Where You End by Anna Pellicioli Page A

coming on, and since nobody can turn away from ugly truths, I listened.
    â€œBeing with you is like … ”
    â€œWhat is it like?” I hissed.
    â€œIt’s like you bring me down into this deep ocean, where I’ve never been before, and it’s really beautiful, and it’s exciting, but sometimes it’s just too much … ”
    â€œI’m just too much?” I asked.
    â€œIt’s just so intense. It’s, like, sometimes you have to come up for air, you know, but it’s, like, impossible to come back up to the surface with you.”
    â€œ So you’re tired? Is that what you are saying? That you’re tired of me?”
    â€œCan we just go back and sit down?” he pleaded.
    â€œDo you agree with him?” I asked, desperate.
    â€œOh my God, please,” he said.
    â€œDo you think you’ll wake up one day and no longer need your music? Or God? Or love? Do you think we’re just wasting our time?”
    â€œI have no idea, Miriam.”
    â€œYes, for example. Miriam.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?”
    â€œDo you know who Miriam is?”
    â€œ No.” He looked down and made circles in the sand with his feet, probably to stop himself from shoving me out of his way.
    â€œShe’ s the one who saved Moses, watched him float in a little basket down the river when the Pharaoh wanted to kill him.”
    â€œSo what?” Elliot said, losing patience. “My father is the Pharaoh?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œOh, no, I’m the Pharaoh! I’m the Pharaoh!”
    â€œYou didn’t answer my question,” I said.
    His eyes were green, green, green—like Oz green. “It was a stupid question.”
    â€œOh, now you’re calling me stupid.”
    â€œI didn’t call you stupid,” he said.
    â€œNo. You just think I’m too much.”
    â€œMiriam.”
    â€œElliot?”
    â€œIt’s one thing. He said ONE thing. You’ve been here for five days. You’ve gone on hikes with him. You’ve had dinners with him, and one time he says this thing and you totally write him off.”
    â€œShould I be grateful?”
    â€œI’m not saying that.”
    â€œWhat are you saying?” I ask.
    â€œI’m saying he’s my father and maybe he’s wrong, but I love him, and I still respect him.”
    He was trembling when he said that. I knew I could make it to the ocean, but it could not be with Elliot. Elliot could go back to his Mommy and Daddy.
    â€œGood.” I nodded. “And I’m saying my grandfather took the last boat to America before the Nazis raided his house, and that’s why I’m here to fuck you in your summer home. I’m saying my mother gave up everything and lived in a rathole for years, just so she could take photographs for the rest of her life. I’m saying that guy at the concert was your knife, and he probably saved your life, and now you’ re turning your back on him and everything he does. I’m saying we’re in love, but it’s nothing anybody can count on, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop when I get tired. Faith isn’t something we can just get rid of. We need it. Everything runs on it.”
    You could say we would’ve never broken up if it hadn’t been for David’s rant on the useless arts. Or if Elliot hadn’t been so damn passive, so quiet. But what kept me shivering until I got home was the fear—not of David, whose comments I’d heard before; not of Elliot, who’d proven his loyalty enough other times—but of love itself, stretched from my Opa, through my mother, to my favorite second grade teacher, to the boy who kissed my breasts in the kitchen of his summer home after his parents had gone to sleep.
    All I kept thinking about was his ocean metaphor. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was too intense, too tiring. Maybe it was easy to fall in love with me, but not