“How long have you felt like this?” Maggie asked, her throat tightening up and making it difficult to get the words out. This was why she did what she did. Why she lived like she lived. So no one had the opportunity to do this to her again. And yet it was still happening.
He crossed his beefy arms over his barrel-like chest. “Awhile maybe. I’m not saying you need to start looking for a new me or anything.”
“But…”
He nodded solemnly. “Yeah. But.”
She stepped back from him, needing the distance, and fiddled with her tape measure. “I thought you were all in for life on the road since you and Will broke up?”
How had she missed this? How had she let herself get so dependent on him again?
“I thought so, too. But the thing is, we broke up because of the road.”
She narrowed her eyes. That wasn’t the story he’d given her a year ago. “What are you talking about?”
“He wanted me to choose.”
“Choose what?”
“You or him. And you’d never ask me to choose. So I chose you. But maybe sometimes—like when he posts a picture of his hot new art history professor fiancé—I wonder what it would have been like.”
She felt like the time she’d taken a backward header over a roll of carpet into an open stairwell. Free fall. No time to brace for impact.
Dean had chosen her over Will. A man he’d dated seriously for two years. A man who’d wanted the condo with a water view and the dog park on Saturday afternoons. Hadn’t she and Dean joked about it? Hadn’t she teased him about narrowly escaping the horror of farmers market mornings and Sunday brunches with the same faces every week?
She was an idiot. A big, stupid, self-absorbed idiot.
But she was an idiot with an old wrong to right.
“Listen, you know that I want you to be happy,” she said, still fighting the tightness in her throat. “So whether that’s flying drones and living out of a suitcase or buying a place in a town you want to live in long-term, I don’t need to be part of that equation. I want you to have everything that you want. I’ll survive without you.”
“Will you?” He didn’t say it with a nasty edge. He said it wearily, as if it were a legitimate concern that kept him up at night.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means it’s too early, and I haven’t had enough coffee, and maybe I’m just feeling sorry for myself, so let’s forget I said anything.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Let’s not. Let’s finish it.”
“Fine. I’m your best friend,” he said.
“Yeah. So?”
“I’m your ex-husband.”
“I repeat. So?” she said stubbornly.
He took in a breath and blew it out. “Magpie, I’m your best friend, but that doesn’t mean you’re mine.”
“Um, ouch. Ass.”
“That’s not what I mean. Of course you’re my best friend. But you’re mine by choice. I’m yours by default. I’m all you’ve got. I’ve still got friends back in Seattle and San Francisco. I keep up with them. We see each other when I’m in town. I get kid birthday party invites and Christmas and Hanukkah cards. I send flowers for babies and surgeries.”
“So you’re a social butterfly. What’s your point?”
“You don’t.”
Her tidy little organized world was tilting on its axis.
There was a ruckus in the hall, and she jumped back just in time as Kevin barreled in, a powdered doughnut hanging out of his mouth.
“Get back here, you mangy thief!” Elton—powdered sugar on his chin and shirt—shouted as he gave chase. “Your daddy’s gonna kick my ass if you get a sugar high!”
The dog gleefully plowed into the hall with the doughnut’s owner on his heels.
“I love you, Mags,” Dean said. “I do. But I shouldn’t be your one and only person.”
She stood there sucker punched, tape measure dancing from limp fingers. This hadn’t been in the plans for the day. She hadn’t penciled in a meltdown between opening up a wall and going live to show off the newly gutted kitchen.
But again. She owed him.
“Okay,” she said, keeping her tone light. “Keep thinking about it and let me know what you want to do. We’ll make it work.”
It was his turn to grimace. “Look, I’m sorry. Just forget I said anything. I just need a massage and a gallon of good wine and to stop looking at Will’s Instagram.”