“Did something happen at the dinner?” she pressed.
He let out a huff of breath. “Nothing I wasn’t expecting,” he said, and he sounded so sad, so bitter . . . so un-Aiden-like, she was upset on his behalf. “My mother gave me hell about not having a date, even though technically it meant her winning our bet—but that’s a different story. She insisted we sit with Davy and Sheryl, which was a nightmare. Nothing overt, just the usual little stabs and snarking.”
“Davy snarks at you?” she said, incensed. His little brother had hooked up with his ex. Surely he wasn’t the offending party here?
“No. Sheryl.” Aiden sighed. “It’s been ten years. I swear, I keep waiting for her to get over it. It’s actually kind of hurtful to my brother, if you think about it.”
“Wait, why is Sheryl pissed?” she asked. “Did you dump her? Because I don’t understand this at all.”
“It is a little complicated,” he said.
When he was quiet for a beat, she gritted her teeth, blowing out a breath. Then she said, “You really don’t have to tell me, Aiden. It’s all right. I’m just trying to understand. Because it doesn’t sound like you did anything wrong.”
“No, it’s okay. I don’t know that I’ve given anybody the gritty details, except Malcolm, now that I think of it.”
She took a sip of tea.
“So, remember, I broke up with Jordan junior year of college? I was working for a few years after that. I didn’t date anybody, because I was heartbroken, and I was trying to figure out what I wanted, and I thought there was something wrong with me. Sheryl had gone to school in Chicago, but she’d had kind of a bad experience too. I think she wanted to have this rebellious period, and I guess she did go a little wild, but ultimately she didn’t like what was happening. I heard her parents needed to bail her out of something—I think a trashed apartment or something, and some debt she’d run up—but by the time I saw her, that was all in the past. She graduated, had gotten a job in HR in Seattle. After Malcolm and I had started the hospice . . . I was like twenty-eight or something when we connected again. I ran into her at a grocery store, of all damned things.”
Maggie felt like she was on the edge of her seat.
“It was nice. She was still kind, and fun, and supportive. She didn’t know why I’d left Spokane and went to the west side, but she was supportive of me being a nurse, and thought the hospice was a great business to get into. We started seeing each other regularly. She felt like home, in a good way. And I was still attracted to her, and she was still attracted to me and single at the time we bumped into each other, so it just kind of happened. Organically.”
Maggie felt her stomach twist. Why was she begrudging him? This was his life. She was just listening to him tell this story. But there was a Spidey sense tingling too. She didn’t trust this woman.
“Anyway, after we’d been together a few years, I started noticing some things that had changed. She’d always prided herself on being different from her parents, who were pretty conservative. Now, she was starting to say she saw their point. She complained about living in Seattle. She wanted to get married, and have kids. Settle down in Spokane.”
Maggie’s jaw clenched hard. She would not interrupt. No matter how badly she wanted to.
“I started to realize that I wasn’t really feeling as connected. I should have broken up with her immediately . . .”
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Maggie blurted out. “It’s not your fault. People grow apart. I can’t imagine that many people reconnecting with their high school sweethearts and still being the same people, much less maintaining a relationship.”
He sounded startled. “I . . . guess that’s true,” he murmured. “The thing is, my family was pressuring us to get married. Her family was pressuring us to get married and move back to the east side. I wound up asking her to marry me, but I kept putting off setting a date. That should’ve been a sign, right there.”
Maggie made a sympathetic noise.
“Sheryl started talking about me either opening a branch of our hospice company in Spokane, or taking over her parents’ car dealerships. I put my foot down on that one. I had absolutely no interest in selling cars.”
She could all but picture him shuddering. “Yeah, I don’t see you as a car salesman,” she said, with a little teasing in her voice.
He chuckled, but it was brittle. “I didn’t want to move to Spokane either. It felt like we were fighting more than anything, and I guess the writing was on the wall, but I . . . well, I so rarely felt like this for people. I didn’t know what to do, and if I screwed up with her . . . although by that time I didn’t even want to have sex anymore anyway.” He paused. “Thanks for the demisexual and asexual information, by the way. It really cleared some things up. About me, I mean.”
“Glad I could help,” Maggie said, swallowing against a knot in her throat.
“Wish I’d known it then,” he added ruefully. “So we were arguing one day, because I’d been working a lot of overtime or staying up late so I didn’t have to, you know, go to bed with her. She asked what was wrong with me. She asked if I’d ever even dated anyone else, and how we’d lost our virginity to each other, but she’d slept with other people in Chicago and had boyfriends and stuff, and she hinted that something might be wrong with me and maybe I should see a doctor . . .” He cleared his throat. “It really sucked.”
“Jesus.” That bitch.
“I brought up my relationship in college, in Spokane. She actually doubled down and said it was impossible, because my family didn’t know, or they’d have told her. So I spit out that I had been dating a man in college, and he was in the closet, so nobody knew, least of all my parents.”
Maggie let out a low whistle. “Bet that went over like a lead balloon.”
“She lost her shit. Kicked me out that day. I had to move in with Malcolm and his wife until I could get a new place to live.”
Now Maggie didn’t hold back. “That bitch!”
“No, she wasn’t,” he said. The sheer virtue this guy had. “She was angry, sure. But it was my fault too. I knew we weren’t working, but I didn’t do the hard thing and just break up. I just kept thinking things would work out somehow.”
“I bet you put in a ton of effort,” Maggie countered. “Because I know you. You probably did all kinds of shit you didn’t like to try to make it work. And again: Why is she pissed now? She kicked you out!”
He let out a long exhalation. “Because I should’ve been honest,” he said. “I should’ve been up front with her, right from the start.”
Maggie blinked. “Why?”
Now there was a long pause. “What do you mean, why?” Aiden asked, sounding genuinely baffled. “Because . . . I should’ve disclosed it.”
“Again: Why?” Maggie felt anger bubble in her bloodstream. “I don’t hand over a résumé of my past partners when I start seeing someone. Did she tell you all about her boyfriends from college? Provide you with a list of past lovers?”