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The life with a man who told Rhys all about his day when he came home. Who was a good cook and would tease Rhys gently as he taught him to cook too. Who did things like buy birthday presents months in advance because he saw something Rhys would like, and wrap them in real wrapping paper. Who woke Rhys on weekend mornings with elaborate plans for activities and who didn’t sleep with his head under a pillow. Who wanted to spend holidays with Rhys’s family and had a family of his own, so they’d alternate.
Who knew how to do this.
My throat was tight, and I swallowed hard. I wanted it for Rhys. The best. The best I knew I could never be. It was so clear now, the impassable distance between myself and this other man.
But even imagining Rhys with anyone else nearly made me vomit.
Max barked, confused as to why we were lurking on the front porch, and Rhys opened the door. He looked worried.
“Hey, I wondered where you guys’d gotten off to.”
The door was open. Rhys was right there. I loved him so much that sometimes it felt like it could shred me.
I held out Max’s leash to Rhys and when he took it I inched backward. Max looked between us.
“Wanna just order pizza?” Rhys said, sounding tired. “I don’t really feel like making— What are you doing?”
I took another step back.
I don’t know how to do this! I don’t know how to be what you need! Help me, please!
Inside my head, everything was screaming. Owls shrieking, the horse rearing, and that tiny, skinned squirrel screaming and screaming and screaming as we were laid bare.
“I don’t know how to do this.” My voice was so soft that at first I wasn’t sure I’d said it out loud at all.
“Do what?”
“This.” I gestured between us. “I don’t know . . . what I’m doing. I gotta . . .”
There was rushing in my ears and darkness at the edges of my vision that blotted out the stars overhead.
I backed up, as if the more distance I put between myself and Rhys’s other life, the more likely it might be to materialize for him.
He’d worked so hard to make things okay between us. He’d forgiven me everything. He’d made me feel at home with him even though I’d had no idea what home felt like. He’d done all this, every day, and I still didn’t know what to do for him.
He shouldn’t have to work so hard. Someone else would be better. He deserved someone sweet and easy and smart and confident. Someone who matched him. Like the puppy at the shelter had matched him. Like a hundred guys out there would probably match him. He was a lion and I was a skinned squirrel. All I’d ever had was quickness and cover, and now that they were gone, I had no choice but to feel everything.
“Matt.” Rhys’s voice was confused.
“I have to . . . I can’t . . . You . . .”
Rhys stroked Max’s ears once and then closed the door, leaving him inside. He caught my arm just as my feet hit the dirt road.
“Matty, stop. Talk to me.”
He sounded so fucking tired, and I felt like I’d woken up on a raft adrift on the ocean, no land in sight.
“Rhys, don’t,” I choked. “Why are we doing this? Why can’t you just let me go?”
“What? What the fuck does that mean, let you go?”
“Don’t you get it? I can’t fucking do this! I’m worthless at this! I don’t know how to be this . . . this . . . person. And you deserve the best person because you’re so fucking perfect, and every day I know that I’m fucking up your life and you just, you just let me.”
Rhys’s mouth was open in a stunned cartoon O.
“I thought we’d worked this out. I thought . . . I thought . . . Where is all this coming from? Did something happen tonight?”
“It’s coming from me! You shouldn’t have to try so hard to turn me into something okay. I’m not—I’m all—I’m fucking broken, Rhys. I make everything harder for you, and I don’t know how to do the shit that you know how to do. I don’t know how to be married. It’s like a big fucking joke where I’m the little orphan kid who accidentally got made king and I’m sitting on that throne with piles of gold and I’m supposed to like rule a kingdom or something but I. Don’t. Know. Shit. The only happy marriage I ever saw was reruns of fucking Friday Night Lights when I worked at the laundromat!”
I was yelling at Rhys on the road outside our house in the dark. His cottage glowed like a beacon. Like a snow globe. Like a fantasy.
