An Unhelpful Apology

I went to see Eli on Monday with a packet of biscuits and an apology that had too many jobs attached to it.

I had written the speech on the bus. I would explain Thursday, say I was sorry for going quiet, offer to help make the tool rolls he needed for Westport and demonstrate, by being extremely practical about his departure, that I no longer had any unreasonable feelings about it.

The speech lasted until he asked, “How are you?”

Then I said, “Would you ever think about staying a bit longer?”

The biscuits were still in my hand.

He looked at me across the workbench.

“How much longer?”

“I don't know. A few months.”

“That's when the apprenticeship starts.”

“I know.”

“If I miss it, I don't just go later. I lose the place.”

“I wasn't asking you to lose it.”

“What were you asking?”

The shed seemed suddenly too full of things I couldn't look at. A boat rib. A clamp. A shaving curled like a small pale question on the floor. I put the biscuits down because holding them had begun to feel absurd.

“I don't want everything to change at once.”

Eli leaned back against the bench. He didn't cross his arms, which I noticed because I had already started preparing myself to feel shut out.

“I don't want to be far from you,” he said. “That's not the same as wanting to stay here instead.”

I looked at his hands. There was a shallow scratch across one knuckle and a strip of tape around the thumb he'd rubbed raw sanding. I liked those hands. I liked what he wanted to do with them. Somehow I had separated that from the actual future in which he got to do it.

“I'm being unfair.”

“Yes.”

The answer hurt. He wasn't trying to soften it for me, and I couldn't blame him.

“I missed the interview because I was scared,” I said. “Not because I had to help Agnes. I had a way to go. I didn't take it.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“I guessed some of that.”

“From my very detailed message saying it was complicated?”

“Mostly.”

I laughed without much humour.

“I didn't want you to think I was the kind of person who doesn't turn up.”

“I wanted you to tell me what happened.”

“That sounds so much easier when you say it afterwards.”

“It probably was difficult. I still wanted to know.”

I sat on the stool beside the bench. Stan was out collecting timber. Without his voice from the other end of the shed, the space felt too private for the conversation I had prepared and exactly private enough for the one we were having.

“I can help with the tool rolls,” I said.

Eli closed his eyes briefly.

“What?”

“You don't need to sew your way out of this conversation.”

“I wasn't—”

I stopped.

He looked tired. Not of me entirely, I hoped, but of being offered tasks where an honest feeling ought to have been.

“You can say you'll miss me,” he said. “You can say you're worried about what happens. You don't have to disguise it as a problem with my packing.”

I rubbed my thumb along the edge of the stool.

“I'll miss you.”

“I'll miss you too.”

“And I'm worried you'll get there and this will feel like a nice thing that happened before your proper life started.”

His face changed.

“Is that what you think this is?”

“No.”

“Then let me have an opinion too.”

I nodded. It was harder than promising a tool roll because I couldn't make trust with my hands and inspect the seam afterwards.

We opened the biscuits. They were the plain sort Stan bought, which suddenly seemed a poor choice for an apology but an excellent one for two people who needed something uncomplicated to do with their mouths.

“Do you still want to see me?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“I don't want every nice evening to feel like a test of whether I'll change my answer about September.”

“It won't.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I'll try not to do that,” I corrected.

“That sounds more believable.”

I left before Stan returned. Eli walked me to the lane but didn't kiss me goodbye. I wanted him to, which didn't mean he owed me one to prove the conversation had ended successfully.

At the corner, he touched my hand.

“Tell me about the next email,” he said. “Even if it doesn't go how you want.”

“I will.”

On the bus home, I opened the apology I'd written that morning. It looked polished and almost completely beside the point.

I deleted the paragraph about helping him pack. The blank space beneath it was uncomfortable. I let it stay blank.