AN: This is the scene we are missing in the book. :)
Miss You
I wasn't quite sure how our reunion would go. I felt excited and anxious and cool simultaneously. The written word allows a level of intimacy that is simply too uncomfortable up close and personal. Ivo and I had had a light, easy relationship prior to his departure, although we fought pretty much all the time after he refused either to cancel the trip or take me with him.
The summer had been a whirlwind romance - passionate letters, drunken phone calls, valuable gifts to win my favor. He had courted me in a fashion worthy of Blake or Wordsworth, sweeping me off my feet with his ardor - and I didn't even like the Romantics! How could we possibly face one another after that? I dreaded it. What would we say to one another? Would he kiss me, fuck me on the spot? Would he unpack while I sat on his bed hearing more of his adventures with none of my own to offer him?
He had proposed picking me up in P. and driving me back to N. to save me the train ride. It was our unspoken agreement that I would live with him while keeping my room in a flat shared by five others. It gave me someplace to stay when he had company or was traveling and kept the gossip down. I had packed for term three days earlier, leaving me little to wear or read. I spent the days smoking and revising what was to be my first novel, my nights drinking myself into a stupor to block out the telly my mother now kept on at all times to banish her own loneliness.
I placed my bags on the porch and watched for him. I changed my mind, not wanting to appear desperate, and moved my bags back upstairs and lay down on my bed. After ten unendurable minutes, I moved them back downstairs in the hall and sat at the kitchen table. I didn't want to stay in the house one second longer than absolutely necessary.
The doorbell rang and my heart first failed and then beat so violently I was fairly certain I was having a heart attack. My face flushed hot and my knees went wobbly and my legs were barely able to perambulate me to answer. I tried to compose myself, think of something clever to say. I had an image of his mocking smile that contrasted violently with the man I had come to know through correspondence. I had lost the ability to salivate and my tongue was now glued to the roof of my mouth like peanut butter. I wanted to cry, give up, crawl into a hole somewhere and die.
But this was Ivo. My Ivo. Coming to pick me up to take me home, back to my true home. I managed the twenty-odd feet to the door and wrenched it open, no longer caring what impression I made. I was doing plenty of damage to myself on my own; there wasn't much more he could do to ruin me completely.
How wrong I was!
Ivo stood in the doorway bearing flowers, a penitent look on his face. "Can you ever forgive me for leaving you all summer?" he asked, low and urgent.
I fell into his arms, crying.