All his impassioned protests withered on his tongue.
The shame descended on him, so heavy his legs locked beneath him. He trembled beneath its weight, its inexorable press downward and downward again.
Selfish. He’d been unforgivably selfishagain.
She was right. He hadn’t listened. Hadn’t paid attention.
Instead, he’d fuckingassumed. That what she wanted was the same as what he wanted. That his work would make her happy too. That she loved him—or could grow to love him—the same way he loved her.
He’d failed to hear her, and he’d misunderstood. He’d misinterpreted her affection as something more than a friendship and some casual sex.
Only sex wasn’t casual for him. It never had been.
But that wasn’t her problem. He wasn’t her responsibility anymore.
Soon, she’d be burdened and staggering under the mental, physical, and emotional weight of her work once again, and he wouldn’t make her life harder with his neediness. His self-centered demands for her time and energy, when soon she wouldn’t have either to spare.
I’ll miss you,she’d said, and now he understood.
Soon, she’d have no space in her life for him anymore. Which was as it should be.
He’d long thought she was too good for him. This conversation only proved it, and good for her, really. Good for her for realizing it.
“Alex?” She’d moved a step closer, and was studying him now, her brow furrowed.
He wasn’t her patient, though, or her lover. He was just a friend she’d fucked, and she didn’t need to waste her concern on the likes of him.
“I didn’t listen. I didn’t think. I didn’t notice.” He laughed, and it didn’t contain bitterness this time. Only defeat. “Then again, when do I ever?”
She bit her lip, and he couldn’t bear her scrutiny a moment longer.
His eyes dry through sheer force of will, he tried to smile at her.
“Why don’t you pack while I give your best wishes to Stacia and her husband?” Turning away, he reached for the door handle. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes to help you carry your bags down to the entrance.”
He was out in the hall before she could respond.
Downstairs, in the lobby, he heaved open the door to a single-stall bathroom and locked himself inside. He sent a text to Zach with unsteady fingers:I need a few days to think. Stall them if you can. I’m sorry. Swallowing hard, he tucked his phone back in his pocket.
The marble floor stung his knees when he crumpled, but it was just another pinwheel of pain in a body already racked with agony. He couldn’t contain it all a moment longer.
There, where no one could see, he cried so hard he threw up.
TUESDAY MORNING FOUNDAlex back in his home.
Marcus had arrived at the hotel very late Saturday night, carrying both his duffel and a bag full of weird pastries he calledcocroffinuts. He’d slept a few hours on the pullout couch, while Alex had spent the night miserably sniffing the bed’s pillowcases, hunting for a whiff of coconut. And early the next morning, they’d begun their two-day, caffeinated-pastry-fueled trip back down the coast.
Because of Alex’s shaky grasp on—well, everything, Marcus had done all the driving, and he’d done it without complaint. Even when Alex kept choosing playlists full of brokenhearted ’80s power ballads. Including, notably, “Broken Wings” by Mr. Mister, which he played six times in a row before Marcus’s increasingly visible misery finally prompted him to switch to Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” followed by Heart’s “What About Love?”
“You know,” Marcus finally said after the fourth repetition of Cheap Trick’s “The Flame,” his voice strained but patient, “music was still made after the turn of the century. Even sad music with electric guitars.”
Alex stared out the window, where a cliff tumbled down to pounding waves far below. “The synth speaks to my soul.”
Marcus raised a hand in surrender, then went back to driving.
When they’d finally reached Marcus’s L.A. home, he’d emerged from the driver’s seat with a groan, stretching his back. “Want to stay here for a while?”
They both knew Marcus would rather be back in San Francisco with April, and Alex might not prefer solitude, but maybe it was what he needed. It was certainly what he deserved.
