Page 94
"Yeah, well if you loved it so much, why were you getting naked for me 20 seconds after he left?”
"Maybe I just wanted to see if it could be better with someone else,” I fire back. “It wasn’t.”
He closes the space between us until he is pressed up against me. His muscles are coiled and under the starch of his shirt, I smell him—skin and soap and heat. His pupils are so large that the blue is a mere shadow, his mouth slightly ajar, his body tense.
“You’re so full of shit,” he hisses, his mouth a breath away from mine. “Let’s go in the bathroom right now. I’ll prove it.”
I won’t do that to Rob. But I wouldn’t do it anyway. Brendan has wounded me endlessly and unforgivably over the past three weeks. He’s turned me back into the girl I was in high school and after Olivia’s wedding, the one so overwhelmed by grief she could barely get through the day.
I shove him hard and push away. “Move on, Brendan. I have.”
* * *
I’d planned to ask Rob to take me home, but Crystal won’t let anyone get a word in edgewise. She’s too busy trying to explain how being a Broncos cheerleader is really “the exact same” as being a prima ballerina. It’s not until Brendan returns that she finally stops babbling.
“Where were you?” she whines.
“I ran into this girl I know,” he says, glancing at me. “I’d forgotten what a liar she is. I’m not sure she tells the truth about anything.”
My throat closes in at his words. I know he’s just trying to make me angry, but he’s right. I’m not even sure which lies he’s accusing me of: the one I’m telling Rob by omission, or the ones I’ve been telling for a long time—about my family, what I want from life. I do nothing but pretend. It’s all I know how to do.
The realization exhausts me. I’m so tired of the effort it takes to lie, to be this person Rob thinks I am, to pretend I’m not heartbroken. I tell Rob I’m sick and I need to leave. At least this lie feels true.
* * *
“What was going on back there?” Rob asks on the way home. “With you and Brendan. He seemed like he was mad at you.”
I tell him Brendan was just angry that I was being a bitch to Crystal. I can picture him sneering, calling me a liar, even as I say the words.
He pauses. “Why were you?” The quiet in the car feels ominous, as if the question is asking so much more.
“Because she’s an idiot.”
He could counter that it’s unfair to blame her for being an idiot, or that there’s no reason to ridicule her for it to her face, but he says nothing.
We reach Harper’s house, and he walks me to the door. He watches my face. He wants to kiss me, is wondering if I’ll let him.
I do. And just like everything else with him, it is lovely and familiar and eases something inside of me.
“I fly out pretty early in the morning,” he says slowly, holding my gaze as if these words are important. “But I’m home on Saturday. You know that I want you back, and I think you’re ready to give me a chance, but before I go, I want to make something clear: I don’t care what you did or who you were with while I was gone. I just need to know it’s over.”
There’s something in the way he says it, in the way he’s looking at me. It’s almost as if he knows I was with Brendan.
64
Brendan
Three Years Earlier
Gabi cries all night long. All I can do is apologize, again and again. She’s a nice girl, and I’ve fucked up, so badly. I don’t know why I allowed it to happen, or how to fix it.
The next morning I go to work, but she won’t get out of bed. I lead the morning tour, and just as we’re coming in, my landlady calls. She’s yelling, and I can’t understand her, so I hand the phone to Seb.
“Did you leave a sink on something?” he asks me. “She says there’s water coming through her ceiling.”
I will always remember this moment. The innocent half-second when I ponder what might have happened, followed by the moment the Earth shifts. The moment where I realize the consequences of my behavior might be so much worse than hurt feelings, than grief.
It’s the moment when it occurs to me my mistakes might be fatal ones.
