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“I feel cheated,” she says.
“Why?”
“All this time, and you didn’t even show me yourself. These things . . . they are who you are.”
“No, they are who I was.”
“No, they are who you are. They brought you here. To this day. You didn’t give me a chance to understand that even the unattractive parts of you, the messy parts, were something that I could accept.”
“You believe that? Can you try for a second to understand that maybe my decision to leave this all behind has nothing to do with you?” His voice is tightening, as if he is failing to keep a lid on it, his own growing anger, which instead of making Maggie step back fuels hers. “It was a decision I made long before I ever met you, Maggie.”
“What decision is that? To just pretend that everything is okay, even when it’s not? You couldn’t hear your mother tell you what was really going on with the party tonight. You couldn’t hear me ask you to be real with me about your childhood here. You think if you don’t talk about it, you can just pretend everything is all right? Everything is not all right. Not with us, not with your parents, not with anything today. And if you let yourself go anywhere real with it, you have to acknowledge it.”
“Which part?”
“That I had a right to know. I had a right to know that the person I was marrying had been married before. I had a right to know why it didn’t work out between you. For goodness’ sake, doesn’t that make sense? I had a right to know more about you than a stranger might.”
“You do.”
Do I? She doesn’t know if that’s true. She doesn’t know what she believes. How do you ever know anyone, at the end of the day? Does it matter if they leave out who they used to be? Does it matter if they are never going to become who you thought they were?
She starts to walk away, back toward the car. She can’t think about it now, she can’t think until she has some distance. Until she has some time when she isn’t looking at him, and letting what she feels for him obscure what she needs to be remembering right now.
“I don’t think she ever loved me.”
She turns back around, because she hears the anger drop out of him, hears something much worse beneath it. “Excuse me?”
“We met and it all happened so fast. We met two months before I graduated from high school, and were married six weeks after. I had never known anyone like her. That sure of herself, that fearless about everything. She always knew exactly what she wanted. She knew exactly how she felt about everything that came her way.” He paused. “It is a dangerous reason to love someone.”
“What is?”
“Because you want to be them.”
She is quiet, looking at him. She can see in his eyes how hard it was for him to say that—to her, to himself. She knows the last thing he wants to do now is to keep going.
“And I’m sure she would say she did love me. But I can’t stop thinking that she was in it because I could help her. She needed help getting the restaurant together, getting this life together that she wanted. And when she didn’t need that help anymore, she didn’t need me anymore. And I’m not just talking about financial support or whatever. I’m talking about the fact that she wanted an audience, and I couldn’t have been a better one. I’m talking about how long it took me to believe, after her, that anyone would actually just want me.”
“So what, then?” Her heart is racing, everything good he has said dropping out beneath what she fears she just figured out, what she worries she now knows. “Is that why you picked me?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m the opposite.” She motions in the direction of The House. “Ryan, your previous life, the restaurant. It looks absolutely different, it feels absolutely different. You just said it yourself, and I saw it myself. She couldn’t be more different from me . . . the way she looks, the way she is. And so now I don’t know if you actually chose me, or just chose the opposite of what didn’t work before.”
“I am choosing you.”
But she is no longer listening. She is not even sure, at this moment, that she knows how. Apparently, though, she does know how to cry. Because she is crying. She is crying harder than she can remember crying. She can’t stop it now. And, what’s worse, she can’t stop from saying the next thing, even though she is scared it will change everything once they both hear it.
“And the worst part is that commitment has always been so hard for me. You know that. You know that I’ve run from everyone my entire life. But when I met you, I thought, hey, maybe it isn’t me, after all. I just had to meet the right person. And then I’d know how to stay still, and be a good partner, and be a good friend, and be happy.” She pauses, makes herself swallow. “Only now, I think that our relationship is the clearest example I can give myself that I still can’t handle commitment, that somewhere inside I still don’t want real partnership.”
“Why?”
“Because there was no real risk with you,” she says. “You were going to run first.”
“I’m right here.”
“That’s the thing, Nate. Why do I have to explain this to you? If you haven’t been honest with me, you’ve never been here,” she says.
She starts to leave him standing there, but the sound of his voice stops her. “So now you have it, Maggie. Your way out.”
