“I don’t know. I just did. I liked the way we joked, and I liked talking to you. I wasn’t dramatic about it. I didn’t expect you to date me.”
“But I dated your roommates.”
“But I wasn’t mad at you for it.”
“You never said you liked me.” His voice was frustrated.
“When would I have told you?”
“I don’t know. Any of those nights that we spent talking to each other?”
“If I’d told you I liked you, you’d have run away because you would have assumed I was asking for a relationship. I preferred having you as a friend to not seeing you at all.”
“And when you were with Ivan?”
“That made my feelings less intense, but they didn’t go away.”
He rubbed his face. “Okay.” He was speaking almost to himself now. He shifted a little farther from her. “Okay.”
Sarah tried to pull herself together, to slow her racing heart. “Why is this so bad?”
He looked down as if he were replaying his memories. “So okay.”
“Ren,” she said gently, “I’m not expectinganythingfrom you.”
“No, it’s not that,” he muttered, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“I don’t understand what’s wrong.”
He took another deep breath. He still wouldn’t meet her eyes, but his voice was steady. “I am so sorry. I don’t think I can do this.”
“Okay…”
“I am so, so sorry.”
He opened his mouth to say something else, closed it, then walked to the door, opened it, and was gone.
She didn’t hear from Ren again that night. After a few moments of standing stunned in the doorway of her hotel room, she went to bed and stared up at the hotel room ceiling, a murky grey expanse in the darkness, listening to the air conditioning unit turning on and off in a meaningless pattern until dawn.
When she came downto breakfast in the hotel restaurant the next morning, she found Paul there alone, though he had a plate ready for Trish’s arrival. Sarah had a quick breakfast with him and a few other guests who slowly surrounded them. Then she hugged him goodbye and promised to come to St. John’s at Christmas. Trish was still nowhere to be found, and neither was Ren, of course, which felt both predictable and horrible.
Sarah stopped by the hotel’s lobby restroom with her luggage on her way out. Soon after she had entered a stall, she overheard Trish talking to her sister Eleanor as the women stood by the mirrors.
“Like, at a certain point, you have to be realistic, you know?” Trish said.
“Yeah, I get that,” Eleanor replied.
Sarah stayed quiet, listening.
“He adores me. And that’s…I mean, I could marry someone with more money, but I think it’s important to marry someone who’s madly in love with you, you know?”
“And you’re madly in love with him, too, right?”
“Yes.” Trish’s voice had just a touch of hesitation. Or was Sarah imagining that? “And I’m thirty. At a certain point, you have to give up on the fantasy and pick a guy who’s healthy for you.”
Sarah waited until they’d left the restroom before she slipped out, quietly rolling her wheeled luggage through the lobby with her eyes on the ground so she could avoid speaking to anyone. She walked straight to the taxi stand in front of their hotel. She was furious on Paul’s behalf, but her boiling outrage slowly subsided on the taxi ride to the airport.
Was what Trish had said really so wrong? Was her attitude that bad? Hadn’t Sarah herself pursued a fantasy the night before, only to be smacked in the face with reality? What was wrong with Trish deciding to pick a husband who liked her?
