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David turns in the window, and, unthinking, I drop to the ground. I don’t want him to see me, which I know is ridiculous considering I’m on this trip with him and it would also take so little effort for him to just… look out the window and see me hunched over.
Trying to make it as inconspicuous as possible, I sit back, pretending to be watching the sky.
This is how Jessi finds me ten minutes later.
“Oh, Laura. I’m sorry,” Jessi says, her voice tight with emotion. She’s holding a champagne glass that’s pretty low.
I smile at her, but then register what she said. “For what?”
She wraps the blanket tighter around her shoulders. The engagement ring literally dazzles in the setting sun, and I’m momentarily blinded by it. “I mean… I know Lewis asked you to come. Now it makes sense!”
I smile. I know it’s not as broad as it could be, my mood tempered by the sorrow I feel about David. But still… it’s genuine. “I’m glad I got to see the engagement.”
“Maybe,” she allows with a shrug. “But I know this couldn’t have been the romantic getaway you were hoping for!”
“The what?” Then, like a bulb going off, I remember. My eyes well up.
“Oh no!” Jessi frets. “Oh, I’ll talk to David, and he’ll—he’ll—he’ll fly you to France or something!”
This opens the floodgates. I begin truly crying, no longer able to blink the tears away. “We aren’t together!”
It comes out like a cough—I felt it coming, but there was nothing my body could do to keep it in. It sends my lungs and stomach spasming, the muscles all across my body reacting to the involuntary motion. I feel that burst of immediate relief, followed quickly by the knowledge that another kernel of truth is coming out.
“I’ve been lying to you all!”
“What do you mean?” Jessi asks. She sits beside me on the cold ground, and it just makes me cry harder.
The weight of this romantic weekend away together feels suffocating. I want to be happy for Jessi and Lewis, and Iam—but moreso, I am…
Bereft, I guess.
“We were never even together,” I whisper, the shame so deep inside of me it feels like I’m choking on it. “We weren’t—we aren’t in love, we aren’t dating. Weliedbecause you all walked in and Lewis was looking at me and the kids were looking at him and I feltterribleabout it, and then we lied, and?—”
“Woah, woah, woah.” Jessi’s warm hand finds mine, and she looks at me with a soft gaze. “Laura, slow down?—”
“We never wanted it to get this far! I kept saying no?—”
“You said no?” she interrupts, voice sharp.
“We both did!” I cry. “We both kept saying it was the last time and that it was just a lie, just a… a thing! A thing we did to save face and because of Lewis and you and the kids and—I tried to stay away from him.”
“Oh,” Jessi says. I swipe away at my tears, glancing up at her. Her expression is soft. “Oh, hon, I think I get it.”
“Do you? Because I’m not so sure I do.”
Jessi squeezes my hand. “You didn’t mean to fall in love.”
“I didn’t. We aren’t in love,” I defend weakly. She lifts an eyebrow, considering me.
The last two months blur past me in a wave. The big moments—hooking up at the bar, falling asleep together, playing video games with him and Benji—these are the moments I had guarded my heart against. Even when I felt thatpingof something, that desire, that awareness that something could form between us—I’d been able to ignore that. I’d been able to push myself away from the intimacy, at least a little, at least enough.
But the smaller moments… kissing goodbye before work, him handing me a pen at work without me asking, his eyes crinkling when he talks about his kids, the soft way he brushes my hair aside when he thinks I’m too asleep to notice…
I’d been careless in those moments, indulgent.
And now…
Now I’m in love with him.
