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Head tipped, Marco takes a long drag on his coffee, holding the cup full-tilt over his mouth and giving it a little shake. It makes a hollow sound when he sets it back in the holder. He drums the plastic lid with one finger and slides me a glance. “Can I ask you something?”
Please don’t.“O-kay.” I squeeze the cardboard cup in my own hand.
“I don’t get why this is all a giant secret.”
I stare holes through the lid on my cup. “It’s not the miscarriage itself. It’s the fact that I...” I stop. Am I really going to have this conversation with Marco?
I feel his gaze in between peeks at the road.
My face gets hot.
“Wait. You’re not saying…”
“My family believes in marriage, Marco. Kyle was…the pregnancy should never have been able to happen in the first place.” I pinch a fleck of skin from my cuticle and pull.
The silence gets horribly, painfully long. “I see.” Shaking his head, he draws his hand down the back of it. Does he really see? That Kyle was my one and only? I can’t say it because I’d sound like a liar. I mean,I left a bar with this man.
He puffs out a breath. “Alrighty, then. So. Tell me about your parents. I mean, I get it with Tripp, trust me, but are your parents super judgmental, too? You can’t talk to them about stuff?”
I too exhale, beyond happy to move the conversation along. I consider my words. I want to tell him that Tripp isn’t as bad he thinks. He’s always been my biggest cheerleader. Always, including the times I didn’t deserve the support. Like now. He’d hate what I did—particularly with Marco—and hate that I was hurting. He might even, in a low moment, say he told me so, but then he’d apologize, hug me, tell me he loved me, and totally be there for me. Surely, after years of friendship, Marco knows this? I can’t imagine Tripp being any less loyal and supportive of a friend.
I reposition myself in the seat, my aching body as restless as my mind. “I can.”
“And yet, you’re running across two states to avoid them all.” I think I see his right eyebrow spike behind his glasses, which, by the way, are beyond cool on him.
Still, for an instant, I’d like to knock them off his face. Can’t the man just drive me cross-country, no questions asked? I mean,really. How hard is that?
“My parents are great, but something like this…?” I turn, staring at my sad self in the side mirror. “I went against everything I was ever taught.”
“Everything you were taught…or everythingyoubelieved?”
My answer comes fast. “Believed.Believe.” Yes, I let doubt creep into my life over time, though honestly, it was less doubt and more selfishness. I wanted to do what I wanted to do. In my relationships, yes, but pretty much everything else, too. But now, I’m circling back to who I really am, what I really believe. My beliefs have stood the test of time—I’m the one who failed.
Finally, with a headshake he says, “I don’t know, Annalise. You’re a grown woman who had a mature relationship with a man. Big deal.”
“It is a big deal in my belief system. My faith.”
“Fine, so deal with God. You believe in forgiveness, right? But no one else gets to cast stones, even family.”
“My parents are great,” I defend.
“Now you’re making my point for me.”
He doesn’t get it.
“Look, all I’m getting at is…things hadn’t been going great for a while, and then you nearly died. You need someone in your corner right now.”
He’s not wrong. But my instinct is to run. To shove everyone who loves me away with both hands. Hide under a rock—or in the desert. I want to be alone.
I’m scared to death of being alone.
I massage away a droplet of blood along my cuticle. “I know I’m a huge imposition.”
“Whoa, that is not what I was getting at.”
“Good, because I’m not going back. Not yet. I’m sticking around as long as you’ll let me.”
The expression that sweeps his features is enigmatic.
