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I’m sorry, I typed out and hit send.
A minute passed. Then two.
I tried again.
Erin’s gone home. Please can we talk?
Still nothing. I waited and waited, staring at my phone, but those three little dots never appeared.
Maybe he needed space. Or more time to cool off before he was ready to talk.
I should give it to him, right? Wait for him to tell me when he was ready.
But how long should I wait? An hour? A day? What if he still hadn’t responded by tomorrow?
The feeling of doom sitting on my chest had gotten almost unbearable. It felt like I’d lost something precious by being too careless with it.
Thirty minutes later, I was in the middle of putting on my shoes, about to walk my ass over to Donal’s and confront him, when I was interrupted by a knock on my door. I hobbled over to see who it was, one running shoe on and one still in my hand.
Donal’s face filled up the fish-eye lens of the peephole, and I nearly cried with relief. But when I flung open the door, his grim expression made my stomach twist with even more dread.
“Hi,” I whispered.
He didn’t say anything. Just stared at me, his eyes guarded and glacial.
“Do you want to come in?” I asked uncertainly.
He nodded, and I stepped back to admit him. As I closed the door, I took a deep breath before turning around to face him.
He’d only walked a few paces into the apartment, as if he wasn’t planning to stay. His brow furrowed as his gaze caught on my feet. “Why are you only wearing one shoe?”
“I was about to go to your apartment to see if you were okay.” Bracing a hand against the wall, I toed off my running shoe and dropped the other one next to it. “You weren’t answering any of my calls or texts.”
“That’s because I’m pissed off at you. So no, I’m not okay.”
It wasn’t like I hadn’t guessed as much, but it felt even worse to hear him say it in that cold, resentful voice. I nodded slowly, absorbing the discomfort. When I spoke, my voice sounded scratchy like I was going hoarse. “What happened to ‘no one gets upset until we’ve had a chance to talk about it’?”
He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Why do you think I’m here?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, wishing I could go back in time and do tonight over.
“Do you know what you’re sorry for?”
“I hurt you when I told Erin there was nothing between us.”
“You did, yeah. It made me feel like shit.”
My stomach clenched, and I sucked in an unsteady breath. “I really am sorry.”
A little of his anger seemed to drain away. Enough that instead of furious he looked tired and sad, which was even worse somehow. “We need to talk about why you said it. Because it feels like maybe we’re not on the same page here.”
“Okay.” I swallowed and gestured at the living room. “Do you want to sit down?”
“Not really.” He crossed his arms, pinning me in place with his gaze. “I’m listening.”
Right.I’d asked if we could talk, and now he was here waiting for me to do exactly that. Talk.
“Well…” I’d had this conversation in my head a dozen times in the last hour, but now that he was here I couldn’t think straight and all the words were slipping away. “I suppose I thought it wasn’t a good idea to tell Erin about us yet, because she might get her hopes up and then be crushed if we—” My throat closed up, refusing to say the wordsbreak upout loud, so I skipped over that part. “It felt like we should wait and keep it to ourselves for now. Just to be safe.”
