She opened her laptop and tried to work on her book, but she was too distracted. What happened when you had a fight with your boyfriend when you were living together? Was that even a fight? Was Beau even her boyfriend?
She wanted to cry, but she wasn’t even sure what she was crying about. The look on Beau’s face when he’d spat those words out at her in the library, the emptiness she felt about the idea of not having dinner with him tonight, the longing she felt for him right now—not the Beau who had left like that in the library, but the Beau who had woken up and kissed her this morning before she’d left his room.
She should have known these past two weeks were too good to be true. She had known, actually. Everything had been so good between them, so idyllic, with beaches and picnics and swimming and surfing and reading to each other in bed. She’d known it couldn’t last.
She wanted to text Priya, ask for her advice, but since she hadn’t told Priya about any of this, there would be a lot of catching her up first, and Izzy didn’t have the energy for that. See, that’s why she should have told Priya all this last week, in anticipation of something like this happening.
She went to the bathroom to wash her face. That always helped reset her mood. Then she sat back down at her computer. If she was going to feel all these emotions—this frustration, these pent-up tears, this sadness—she might as well use it. She opened her manuscript.
As she wrote, her frustration mounted, and her sadness turned to anger. See, this was better. She—and her main character—should get angry instead of so sad. What had sadness ever done for her? Nothing.
When she finally looked up, she realized the sun was already setting. She and Beau usually ate dinner by now; no wonder she was hungry. But she was so mad at him that she wanted to wait to eat until after he was safely out of the kitchen.
No. That was silly. She wasn’t going to sit in her room and hide from him.
She got up and went downstairs.
The kitchen was empty when she walked in, and she felt a mixture of relief and disappointment. She opened the refrigerator door to see what Michaela had left for them tonight. She hadn’t done this in a long time, she realized. Beau was always in charge of getting their dinner ready.
“Hey.”
She turned around, and he was standing there, leaning against the kitchen door.
“Hi.” She took a salad bowl out of the refrigerator and set it on the counter.
“I wasn’t sure if you were coming down,” he said. He took a few steps into the kitchen.
That was really all he was going to say?
“Oh, are you done with your break?” she said.
Beau winced. Okay, yes, she’d sounded kind of bitchy—okay, very bitchy—when she’d said that, but what did he expect?
“I’m really sorry about earlier in the library,” he said. “I should have led with that. But, Izzy, I’m trying here. This is all hard for me, you know that. Yes, of course, what you said today made perfect sense. But it was hard for me to hear, hard to realize I have to do it, to reveal to the whole world more of the hard parts of myself if I want to make this book any good. And I hate that I still miss my dad, despite everything. I started to get mad at you in there, and I realized I had to stop and take a breath. So instead of lashing out at you, instead of saying something I knew I would regret, I told you I had to take a break. Please don’t be mad at me for that?”
Oh.
She should have realized that’s what he was doing. He’d basically told her, but she’d been so freaked out by their first fight after they’d become…whatever what they were…that she hadn’t bothered to think about it from his point of view.
She uncrossed her arms. “I’m sorry, too. You did the right thing. I should have thought about it more from your side.”
He let out a sigh. “No, it’s okay. I came back to the library to apologize, but by then you’d left, and you’d forgotten your phone there, so I couldn’t text you. And I couldn’t come up to your room, so—”
“You can come up to my room,” she said.
He shook his head. “I promised I wouldn’t.”
She’d almost forgotten that he’d said at the very beginning that he wouldn’t come upstairs.
“Yes, but it’s different now,” she said. “I’m saying that you can.”
He took over dinner assembly—a Caesar salad, with chicken and fresh croutons—while Izzy pulled out the dishes. She felt bad for getting carried away, getting so mad at Beau for something she should have understood.