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Ging never told her when he was leaving. The first time was hard, and it never, ever got easier, rubbing salt on an old wound that never healed. It had to be something about hating goodbyes, something about him not knowing if this time he would ever return. Or if he’d return to her, even.
She couldn’t stay mad at him. She wanted to. To tell him off, tell him he couldn’t just toy with her heart like that. To tell him that she needed at least some heads up, some ground rules about what was going on if they were going to keep seeing each other. She wanted to slam the door in his face, tell him to stay somewhere else, with someone else. But thinking about someone and seeing them in person were two very, very different things.
He had this charm, this magnetic pull that drew them together. Every time he returned, it was as if everything was back to where it was before they left off. No mind they hadn’t seen each other in months, or that she didn’t know where in the hell he’d gone off to, he filled in the gaps with his stories of his excursions, and she’d tell him what she was working on in the lab.
“So, how long are you staying?” asked Cheadle, resting her head on his shoulder. She scooched herself closer to him, draping an arm over his chest, her fingers running playfully against his skin. Ging played with a strand of her hair, teasing it between his forefinger and thumb, not bothering to look up.
“Not long,” he replied. Always keeping it vague and uncertain. “I’m deciding between a few different sites to survey next.”
Three days, that’s how long Ging was staying. But even he didn’t know how long he’d be gone. He told himself, every time, that it’d be the last time he showed up at her apartment unannounced, but it always seemed like a good idea in the heat of the moment.
“Why don’t you come with me, there’s the remnants of an old village a few miles from where I’m taking a team to collect some samples.” She said, propping herself up on her side, green eyes wide with anticipation. She pressed a quick kiss against his cheek. “We could do a joint mission again. Carnivorous plant forest, doesn’t it sound interesting? Lots of medicinal applications. And it’s in the tropics, wouldn’t that be fun?”
He could go with her, he knew exactly what site she was talking about. Truth be told, it was a site he’d been looking at for a while. It would be nice to have her around, to chat late at night around the fire pit about all the field work they did that day, stay up late and watch the stars together outside their tents. To make more memories together. But it was only postponing the inevitable.
Ging wasn’t oblivious, the frustration on her face as Cheadle opened the door earlier that night was hard to hide. Frustrated with him, and with herself for taking him back every single time. It was a decision every hunter would have to make at some point in their life, whether it be a relationship, a friendship, a future. It wasn’t a balance if the scales were weighted from the start.
One of these days she was going to close the door on him when he least expected it. Sure, they were in good graces now, but next time? The time after? He was playing with matches, it was better to put them out before he set them ablaze.
“I think we should see other people.”
Cheadle’s brows furrowed together, lips slightly parted in confusion. She shifted against the mattress, the creaks filling the gap of silence between them.
Her head began to fill with all sorts of unanswerable questions. No, this wasn’t right. He kept coming back to her. He came back tonight, and the last time, and all the times before that. Every time he disappeared, she was the first person he saw again. Did that mean nothing to him?
“So you’re just going to give up?” The more her voice rose the more it cracked and quivered, strained against her emotions. “That’s it? You’re a quitter?”
“It’s not quitting, it’s just…” Ging tightened his grip on her hand, thumb rubbing against the back of it, before letting go. “I can’t keep lying to myself, or to you. It’s not fair to either of us.”
Irony was a bitter, bitter taste. Ging sat up, bare legs over the edge of the bed as he turned his back to her. It was cold, the sheets were warmer, but if he went back he knew he wouldn’t leave. He had to cut her off, crisply and cleanly, with one fell swoop of the knife.
Lies. Cheadle grabbed the covers, pulling them over her bare body. There were so many kinds of lies. Lies propped up as a shield to protect people from a reality that would hurt them, lies wielded as a knife to dig into their emotions and hurt them. Lies that were less spoken but what was unspoken, the omitted details of a bigger picture, washed out and hidden.
It was an echo in her mind. He’d lied to her before, or he was lying right now. Whether out of protection or malice, at the end of the day, it didn’t matter. A lie was a lie. But the lures of curiosity were enticing, too strong to resist.
“What do you mean?”
“About all of this, about-” Ging turned around to gesture between the two of them. “Us.”
About how I’m slowly hurting you.
Cheadle grabbed the glasses off her nightstand, rubbed the lenses against the bed sheets then put them on, putting him into focus. Ging looked uncomfortable and vulnerable, stripped out of his shell of overconfidence.
“What about us?” she pressed. Omitting details, letting her fill in the pieces. It was a clever way of his to make her assume things, figure things out for herself and choose what she wanted to believe.
Ging brushed locks of green hair out of her eyes, the pale moonlight casting its glow over the edges. To call her pretty was an understatement, she was more than that. She was passionate, driven, and highly intelligent. But their goals didn’t align. He knew she was conflicted, she wanted a relationship. A real relationship, not an indeterminate amount of nights they’d share together. They were hunters, and would always be hunters. She would know as much as he did that they wouldn’t give up their passions for anything. And that included their own feelings. The more she wanted them to work out, the harder it was going to be for this to fizzle out. Selfishness was a beast of desire, taking what it wanted without a care in the world. He needed to put it down before it consumed him, taking her with.
“We keep telling each other it’s fine, but it’s just not working. We’re both… frustrated.”
“It’s not working out because you won’t put in any effort,” snapped Cheadle. It was almost a record time of how long it took for him to say something that pissed her off. They could work, she knew it, if he could just put in a bit of effort, make a few sacrifices of his own. He was being selfish again, only thinking about himself. Was she really more trouble than she was worth? Was that all he saw her as? A quick and convenient lay? She felt her cheeks getting red with anger. “How hard would it be to just give me a heads up when you go off somewhere? Or to match our schedules?”
“Cheadle, look, my plans are never concise. I don’t know when I’m coming back,” sighed Ging. Hell, he didn’t know if he was coming back. The hunter world was dangerous and unpredictable, even for the most experienced and proliferate nen users. “Sometimes complications happen, or I get a new opportunity to pursue something, and plans change.”
But apparently she wasn’t worth it.
“You know, I always waited for you. I don’t see other people when you’re gone.” Cheadle looked up at him, and just from her eyes he could tell she didn’t say it to brag, or out of bitterness, but out of longing.
“I didn’t ask you to do that-”
“I didn’t do it for you,” she retorted. How could he be so dense, so stupid, yet so brilliant at the same time? He could predict people’s actions months, no, years in advance, yet he couldn’t even see what was happening before him? “I did it for us. Because I wanted us to exist.”
“Okay, well, I don’t care.”
Another lie, the web growing and growing. The more he tried to balance on the strings the more they tugged and pulled on him, his own trap consuming him. It tugged at his heart strings, a ballad of young love and the mistakes that came with it.
“Tell me you don’t care about me. Tell me that you don’t want to see me again. I want to hear it from you.” Her eyes were lit with anger, the flames dancing around the edges.
Ging opened his mouth to speak. All he had to do was say it, tell her what she wanted to hear. But the protective web he’d built began to unravel before him, the lies losing their integrity, coming undone. And then he was free falling, left without a plan of what to do next. He’d gone in too far over his head, said too many things without thinking about them first. Of course he cared, he wanted to see her, he wanted things to continue like this. But she wanted more than what they had, things he couldn’t give her. It was better to get out before he drowned them both.
“I should get going,” he said, grabbing his pants off the edge of her bed, awkwardly hopping into them.
“Yeah, you should.”
Stay.
Ging pressed a chaste kiss on her lips, lingering for far too long. What was meant to be a last goodbye felt like anything but that.