“Of course I would have told you.” Her head bobbed in a way that seemed too vigorous for her words to be true, her curls bouncing around as she did.
“Oh, really? You’d have told me that you weren’t taking it, and assumed I’d be okay with you wasting your talent? You’ve been selected, Molly. Hunter was right, this is a big deal.”
Her nostrils flared slightly in defensiveness. “It’s my life, Felix.”
She was so fucking stubborn. Always so fucking stubborn, that she couldn’t even see what she was doing.
“No, Molly, it’sourlife. Because what happens to you, happens to me. What the fuck?” I turned and moved further away from her, almost knocking into one of the vases. “You spent two weeks deciding something without me, something that was so important Hunter Reyes yelled at me that I was holding you back and making you a worse surgeon. And maybe I am. But you went ahead anyway and did what you thought was best, as per fucking usual. You make all the decisions and I don’t get one fucking say. All I’ve ever done is ask you to consider me, considerus. You promised you’d talk to me when you had something to say, that we’d work it out together, because either you see me as part of your future or you don’t.”
“Lex, I’m so sorry. Hunter should never have said that. It’s not true.” She held onto my hand. “I get that you’re pissed.”
“No, I don’t think you do actually, because pissed doesn’t even make a dent in how I’m feeling right now. This has nothing to do with Hunter. You’re just like your fucking brother, stubborn as fuck and shit at admitting when you’re wrong.”
“Lex…”
“What did you think I wouldn’t understand?”
“What do you mean?”
“What about this Fellowship did you think I wouldn’t understand? What were you spending two weeks on?”
Her eyes trained on the floor as she scuffed her feet on the carpet, the gold lightning bolts on her sneakers catching the light and reminding me of the day I’d given them to her.
“Molly?”
“Because I wanted both!” she barked, “I wanted both you and the fellowship.”
I blinked through my rising anger, which had stalled because she’d lost me in her reasoning. “What does that mean? Why can’t you have both?”
I stood there, waiting for her to look at me but she wouldn’t, and my anger started bubbling up again, the familiar flush I’d felt since walking into Hunter Reyes’ office returning in full force. Because then I knew exactly why she hadn’t told me. The hours. The late nights. The not coming home when she said she would. The only thing we ever disagreed about. The fact that she didn’t believe me when I said I was okay with them, that as long as she came home to me at the end of the day, then that’s all I cared about.
My cap fell off as I pushed my hands up through my hair, tugging on the ends. “Oh my God, Molly. How are we having this conversation again? I can’t keep doing it, and you can’t keep makingdecisions for both of us without ever talking to me. That’s not a relationship that’s a dictatorship. Either you trust me to stick around or you don’t, but I’m telling you now, you’re going to that interview, you’re going to ace it, and then you’re taking that Fellowship.”
Confusion and frustration crossed her face. “I am taking it, I already told you.”
I picked my cap up off the floor and walked across the room, rolling the peak in my palms. I’d lost count of the amount of conversations we’d had on this subject, and my head shook slowly as I thought about them, about how nothing had got through her stubborn, pigheaded brain. Not one thing I’d said to her had taken hold. And even now, she couldn’t seem to understand why I was so mad.
“Lex, I’m sorry.”
My head snapped round, the annoyance and anger crashing together with a decent level of hurt, as I erupted at her. “Stop fucking saying you’re sorry! I’m sick of hearing it. Stop fucking apologizing for loving your job! And stop fucking underestimating me!”
Deep lines appeared between her brows. “I’m not, Felix. I don’t.”
I dropped my head, not wanting to look at her. “But you do, and you don’t even realize it. Because you don’t trust me.”
She scoffed. “I do trust you, of course I do.”
“No, not when it comes to us.” I closed my eyes, wishing away all of this, wishing the last thirty minutes of my life could be done over. But it felt like my skin was being peeled off layer by layer, my nerve endings exposed to the air, the temperature of which was significantly lower than it had been when I first walked in as clarity came hurtling toward me like an asteroid heading for earth. “You don’t trust us enough to get through this, that’s why you didn’t tell me.”
She looked down at the floor and I watched as a lone tear rolled down her nose and dripped off the end. But she didn’t say a word, and her silence spoke volumes.
“You think I don’t know that our lives will revolve around your job? That you won’t always come home when you say you will? That when we have kids, I’ll be the one on diaper duty and doing the school drop off? I get that. I’m not the one changing lives here, you are.”
Her bloodshot eyes bore through me. “We’re having kids?”
“Yes we fucking are! We’re a family, dammit, and that’s what I see in our future. Don’t you?”
She wiped her runny nose, smudging the mascara running down her cheeks until it resembled a hauntingly beautiful Rorschach test. “Yes.”
