“Didn’t you have one drink last night?”
“If we’re ignoring the half bottle I drank in the cellar,” he says.
“We should probably ignore everything that happened in the cellar,” I say.
He studies me for a second. “Anyway, I have no tolerance anymore. I drink less than ever these days.”
“Wow, humblebrag,” I say.
He laughs. “Actually, it’s just that I’ve been using edibles.”
At my surprise, he says, “They’ve been really helping my mom, but she gets kind of embarrassed. About taking them on her own. So a couple times a week, I’ll split a brownie with her. She’s funny. She’d never even tried weed before, and she gets super giggly. I sort of think it’s a placebo effect, but it doesn’t matter.”
I suppress a grin. “Moved back in with your mom and get high with her twice a week.”
“Living the dream,” he says.
“You are, though,” I say. “I’m actually jealous.”
“It is fun,” he says. “But she gets so munchy. I’ve probably gained like fifteen pounds.”
“It suits you.” I quickly add, “How is she, really?”
He glances at me askance. “You haven’t talked to her?”
I’m sure he knows I still text regularly with Gloria. I even field the odd text or two from his sisters. Mostly when his little sister, Lou, wants my opinion on a potential present for Wyn, invariably a gag gift that requires no special insight whatsoever, or when his older sister, Michael, wants an opinion on a medical ailment that invariably has nothing to do with neurosurgery. As far as his family knows, he and I are still engaged.
“I do talk to her,” I say. “But I figure she’s mostly lying.”
Wyn’s laugh is low. “I’m sure she is.”
His gaze drops. I let mine linger on the dark fringe of his lashes, the curve of his full upper lip, until his eyes lift. “It really does help. The weed. Just . . . not enough.”
Emotions tangle in my esophagus. Globus sensation, my mind supplies, as if naming it will take away the ache. It doesn’t. “I’m glad you’re there with her,” I say.
His lips part, come together, part again. “I, um . . .” He sets the boxes of candy and cup atop the air hockey table beside us and shifts between his feet. He takes a deep breath. “I know you don’t want to talk about it all,” he says in a low, husky voice, “and I respect that. But you said something yesterday, and . . .”
Heat creeps all the way up my neck to my ears. “I was having a bad day, Wyn.”
“No, no—it’s not . . .” He shakes his head, then tries again. “Something you said in the cellar made me realize you thought he was why I ended it.”
He. It lands with a violent impact.
Wyn swallows. “That you thought I blamed you for what happened with him.”
“Of course you blamed me.” My spine stiffens as I will myself not to crack, or rather not to let the cracks show. The truth is, they’re already there.
“I didn’t,” he says roughly. “And I don’t. I swear. Okay?”
My chest pinches. “So sheer coincidence that I told you about him and you immediately dumped me.”
I have no idea what to make of his look of surprise and hurt. I have no idea what to make of any of this. I went into the bathroom in one universe and walked out into another.
“Harriet,” he rasps, shaking his head. “It was more complicated than that.”
More complicated than thinking I’d betrayed him. It wasn’t that he was angry. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust me.
He just didn’t want me anymore. It feels like my body is turning to sand, like in a minute I’ll be nothing but a shapeless heap on the floor.
“I was in a dark place,” he goes on.
I turn from him because I feel the cracks spreading, my eyes stinging. “I know.”
I did know. Every second of every day. “I just didn’t know how to fix it,” I choke out.
“You couldn’t have,” he says.
I close my eyes as I try to gather myself, stuff all these messy feelings back down.
The truth is, I knew he hated San Francisco. I felt guilty that he’d followed me there. Guilty about keeping him there, even as it was killing me not being able to make him happy.
His hand slides through mine, tentatively lacing our fingers and tugging me back to him.
“It wasn’t just that,” he says. “My dad . . .”
I nod, the ache in my throat too severe to speak.
Hank’s passing was so sudden. I don’t know if that made it any worse. There never would have been an okay time to lose him. Not for Wyn. Not for anyone who knew Hank.
Everything combusted at once, and somehow I still thought we’d make it. When he promised to love me forever, I believed him. That was what made me the angriest, with both of us.
“I didn’t think that I . . .” His eyes hold mine, his jaw muscles working. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
“I know.” But it changes nothing.
“All I want,” he says, “is for you to be happy.”
There it is again, that word.
“That’s what I was trying to say, down in the cellar,” he goes on. “That I don’t want to do anything this week that messes anything else up for you. And I’m sorry I almost did.”
The pieces click together.
“I’m not with him,” I say. “There’s nothing to mess up.”
His lips part.
I wish I could roll the words back into my mouth and down my throat. “If that’s what you were getting at.”
“Okay,” he says.
Okay? What kind of response is that?
After a beat of awkward silence, he says, “I’m not either.”
I suppress a smile. “You’re not in a long-distance relationship with my coworker you’ve met once?”
An irresistible blush hits the tops of his cheekbones. He knocks his foot against the leg of the air hockey table. “I can hardly believe it myself. The chemistry was undeniable, but it wasn’t enough.”
I swallow the second half of a laugh, and he looks up at me from under that one lock of his. “There’s no one else,” he says.
It doesn’t matter, I tell myself.
It can’t matter.
He wasn’t happy with you.
He broke your heart.
He was never yours to keep, and deep down you knew that.
I watched him fade from me, bit by bit, day by day, a mirage receding into nothingness.
But the way he’s looking at me threatens to obliterate logic, to erase history. If he’s a black hole, I’ve reached his event horizon.
My chest aches, but I don’t want it to stop. I want to lean into the feeling, this wholeness. My heart and body and mind are all finally in the same time and place. Here, with him.
I don’t want to go back into the theater, but something has to give. We can’t keep walking out along this tightrope, or someone’s going to get hurt. I’m going to get hurt.
I clear my throat. “How’s the furniture repair business?”
His Cupid’s bow twitches. “Still a furniture repair business.”