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“I can’t hang out with you anymore,” I blurted. The words hung in the air, clanging their death nell. “I’m not going back on tour, either.”
“What did he say to you.” Not a question. I closed my eyes against the hard edges of his voice.
“It’s what we need—what I need—at least just for this month.” I heard the plea in my voice as much as he did and did nothing to cover it. “Please, Andrew.”
“Alicia.” He sighed the long sigh of the eternally disappointed. “Are you giving up your dream for this man?”
“Just for a month. Then I’ll get back into it.”
“If he allows.”
“When he calms down a bit.”
“I see.” He paused. Though I wasn’t looking at his face, I already knew what expression lay there. “And us?”
“That’s a little more complicated.”
“Complicated?”
“Yes.” For once, I didn’t tease him about echoing me. I didn’t know if I had enough joy to pull it off. “Michael doesn’t understand our history.”
“Or maybe he understands it better than you think.” I pulled my eyes up to his and he sighed. As he pushed his hair back, the tug of pain in my chest only grew. “Ace, don’t do this.”
“I have to, just for a little while.” The pleading worked its way into my voice again. “Maybe we can be reconnect again after the wedding is over.”
“Maybe?”
I didn’t answer.
He looked at me for a beat, two beats, three. My heart protested by slamming itself into my body. He didn’t have to say it for me to know. I felt his answer as sure as I knew myself. Because Andrew didn’t engage in fights. Except that one time.
“Sure,” he said. “Okay.”
That night, I packed up everything that reminded me of Andrew. Every momento gained on tour, all band-related paraphernalia. I closed and sealed the box, and I pushed it to the back corner of my closet and of my mind. I have to make this marriage work. I have to be a good wife.
Even if it burns off every last piece of the old me.
