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The study room was eerie this late at night. His beard was too long. His eyes were went as he stared off into the distance at nothing in particular. He heard her come in.
“Do you think you’ll ever come back?”
She looked thrown off by the question. She had barely gotten in the door (How she’d gotten in would be a story for another time.) He wanted to be honest about what he really cared about. What was on his mind. Sick of all the dishonesty.
If not saying what you really meant was just as bad as lying, then Jeff had been more dishonest than at any time he had been a lawyer.
He hoped she would reward his newfound honesty with an honest response. She hesitated.
“I think I have to at some point, right? Or maybe not. Maybe I never will. I don’t know.”
“I know. I have to know that you can’t know.”
He had been honest with himself for the first time ever about what he really wanted in Season 7. He didn’t know if he could keep it up.
“You’re gonna be fine, you know.”
Funny her telling him that.
“I don’t want to be fine. I want to be 25 and heading out into the world. I want to fall asleep on a beach and be able to walk the next day, or stay up all night on accident. I want to wear a white t-shirt without looking like I forgot to get dressed. I want to be terrified of AIDS, I want to have an opinion about those boring ass Marvel movies. And I want those opinions to be of any concern to the people making them.”
“Well I want to live in the same home for more than a year, order wine without feeling nervous, have a resume full of crazy mistakes instead of crazy lies. I want stories and wisdom, perspective. I wanna have so much behind me I'm not a slave to what's in front of me, especially these flavorless unremarkable Marvel movies.”
Now they’re talking about Marvel movies. It’s easy. But it’s not honest.
“There's pressures on me you don't have to live under, if you accept that you're older. And let the kid stuff go.”
Let go, she said.
“I let you go, Annie. With my hands. My head. The heart… wants what it wants. But I let you go.”
“I might come back, you know.”
“Don’t come back for me, Annie. I need you to go out into the world. I need you see the places I’ve never been. Places I never could have dreamed of. I need you to stay up all night talking to a stranger you’ll never see again. And you’ll always wonder what happened to them until you see them on the six o’clock news ten years later. I need to to make your own mistakes. I need you to live your own stories. To find… yourself. I need you to have let me let you go. Because I could never forgive myself. If I took that away from you.”
“What if I did all that and then came back?”
Tried not to smile too much at that thought.
“I will be here, Annie. I will welcome you back with everything you will take. I will….”
Perhaps a smile is all he can offer.
“Thank you. Jeff. No one could possibly blame you if you couldn’t welcome me back. If you had other commitments. A ring on your finger. You also have bright years ahead of you.”
“You’re right, Annie. I will enter relationships with many beautiful women. Intelligent. Bright. Funny. I won’t deserve them. And they all will fail. Not because of any one thing I do. Because I will know what I am looking for. And none of them will be it. It will be wrong of me to use them this way. But I won’t be able to help it. Each time, I will tell myself it will be different. Each time, it won’t be.”
“No pressure, huh.”
“I’m sorry. But you deserve the truth. After everything, you deserve that.”
“I think… you should kiss me goodbye or you might regret it for the rest of your life.”
He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to taste her lips again. Like the debate. Like after the dance. And before he knew it, he was imagining all the thousands of little moments of the two of them. He wasn’t going to. Wasn’t going to kiss her.
“You’re right, Annie. I will probably regret it for the rest of my life. But I have many regrets. I can live with one more. Easier than saying goodbye.”
She looked at her phone. It had buzzed.
“The others are coming.”
“Annie, I have one last request.”
She looked at him. No more doe eyes. Honesty. At least as much as he could. Maybe he was being unfair. Maybe not. Who knows. He could always talk his way into believing he did the right thing.
“I will be here whenever you come back, if you do so. When I am 75, I will gladly take you in. But I am not a young man. And I drink too much scotch.”
“Annie, I won’t tell you to come back. I can’t ask that of you. But, please, if you ever plan to come back. Do it soon.”