Intellectually, I know this is the part in the movie when I tell him I love him too—that I’ve probably always loved him—but my panicked heart is lodged in my ribs. I look down at my feet, gathering myself as fear clenches my throat. “If that were true—”
“It is,” he pleads with me, his voice cracking.
I shake my head and gather up my voice like wreckage from a storm. “If it were, you’ve hadyearsto tell me that.”
He presses his eyes shut. “Ididtell you. At your bachelorette party, I told you.”
I don’t recognize my laugh. It’s hard and humorless. “I’m sorry, did you hand a party penis straw to mebeforeorafteryour big declaration of love?” He steps back, struck. “That is such bullshit, and you know it. You said nothing!”
“I did! But you weren’t ready to hear it, and it nearly destroyed us. Destroyed me.” He shakes his head, sending his hair into his eyes. He looks like a cornered animal. “And I would’ve said it months ago if I’d have thought for a second that you wouldn’t panic if I—”
“Ethan.” It takes every muscle in my throat to keep my voice from collapsing into a soundless wail. “You let meget marriedto someone else.”
“You don’t think I regret that?” he grits out.
He kicks the rear tire like it’s done something to him. How must we look to my neighbors, two grown adults passionatelyarguing beside a white van? Someone’s surely reported this as “suspicious” on Nextdoor.
“Every day you were with that guy, you don’t think it was killing me? I moved in with my parents. I tried to get the band back together—a band that Ihatedby the end of it. Thank god Ivan was already drumming for someone else and got me writing songs again or I would’ve gone insane knowing you were waking up next to that smug asshole every goddamn day.”
“You abandoned me!” I cry out. “I thought I’d done something wrong. I was a wreck my entire honeymoon wondering what I’d done to make you leave me like that.”
“How do you thinkIwas, knowing you wereonyour honeymoon, Chuck? Why do you think I’m here now?”
“Because it wasconvenientfor you,” I say bitterly, pulling my arms over my belly. “It lined up with your schedule, and this whole weekend was happenstance. If you’d had a show somewhere else or hadn’t been ‘in the area,’ you’d be professing your love to some other woman right now.”
“I wasn’t even ‘in the area,’ ” he spits, his voice defiant. “I sent you that text from the parking lot of a Kroger in Atlanta after I bought everything to re-create the dinner we had in Malibu. Remember? You were wearing that red dress, and I all but begged you to move to California?”
I do remember it, but not the way he describes it. We were celebrating my passing the Minnesota bar exam. I’d spentmonthsstudying for a test that he casually suggested I throw away over a wine and seafood meal I couldn’t even afford to split. I think I laughed at the offer.
“Then Friday morning,” he continues, “Lo told me your divorce was final, and it was like a starter’s pistol went off in my chest, and I just…drove. I bailed on an entire weekend ofshows. I couldn’t risk you starting your life over without me in it. I’ve always wanted this, Chuck. You and me,” he whispers. “The way it’s supposed to be.” He takes my face in his hands, palms trembling against my cheeks, and god help me, I lean into them. “Let’s just go somewhere. Leave this all behind.”
A cold laugh wrenches itself from my throat. “Powell, this is all too familiar.”
He drops his hands and takes a step back from me. “No, Chuck. It’s not like that. I just want to…start something with you, someplace else. Someplace that’s not your ex’s house.”
“It’s nothishouse. It’smyhouse. I went to great pains to make itmy house.”
“It’s big and cold and empty. It’s not you at all! Why do you even want it?”
“Because it’smine, Ethan.” I jab my fingers into my chest with each syllable. “Because I own it, and it’s not going anywhere. I’m sorry it’s not a van with wheels that you can drive off in whenever you get bored.”
“I haven’t gone anywhere, Chuck. Not really.”
“What are you talking about? Even right now, your big romantic overture involves flaking on the music career you’ve just rebuilt because youfeellike it.”
He rakes his hand through his hair. Watching him scores my insides. “I’m sorry I couldn’t risk you gettingmarriedagain. What do you want from me?”
“I want you to not be a walking red flag who’s already halfway out the door!”
“I’ve been here the whole time, Chuck! Waiting like an idiot—sending you candy, singing songs that become punch lines on late-night shows—because you’re never willing totry.I could change everything for you and you’dstillbe determined to see this as over before it starts.”
“Because I already know how this ends,” I shout through hot tears. I try to swallow down the heartache, but it tastes too much of salt and sunscreen and misery. I wipe my snot with the heel of my hand. I’m a mess.Thisis a mess.
“Why can’t wetry?” He directs his plea to the sky. He can’t even bear to look at me anymore. “When it stops working, we can try something else. We don’t have to have every part of our future mapped out right this second.”
“ButIdo, Ethan. I’ve always needed that, and being together means one of us is giving up everything, and I’m sorry, but I can’t just ‘try that on.’ I’m not built for it. I’ll never be able to do it, andyoucan’t either.”
He doesn’t respond. He just stares back at me, devastated.
