With Love, from Cold World(102)

He meant he couldn’t hide, that he couldn’t take it if she was going to still shut him out even after all they’d shared and been through. He didn’t mean that he didn’t want to be in the relationship anymore. But he could tell from the stricken look on her face that that was exactly how it had sounded. And before he could say more, fix it, he saw the way the look fell away until her face was a blank mask. No, not fell—was pushed away. A return to Robot Lauren.

“That’s fine,” she said.

“Lauren—”

“No,” she said, giving a little laugh that splintered in his heart. “No, that’s fine. I get it. It’s been a lot to take in. It’s probably better if we don’t—”

“Lauren, listen to me—”

She pushed herself up to standing, brushing her hands on her skirt. She seemed about to leave, then had second thoughts and turned back around. “You say middle management like it’s the worst thing that could ever happen to you,” she said. “And maybe it is, that’s fair—but Asa, you have to do something. You can’t just guard the Snow Globe for the rest of your life.”

He got to his feet, too, breathing harder than that simple exertion should’ve required. This had been what he’d always been afraid of, deep down—and to hear her say it was like a punch to the gut. He’d known she was too good for him. He’d just lived on the prayer that maybe she wouldn’t notice.

“I like my job,” he said. “What’s wrong with guarding the Snow Globe?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s not that the job is beneath you. It’s that it doesn’t challenge you, and at some point you’re just standing still when you should be moving forward. Do something with your art, go back to school, I don’t even know! Just do something.”

She said all that like it was so easy. “Maybe some of us don’t want more school,” he said. “Despite what the student loan industrial complex wants you to believe, that’s not always the answer, you know.”

He’d meant it more about him, but he could see how it was a poorly timed comment, coming on the heels of her revelation about going back to grad school.

“Fine,” she snapped. “Don’t go back to school. At the end of the day, it’s none of my business what you do. I wouldn’t have said anything, except that I lo—” She took a deep breath, seemed to catch herself. “I care about you a lot. I want to see you happy.”

Wow. Downgraded off love already. Asa had never wished for anything harder than he wished for a time machine right at that moment, when he could go back to the beginning of this conversation—the beginning of this day, even—and do everything all over. He had so much he wanted to say but his throat was too tight to say any of it, which was why maybe he landed on the most asinine and blatantly false thing he could think to say.

“I am happy.”

She gave him a brittle smile, her eyes bright. “Well,” she said. “Good. If it’s not fun, don’t do it, right?”

His voice was barely a rasp. “Lauren—”

“We dated for what, a week?” she said. Had it really been that short? Images from their time together flashed through his head—Lauren taking the clothespin off his shirt at his sister’s baby shower; snuggled on the couch in her apartment, her feet in his lap while she read aloud from their presentation draft document; the hitch in her breath when he’d entered her the night before, the way she’d clung to his shoulders as he’d started to move. Their time together felt like it had been so much longer. It hadn’t been enough.

“We both knew it wasn’t going to be forever,” she said. “But it was fun while it lasted.”

And then she was walking away, her words still ringing through his head. We both knew it wasn’t going to be forever. Had they both known that? Asa felt like he’d missed the memo.

He wanted to run after her, tell her that he’d certainly been ready for forever, he was ready for it still, and if she wanted them to keep their relationship quiet a little longer, that was fine by him. But he also was shaken by how quickly she’d folded, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it transition she’d made from supposedly being in love with him to telling him goodbye. And with their differing reactions to the Cold World news, the different trajectories they apparently wanted their lives to take—who knew. Maybe there wasn’t anything left to say.





Chapter


Twenty-Seven

“Miss Lauren?”

Eddie had been trying to get her attention for the last thirty seconds, Lauren realized, and she’d been busy staring off into space. “Sorry,” she said, giving him and Ms. Ramirez an apologetic smile. “What was that?”

Ms. Ramirez had completed her parenting classes and been very dedicated to her visitation schedule after that hiccup with the first visit. She saw him twice a week and even though Lauren knew she didn’t have to attend every visit, she genuinely enjoyed spending time with them. That was why Lauren had suggested Eddie and his mom meet her at Cold World to have the day they’d originally planned back when she and Asa had ended up taking Eddie ice skating.

Even thinking about Asa put that pit back in Lauren’s stomach. She’d tried to stop thinking about him, tried to stop always searching for him, seeking him out in every room she was in, but it was impossible. Even now, she was hyperaware that he was back on the rink, skating in lazy circles with his hands behind his back, occasionally stopping to reach a hand down to a kid on the ice. She lived in fear that Eddie would ask to go back out there. How would she beg off?