Happy Place(90)

“Everything,” I say.

He cups the back of my neck while his other hand drags me up his lap, fitting us together. “It’s usually easier to start with something minor, and then let it slowly become about everything. At least that’s how my parents always did it.”

“Your parents,” I say, “did not fight.”

“Everyone fights with the people they love, Harriet,” he says. “What matters is how you do it.”

“There are rules?” I ask.

“There are.”

“Like the uniform,” I say.

“Like no name-calling,” he replies.

“What about honey?” I ask.

His hands move to the tops of my thighs, slide back and forth against them, the coarse texture of his palms making my skin prickle and rise. “I’d have to double-check with Parth and Sabrina, Esquires, but I think honey is allowable,” he says. “No jury would convict. Nothing meaner than that, though.”

“What else do I need to know?”

“It’s okay to walk away,” he says. “Everyone says Don’t go to bed angry, but sometimes a person needs time to think. And if you need that, it’s okay, but you should tell me, because otherwise . . .” His jaw flexes on a swallow. “Otherwise, the person might assume you’re leaving for good.”

I swallow too and move closer, our chests melting together. “What else?”

“There doesn’t need to be a winner and a loser. You just have to care how the other person feels. You have to care more about them than you do about being right.”

“This doesn’t sound like fighting,” I tell him.

“This information came straight from Hank,” he says.

I can’t help but smile. “Then I guess we’d better trust it.”

“Do you want to try?” he says.

“Something minor?” I say.

He nods.

“You load the dishwasher wrong,” I say.

He breaks into a smile. “Wrong?”

“Fine, not wrong,” I say. “But in a way that I hate.”

His smile splits open on an exhalation of laughter. “Go on. Don’t hold back.”

“You fill the bottom rack too full,” I say, “and the water can’t get to the top rack. And you don’t rinse things well enough, so even when everything does get soaped, there’s still, like, full pieces of cereal stuck inside the bowls.”

He fights his way back to a somber expression. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You’re right. I hurry when I do the dishes, and it ends up making more work. What else?”

“I don’t like when you downplay your intelligence.”

“I’m working on that,” he says. “And honestly, the medicine helps. So does feeling good at my job.”

My rib cage seems to shrink, or else my heart grows. “Good. You should be at least a fraction as proud of yourself as I am of you.”

“Those,” he says quietly, smiling, “are not fighting words.”

“That’s because it’s your turn,” I say. “You’re mad at me too.”

“I am?” he says.

“Furious,” I say.

He squeezes me to him. “Furious,” he breathes. “About what again?”

Sabrina’s words replay in my head: You’re losing the love of your life because you’re too indecisive to just pick a wedding date . . . Parth saw what Wyn wrote . . . you sat there and let your life happen to you instead of fighting for what you want.

My stomach flip-flops. “Maybe because of the wedding.”

“What wedding?” he says.

“Ours,” I say.

“We didn’t have one,” he says.

“And maybe you think I didn’t care,” I say. “Or that I was afraid to commit to you, and that’s why I couldn’t make any decisions. Maybe you think I was intentionally putting it off.”

He swallows, murmurs, “Weren’t you?”

My head swims at the confirmation, the final piece of the puzzle clicking into place, five months too late. Tears gloss my eyes.

It wasn’t one moment when everything went wrong, when I failed him, when we lost each other. There were dozens, on either side. Missed signs. Dropped lines.

It fucking hurts to realize it. To understand that I made him think I didn’t want him.

“I was trying to be easy, Wyn,” I choke out. “You were so unhappy. And I didn’t want to rush you while you were mourning. I didn’t want to need you when you were in so much pain, so I pretended I was fine. I was scared that if you realized what a wreck I was, you wouldn’t want me, so I pushed you away.”

His mouth softens, but his fingers draw tight. “Harriet,” he says, all rough tenderness, the exact contradiction of Wyn Connor, funneled into one spoken word. “I always want you.”

It takes me a second to get anything out. “Another thing I’m mad about . . . I hate when I hurt your feelings and you don’t tell me, so I have to try to guess what I did and how to fix it. Like tonight.”

“Tonight?” he asks.

“When we got back in the car. You wouldn’t even look at me.”

“Shit, Harriet,” he says. “I was just embarrassed. About this entire fucking week. About dragging you into this situation when it turns out there was no good reason.”