Happy Place(89)

Instead, I’ve pushed away everyone I love.

My heart clangs in my chest. I need to outrun these feelings.

I stand and tear the sheet off the bed, wrapping it around my shoulders. The temperature drops a solid ten degrees as I make my way into the hallway, another few as I descend the stairs, but I still feel hot and stuffy.

The kitchen is a wreck. I set my sheet aside and, in my underwear, put away the dishes, loading the dirty ones into the empty dishwasher. I wipe down the counters. I sweep. I tell myself it will make a difference. That tomorrow, when everyone comes down, tonight’s wreckage won’t look quite so bad.

The anxiety doesn’t let up. My skin feels too tight, hot and itchy. Gathering the sheet again, I let myself out back.

The wind does little to break the feverish feeling. I climb down to the bluff, and in the dark, the water seems louder, powerful but ambivalent. I imagine what it would feel like to be swept up in it, to drift across its back. I imagine being carried away from this life, opening my eyes in a different place.

Something Sabrina said intrudes on the fantasy: You’re losing the love of your life because you’re too indecisive to just pick a wedding date and a venue.

I know things are more complicated than that, but those words keep replaying, braiding in and out of what Wyn told me earlier.

I genuinely convinced myself that was the kind of guy you wanted to be with. And you kept pushing the wedding off. You never wanted to talk about it. You never wanted to talk about anything.

You were never mad at me. You never fought with me. It felt like you didn’t even miss me.

I kept so much of what I was feeling from him, thinking the weight of my emotions would only drive him further from me, push him back behind a door I couldn’t open.

And even after he told me that tonight, I felt trapped inside myself, unable to get the words out.

Now they wriggle in my gut, burrowing deeper, gaining ground.

As soon as I make the decision, time accordions. The steep climb up the bluff, the length of the patio, the creaky stairs, the hallway—it all blurs past and I’m standing at his door.

Knocking quietly. Maybe have been for a while, even, because the door’s already swinging open, as if he’s been waiting.

That would explain why he’s fully dressed, but not why he looks so surprised.

Not the way his lips part and his brow furrows as I seem to float into the room, inflated with helium-light purpose.

And it definitely wouldn’t explain the packed luggage sitting by the door.

At the sight of it, a hot coal slips down my throat, hits the deepest pit of my stomach and sizzles. “You’re leaving?”

His steel-gray gaze flicks back toward his luggage. “I thought that might be easiest.”

“Easiest,” I murmur. “How? Only like three flights leave the airport a day, and none of those departs in the dead of night.”

He grabs the corner of the door and clicks it shut behind me. “I don’t know,” he admits.

Finally, I manage, “No.”

His brow lifts. “No, what?”

“We’re not done fighting,” I say.

“I thought we weren’t fighting,” he says.

I step in close enough to feel the warmth radiating off him. “We’re in an all-out brawl.”

He looks away, the corners of his mouth twisting downward. “About what?”

“For starters, about the fact that you packed your bags up in the night,” I say, pressing closer. He takes a half step back. My voice wobbles. “And I don’t want you to go.”

His hands come to my hips, holding me but keeping me at a distance. “I shouldn’t have come in the first place,” he says. “This is all my fault.”

“No, it’s not,” I say.

“It is,” he says, insistent.

I press closer. Our chests brush. “There,” I say.

“There what?”

“Something else we have to fight about,” I say.

Faintly, grudgingly, he smiles. It doesn’t last. He glances away, his brow tightening. “I’m so fucking sorry, Harriet,” he says. “If I’d just stayed away this week like I said I would . . .”

I set my hands on his shoulders, and his eyes snap to mine, a current flaring in them. I push down gently, and he sits at the edge of the bed, his head tipped up to study me in the light of the lone bedside lamp. His thighs fall apart as I step in between them, my hands trailing up over his warm shoulders to his jaw. His eyes flutter shut, and he turns his face into my palm, kissing its center.

His hands come to my waist, and I slip my knee over his hip. His eyes open, inky dark, and he takes my weight as I slide my other knee over his far hip, shifting over him.

“This is fighting?” he murmurs.

I nod as I sink into his lap. His Adam’s apple bobs. His hands clutch the underside of my thighs, the bedsheet still caped around my shoulders. He says, “This is what you wore to fight?”

“I’m new to this,” I say. “I didn’t know there was a standard uniform. Do you want me to go change?”

His gaze wanders down me, considering. “Did you pack anything smaller?”

I shake my head. “Not unless you know a good way to wear a toothbrush.”

“We can make do with this,” he says. “Now, what are we fighting about?”