Asher waited for the answer, eyes unblinking, as if he already knew. I felt the tears building, and I peered up to the ceiling, willing them away. I’d rarely tempered my emotions in front of Asher before, but we were in a public place, and I was worried that if I started to unravel in front of him, I might never stop.
“Heart attack.” I let my eyes come back toward Asher.
“When?” he asked, so softly that I swear I just heard him mouth the word.
“Two weeks after we broke up.”
He didn’t even say “I’m sorry.” That, he mouthed. I could see the tears in his eyes, and I looked away from him, my chest threatening to cave in.
“I wish I could have been there for you.”
His hand gripped mine, and instantly, tears jolted onto my cheeks.
“I should have been there,” I heard him whisper.
I glanced back at Asher, tears swimming in his eyes.
After a few heartbeats, I realized my hand was still in his, and he looked down as our fingers parted.
I focused on a deep breath, in and out, a technique from my therapist, my attention fixed on a man and woman a few tables in front of us. The woman folded a cloth napkin in her lap, eyes out the window, watching the cars fly by. Her date dangled a forkful of his chocolate cake in front of her mouth with a grin. She tore her eyes away from the cars to take a bite of the cake and painted on a smile.
“What do you think’s happening there?” I asked.
Asher tilted his head, studying the couple.
“She’s about to break his heart,” he said.
I swallowed down a throat full of tears, grateful to study someone else’s misery.
“You think?”
“She’s slow dancing around it,” he decided, coming back to me with a gentle smile.
I had always loved the way Asher looked at the world. He once picked up a geode by the lake, squeezed it in his fist, and imagined an entire backstory for the rock. I was reminded of the time I visited him in San Diego after our second summer at camp. He had just gotten his license, and I remembered watching him in the driver’s seat—the way his fingers carefully gripped the wheel, the way his amber eyes paused to take in the rocky cliffside, the way he smiled wistfully at an elderly couple sharing a sandwich on a bench, the way he looked at me to make sure I saw it, too: the promise of growing old together.
I stared across the room at the couple, watching the woman’s clenched jaw—her happiness hanging on by a thread.
“You know…you broke my heart,” I said softly, with eyes glued to the unhappy couple.
My lips stayed open in the candlelight as my gaze drifted back to Asher. He rolled his shoulders back, my statement hitting him like lightning, jolting his frame. He pulled his eyebrows together, staring fixedly at me.
“I thought we broke each other’s hearts.”
Smile and nod. Change the subject.
“Did we?”
“Are you asking me if our breakup crushed me?” He was fully flabbergasted.
“I mean, it would be nice to hear,” I said, smiling and leaning in, my dimpled chin resting on my hand. I was trying to make light of something that wasn’t light at all.
He mimicked me, resting his hand on his chin, just a handful of inches from my face, but his expression was pained. He took me in for a moment.
“Mags, there’s some nights where I sit alone and think—” He paused, keeping his eyes locked on mine, the rest of the sentence in his throat.
My insides were humming, waiting for him to fill in that blank. He moved his entire body closer, his lips mere inches from mine.
“You were the biggest heartbreak of my life.”
I blinked rapidly, my chest aching. For years I had thought that I was crazy, histrionic, insecure—but it hadn’t just been me. Even as a grown adult, a part of me wondered if I had lost my soulmate as a teenager, and that thought was humiliating. It felt like an admission: I don’t know how to grow up. I don’t know how to move on. I carried it around like a weight. And here he was, telling me that he carried it, too. My heart felt like it was breaking for What Could Have Been.
“You weren’t supposed to lose me,” I said, tears rimming my eyes.
“You weren’t supposed to lose me, either,” he cracked, not even bothering to hide the emotion in his throat.
We traced each other’s gazes, wistful, teary, and a whole lot of something else. He slowly inched his mouth toward mine. He put his finger under my chin, tilting me up to him.
I opened my lips, just an inch from his.
“I—I can’t kiss you. Not until the work is done. And then…I’d very much like to kiss you.”
Asher’s eyes went wide against my words. My manager’s advice was echoing in the back of my head, reminding me not to touch Asher before the work was done. He didn’t flinch or pull back, because neither did I. We were frozen, just inches from each other, his eyes blazed on mine—a fire growing between us.
“One of us should move our lips here,” he whispered, the heat of his mouth floating on my lips.
I couldn’t move as his eyes scanned mine.
“Do you need it to be me?” he finally asked.
“I—I really do…” I said, achingly, desperate to just fill the gap between our mouths.
He leaned back and exhaled, adjusting his jeans and taking a long sip of water. He turned back to me, seeing that I was still frozen in place.
“Do you want to hear the song? I worked on ‘See You if I Get There’ this afternoon, and it’s almost done,” I found myself saying.
“Right now?”
“Tonight? Later? My friend, Summer, grabbed my guitar from my apartment, so I need to go back to her place to retrieve it, but…”
He shot me a warm smile.
“Mags, I’m not going to be that guy.”
“What guy?”
“I don’t want you to feel like I’m taking advantage of you, in any way, ever.”
We had always played on an even field in our relationship. But Asher and I were in two different galaxies now—he had an Oscar, and I didn’t have health insurance. When I was with him all those years ago, all he ever did was lift me up, cheer me on, and want me to succeed. This time didn’t appear to be any different. I wasn’t a woman feeling pressured by a big movie star who could make or break her career. I was a woman openly flirting with her big movie star ex-boyfriend who could make or break her career.
“I want to play you the song. Nothing more.”
I want to play you the song and run my nails along your naked spine.
“I—I’m trying to figure out how to say this without sounding like a complete asshole,” he said, holding my eyes. He leaned forward, speaking lowly so only I could hear, with his arm brushing against mine. “I don’t know how I will be able to go home with you and pull back from your lips if you don’t pull back first.”
I circled the rim of my wineglass with my hand, watching his chest rise and fall under his T-shirt. I moved my hand to the stem of the glass, gripping hard to keep from reaching out and tugging him toward me.
“Are we really this bad at self-control?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“To be fair, we never had to practice self-control,” he said.