I put my arms around Kelly and tried to pull her close to me. She turned her head away from me in anger and stalked off. I ran after her, moving through the crowd without caring whose toes I stepped on.

"Kelly…"

"Leave me alone," she said, her voice breaking.

"Kelly, I'm sorry."

"Leave me alone, Alan."

"Not this time." I said, more forcefully than I intended.

Her back stiffened and she turned to face me. She grabbed my upper arm and shoved me in the direction of Alexis's office. My fingers were still fumbling with the light switch as Kelly slammed the door behind us. The lights came on at that instant and I had to shut my eyes, so used to the dim light at the party outside.

"I'm sorry, Kelly." I repeated. "She's here to meet her new in-laws. I never thought she'd come."

"Really?" she spat. "I didn't know she existed! Exactly when were you planning on telling me that you were divorced?"

"Kelly, I had a hard enough time dealing with it myself. It was too painful. I couldn't talk about it with anyone."

"What kind of excuse is that?" she yelled incredulously.

"Your excuse!" I shouted. "Or are you the only one who's entitled to have secrets?"

"This is different!"

"Of course, now you're the one who feels betrayed! I've fulfilled your prophecy! Are you happy now?" I lowered my voice with effort and tried to unclench my fists. "You were right all along, I'm just another bastard. Now you have a valid excuse for dumping me."

"What are you talking about?" She asked in confusion.

"That! What you do! The way everything I do is one big test, like a never ending audition. You always want me to prove the sincerity of my intentions, to prove that I'll always be there no matter what shit you put me through. You always want a fucking guarantee!"

"Are you saying that to convince me or yourself?" she retorted furiously, the words hitting too close to home. "You're the one who needs a guarantee, a promise that you're not alone."

"That's what love is!"

"No, it isn't!" Kelly screamed. "That's bribery! You say you love me but you really mean that you'll love me if I'm sweet and affectionate and if I love you YOUR WAY."

I gasped. A Pandora's box of emotion pummeled me with the intensity of a wave lashing against a pier. I tried valiantly to deny it, to make some sort of excuse. I looked away from her.

I heard the rawness in her voice but I was powerless to comfort her. I couldn't help but recoil from the intense pain she was now expelling.

"I can't love you your way, Alan." she cried. "I don't know how. All my life I've been changing for people, trying to prove something to them. I've been trying to give them a reason to stay. And I'm tired… I'm just so tired."

She took a shaky breath. "I'm tired of you hammering at me. I'm tired of you looking at me as if I'd done something horrible that only you can see. Only you won't tell me what it is because then you might have to forgive me."

I turned away from her and leaned on the large oak desk. "I'm tired too, Kelly. I'm tired of being trusted only when it's convenient for you. To be loved as long as you're not vulnerable, as long as you're not jeopardized."

I gave a hoarse laugh. Not wanting to look at her, not caring if I hurt her. "Kelly Garret, vulnerable to bullets but not to people. Intense yet controlled. Passionate but in charge. Knows what she wants but takes it only when her desires don't put her at risk. Kelly Garret, always condescending to give more than she takes, because the more you take, the more you get used to taking. Habit mutates into need. And Kelly Garret doesn't need anyone."

Tears spilled over her eyelids, and she brushed them away savagely.

"You're not in love with me, Alan. You're in love with the idea of me." Kelly stated. "You only need me to need you. You know it and I know it."

I stared at her, recognizing the truth and wishing I could shove it away.

"It's killing you, isn't it?" Kelly continued. "You would rather deal with me getting shot on the street than with me leaving you."

"Do you know why Sylvia left me?" I asked abruptly. "And make no mistake, whatever she hissed at you back there, she was the one who left me."

"Small wonder, if you were as relentless as you are with me."

"She just decided to leave. I came home one night and she declared over dinner that she had gotten an apartment. Just like that. Six years of marriage and she never gave me her reasons. There were no fights or recriminations." I said in a dead voice. "She just dropped me from her life completely. Even now, she doesn't really want me back. Sylvia just doesn't want anyone else to take her possessions. Even the ones she's thrown away."

"And you think I'm like that?" Kelly retorted. "You think I'd just leave you on a whim? This is why you've been badgering me? You don't know the first thing about me."

"Of course not!" I yelled. "You revel in your inconsistencies. You maintain these contradictions not because you can't be understood but because you don't want to be!"

She recoiled from me as if I had struck her across the face.

"What are you afraid of? Do you think you'll lose your identity if someone understands you?" I asked. "Or are you just as terrified as I am that no one will think you're worth knowing? Worth loving?"

"I… I don't need you to understand me."

"You'll never need anything from anyone, will you? That's the way you've set it up." I said sadly. "It's not that you don't need anyone. It's just that you don't want to."

Kelly's honest, unpretending face turned towards mine. She was more naked at that moment than I had ever been privileged to see her. I took a breath and touched her, gently, wiping the tears.

"It's like my painting. You and I, we're the wheels of the bicycle. Both of us going in opposite directions but trying to stay together. Bicycle wheels trying to reach each other. You and me, stuck, going nowhere. Not knowing there are nails in the path because we're too busy trying to touch.

"It's impossible." I said softly. "We're drowning in the inevitable. I kept thinking of something I could do to make it work… why do you always run away from me, Kelly? What are you trying to protect yourself from?"

"You…"

"Me?!" I shouted in amazement.

"You… smother me."

I shook my head. "I treat you the way you deserve to be treated."

"Like a cripple?" she bristled.

"I have never taken advantage of you. I have respected your privacy, your freedom, and your space. I have never lied to you. I have loved you unendurably. I still do. I love you in ways that give meaning and dignity to my life."

"You treat me like a cripple!" Kelly screamed, her fury washing over me like heat.

"If that's what it takes to show you that you can't stand alone… Then yes, I will treat you like a cripple. Like a needy cripple." I roared. "If that frightens the hell out of you, then good. You frighten me too."

I took a deep breath, fished out my key ring, and separated the key to her house. It burned my palm. I placed it on the coffee table in front of us, sure of what I was about to do.

"Kelly…"

"Stop it, Alan." She said in a dead voice. "Just stop it."

"I will." I replied quietly. "I have to."

I moved to face her, squatting on the floor. I took her hands in mine. It was the last tenderness we would ever share. I drew breath and began. "You look like a woman who can have six orgasms and keep herself; I can't even kiss you and keep myself. I need you. I love you, I love everything about you. You're the only one who can make me this crazy. Crazy because I am the guy who is willing to go for the long haul, and you just don't seem to get it."

~~~~~~~~~~

It had started to rain as I stepped out of the gallery. The staccato rhythm of the drops hitting the asphalt was the only sound. Everything seemed so strangely quiet outside, without the music, without the noise of the crowd.

I walked to the curb and hailed a cab. I wanted to get away from the exhibit as fast as I could. It wasn't about me. At least, not anymore. I didn't care whether the paintings sold or not. I didn't care about anything anymore. I had no idea where I was going, or what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I didn't want to think, to know what I had done and accept it.

My eyes fastened on the yellowing leaves of the spruce across the street. The rain was light, but it was everywhere. The leaves were being beaten into submission by minute drops of water.

It was getting colder. Summer was yielding to the passage of time and the orbit of the earth. Autumn was coming. It would have been close to a year since our first date. Our anniversary. Kelly and her green scarf, my breath condensing in mid-air. Just as it was doing now.

I let out a sigh, and it turned into a white vapor. Almost indistinguishable from the rain. Absently, I tried catching my own breath. I made fists around my exhalations. I held them tight, trying to keep warm any way I could.

Frustrating. The heat always seeped out, eluding my grasp.

I shook my head, almost humorously.

I took my hands out of my pockets and blew into them, trying to keep warm. My hands tried unsuccessfully to seal the warmth and comfort of my breath, trying to hold the heat inside them. I rubbed my hands together, and blew in to them again.

The only way to warm myself was to cup my hands around my mouth and keep breathing. I couldn't keep the heat in my hands by strangling it, choking my own breath. Smothering it.

Smothering.

"God, I'm so stupid!"

I felt thin fingers on my shoulder and spun around.

Sabrina slugged me across the jaw. My left shoulder hit the lamp post. In an effort to regain my balance, my ankle twisted outwards. I found myself sprawled in the gutter.

"You sanctimonious bastard!" Sabrina screamed. "You are so fucking self-absorbed! Standing there, oh so smug and self-righteous. What about Kelly? Do you know how hard it was for her to open up to you even this much? She's not a painting, Alan! You can't take her apart brush stroke by brush stroke and analyze her. You tell yourself that you only want to find out what it takes to make her happy. You use it as an excuse to try and goad her into loving you. Into needing you. You were so afraid that she was using you. Kelly's not the type of person who's got it together enough to share herself with someone because she's lonely or has nothing better to do. It's easy to hurt her. And that's what you wanted to do isn't it? You wanted to frighten her. You wanted to hurt her before she could hurt you. Are you happy now? You won. You won the battle that was all in your head." Sabrina drew a quick breath. "What the hell do you have to say for yourself?!"

"Bri, I know." I moved my right hand to cradle my cheek.

"What?" she said, startled.

"I know."

"Oh. Well… Good!" Sabrina replied, still taken aback.

"What am I going to do?" I said, still lying in the gutter, my face toward the constellations Kelly loved so much. "I've been so blind."

"I was going to tell you…" Sabrina said. "I didn't plan on this self-realization…"

"Sorry," I said, grimacing. "I've always had a problem with timing."

"Damn it, Alan! I had this whole sermon planned out." Sabrina said, almost laughing as I got to my feet slowly. "You are the second most frustrating man alive."

In the distance I saw Kelly come out of the gallery, alone, walking fast and hard. The stride and the drawn-back set of her body said it all. I ran toward her, trying not to slip on the wet asphalt. The rain was coming down harder now, it ran down my face. My hair was soaked. I moved it out of my face to clear my vision.

She was fumbling with the Mustang's lock. I could see her quietly cursing her ineptitude. Her shoulders were rising and falling in little jerks. It was as if she were still crying but trying to hold it back. Her hair and dress were getting wet. It didn't look like she cared.

I was two feet away when she finally got her door open, threw her purse in the front seat, and climbed in.

I called her name.

She turned to look at me. Her delicate features bore the strain of my merciless hounding. Her eyes and her nose were still a little red.

Silently, she turned away and turned the key in the ignition.

I ran up to the car and held the door open, forcing her to deal with me. Again that direct look, Kelly assessing and measuring, desperately trying not to be hurt anymore.

"Kelly." I breathed her name like a prayer. It condensed in the air.

The silence was an infinite dimension between us. It was formless and yet it oppressed. I knew that the longer it existed, the longer the space between us was uncrossed, the greater the chance that it would never leave. One footstep was all that separated us, that and a chasm of silence.

"Kelly… we have to talk."

Her eyes were dark now, vulnerable.

The rain tapped out a pattern on the roof of the Mustang. The Morse code of longing, S.O.S. Save our Souls.

Kelly reached out and pushed me firmly out of the way of the door. It closed with a sickening finality. I backed away, convinced that I had lost her for good.

I noticed a thick film of condensation had formed on her part of the windshield. I took out my hanky. It was already wet. I shrugged half-heartedly and used it to wipe the glass clean.

I waited for her to maneuver her car out of the parking lot. I don't know how long I stood there. I don't know how long the two of us stayed like that. I was dripping in the middle of the parking lot. She sat in her car. The engine was running. She was looking through the clear windshield. Her eyes unseeing, her mind elsewhere.

The rain began to let up. I could hear voices from inside the gallery, muffled by the distance. I could feel something fading away. The past swiftly annexing the present, the moments too few, and over so soon.

Kelly came out of her reverie. She turned her face towards mine, and bit her lip. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel, her fingers tensed in a brief spasm. Her hands and arms still bore tiny rivulets of rainwater. Her slim shoulders looked damp. Her eyes, those subtle chameleons, were now as dark as pitch. A light flickered in them as she pressed her lips together.

It was a small smile. A tiny, tentative smile as she reached across and unlocked the door. I moved towards the open door. The front seat seemed to gleam like a beacon, like the light at the end of a very long tunnel.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~END~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~