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“I’m an adult, Kylee,” he said firmly. “I am capable of taking care of myself.”
“For God’s sake, you were sick,” I snapped.
“It happens,” he snapped back. “People get sick. They get over it. You’d been planning a trip to your parents for a while now. You shouldn’t have changed your plans just for me. And Jesus, driving so late at night!”
I got up out of bed and walked out of the room, feeling . . . lost.
I ended up in the spare bedroom, the one that had been turned into a writing and reading room for me. I sat down on the couch and stared out the window. And then opened a box up on a nearby shelf and pulled out my journal.
I flicked through the pages. The highs and the lows. The time I sat on the beach and wrote in the book that I had lost myself.
And I wondered whether I’d made a mistake. Whether this was what I had thought it to be.
Michael came and stood in the doorway, hair wet from a shower.
“Are you OK?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said.
He sighed. I stiffened.
Then he walked over to the couch and sat down beside me.
“Just because we argued,” he said softly, “doesn’t mean I don’t still love you.”
I stared out the window and thought about things.
I’d never argued with Sean. I’d just done what he wanted without comment and cultivated a mass of tangles in my stomach while I did it. I once had the gall to tell him to shut up about something. He thought I’d declared World War III. The shock on his face would have been comical if I hadn’t at the time felt like I’d let him down. That I’d failed something.
We brushed things under the rug. We didn’t address them.
I didn’t know how to argue with someone. I didn’t know how to handle someone who stood up for themselves and expected me to stand up for me.
I looked at Michael. He smiled softly at me.
“Come here,” he said, opening his arms.
I went willingly.
“I felt rotten,” he said. “I didn’t want you to have to put up with me. I can get cranky when I’m sick. I should have realised you’d want to help.”
“And I should have trusted you when you said you didn’t need it,” I offered.
“That’s the thing, Ky. As soon as you left, I wanted you to come back to me. I needed you to. And when you did so late at night, I felt worried and guilty.”
I reached up and touched his jaw, drew my finger over his chin and cupped his cheek.
“You’re stuck with me,” I said. He smiled.
“And you, Trolley Girl are stuck with me. Until the end of time.”
Maybe arguing was a good thing.
