Alex wedges his arms beneath me, squeezing me tight. “Before dinner, when we came in from the beach, you said you wanted to talk tonight?”
I swallow nervously. “I did. I still do. But we don’t have to now. It’s so late, and you have to be exhausted. I think… I think we’ve got a lot going on. It can wait.”
Alex stiffens in my arms. Slowly, he pulls away, sits up, staring down at me. “What?”
I sit up, too, confused by his response. “What do you mean,what?”
“Why do you… Why did what happened tonight make you think we don’t have to talk about what you wanted to talk about?” he asks. “Why does it have to wait?”
I search his eyes, trying to figure out what’s upsetting him, where I went wrong. “Ethan blew everything up tonight, and now it feels weird and sad, and I just thought… maybe taking a beat, letting that settle, would be… helpful?”
“Helpful for whom?” Alex demands.
“All of us? Jen? Mia? Your ex-wife is hurting, and your daughter is going to be hurt when she wakes up, and she’s going to pick up on her mom hurting, and that’s a lot to handle. So I just thought it could wait—”
“Ted.” He rakes both hands through his hair and tugs at the ends. “I don’t want it to wait. I’ve waited a long time.”
I stare at him, hearing what he’s saying, understanding that he knew what this conversation was going to be. My heart tumbles in my chest, warmed that he wanted to talk about this as much as I did. And it falters when I realize how angry he is that I’ve tried to defer it.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “I wasn’t trying to… make you wait longer.”
“But you weren’t interested innotmaking me wait any longer, either.”
“That’s not true.” I reach for his hand, but he pulls away.
His eyes search mine. “Is this what it’s going to be, Ted? You always waiting for the other shoe to drop, groping for any excuse, any theoretical obstacle to put between us, to avoid what you said—” His voice cracks. He stares down at the bed. “What you said you wanted.”
“No, Alex, I just… I just didn’t want to talk about all this when it’s so precious and new and… well, when it’s somethingI’ve waited for, too, with Ethan’s douchery and Jen’s sadness and that impact on Mia hanging over us.”
Alex stands from the bed and starts to pace the room. “That’s nice. Good to know that’s what you wanted.” He rounds on me. “But what about whatIwant. Does that matter?”
“Of course it does.” I feel unsteady, shaky, as I look up at him.
“You just told me you don’t want to do this, though.”
“Not now,” I admit. “But I can, if you want—”
“It’s not whatyouwant, though,” he mutters, scrubbing at his face. “You want to wait, until everything’s just right, until it’s storybook perfect.”
“That’s not fair—”
“You know what’s not fair, Ted?” He steps closer, pain flashing in his eyes. “Waiting. And waiting. And waiting for the woman you love to think you’re worth it. To choose you, even when it means sticking her neck out. To show you that she loves you even more than she fears what she’d be risking. And when, finally, you think it’s going to happen, for her to decide, now isn’t the time. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. Who knows?”
“Alex, I’m sorry.” Tears fill my eyes. “Youareworth it to me—”
“Yeah, well.” He grabs a pillow from the bed and storms toward the door. “You have one hell of a way of showing it. I’ll be sleeping in the douche den. See if that fancy fucking pullout mattress is everything Ethan cracked it up to be.”
When he pulls the door shut between us, he does so quietly, carefully. It still hits me like he slammed it, harsh and final.
I lie there for hours, warring with myself. Do I chase him down, follow him, push him to talk it out?
But then what? I tell Alex that I love him, that I want us to be more than friends, that I want every part of life with him, whenhe’s angry, wounded, when we’re both exhausted and spent and in a just few hours this morning, we’ll be pressed in by even more very valid hurts, Jen’s and Mia’s.
Slowly, I sink lower in the bed, curled into a ball, listening to ocean roar. I tell myself that tomorrow, I can fix this. That tomorrow, it can be better.
I’ll make sure of it.
When I wake up to the first stretch of sun on the horizon and wander out into the house, Alex is nowhere that I can see. Maybe he’s still sleeping in the douche den. But it doesn’t feel like he’s here.