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“Do you still love him?” Phillip asks.
The words hang between us in the warm afternoon air. I take my time answering because I know this is important. Getting this right.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “But who knows when love really fades, you know? It’s not like a switch. Right now, I still hate him a bit for what he did. And hate is not the opposite of love. That’s indifference, and I’m not indifferent to him. Not yet.”
“I wonder if you ever will be,” Phillip says, “considering what he did.”
I wrap my arms around my knees. “I’m almost angrier over him doing it with my best friend. Because he chose someone who’d otherwise be my friend for life. Him… well. We weren’t always the most compatible. I loved the idea of us more than those differences, but now they seem pretty stark.”
“Yeah, I can empathize.”
I turn to look at him. “Do you still love her?”
He sighs and looks back out toward the waves. “You’re going to judge me.”
“I really don’t think I will, Phillip. I’m not sure I can anymore.”
“Hmm. Well, I don’t think I ever really loved her.”
My eyes widen. “Oh.”
He sits up straighter, brows drawn together. “Not that I didn’t care for her. Of course, I did. IthoughtI loved her. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have proposed.”
“Sensible,” I say, and he shoots me a look that’s amused and dry in equal measure.
“Yeah. But we didn’t have a lot in common, and I’ve realized since the… non-wedding, as you called it once, that we never really spoke. Not properly, not deeply. Not about everything and anything.”
“That’s important,” I say softly. I’m finding the exact same thing was true for Caleb and me.
“It is.” He runs a hand over the back of his neck. “We had similar goals in life, and I think we both saw the other as fitting into those goals. In a way, it was almost more of a relationship of convenience.”
I dig my teeth into my lower lip. “Did you enjoy it? When you were in it?”
“I thought I did. It was fitting.” He looks down, dark lashes fanning over a tanned cheek. “She cheated about a year ago.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Really?”
“Yeah, with an ex-boyfriend who was back in town one weekend. And you know, I wasn’t hurt as much as annoyed. She apologized, promised it wouldn’t happen again, and I… accepted that.”
“That was very generous of you.”
“Maybe. But now, I think my lack of care was probably a big red flag. For myself, I mean. I’m more irate at your dipshit of an ex for cheating on you than I am at my own.”
“Yeah. I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay with it. I mean, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t.”
“Which is probably the right reaction.” He runs a hand along his jaw. “I worked too much before this trip.”
“Mm-hmm. I suspected.”
“I really like my job, though. But if I had a relationship that truly matters, that’s right… I don’t think I’d make the same prioritization.”
I can’t look away from his eyes. “That’s probably true.”
He leans back, locking his hands behind his head, and looks up at the sky. “That was a damn long answer.”
I chuckle and lie down beside him. The sand is warm beneath me, and I’m sure it’s getting in my hair and my clothes, but I don’t care one bit. “Yeah. But it was a good one.”
We lie there for a long time. I savor his words and let them linger in my mind.
