“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.
“Trust me. She’s about forty seconds away from deciding to pack her knives and go.”
I groaned and got up from my slouch. A heated conversation between Shannon and Patrick filled the dining room, and he gestured for me to join.
“You’re free to talk to Erin all you want,” Shannon hissed. “I will not be making any calls today, tomorrow, or any other day.”
Patrick dropped a hand to my shoulder and squeezed, a clear indication I was expected to wade into the debate. “She’s your sister, Shan, and you need to drop your stupid fucking bullshit and call her. It’s Thanksgiving.”
I held up my hands in surrender when they turned eager gazes on me. I didn’t have any strength or patience for the Shannon-Erin Smackdown today, and I wasn’t sure she was even on the grid. Last I heard, Erin was holed up in some remote location in the Canary Islands listening for volcano gurgles. Or something equally unusual.
“She can callmeif she wants to talk,” Shannon snapped.
“It has been years, Shan,” Patrick said. “When are you going to grow the fuck up?”
I twisted out of his hold while their argument continued. I spotted Lauren in the kitchen, her back to me as she mixed vodka into a tumbler of ice and cranberry juice. I watched her stare out the window, sipping her drink for several minutes, and her rigid body language communicated everything I needed to know.
“Hey.”
Startled, she spun around to face me. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Can we talk?”
She raised her eyebrows but reserved comment, instead draining her glass and setting it in the sink.
“Please. I think we need to.”
She lifted her shoulder with a questioning gaze. “I think you said everything already.”
I wanted to kick my own ass for going off on her in the car. I exhaled and fisted my hands inside my pockets, twisting the necklace I carried with me every day. I held the cool rose quartz pendant between my fingers, and flashes of that first night passed behind my eyes.
“I can assure you that I have not said anything I need to say…not even close. Let’s get out of here. The Thai place?”
“No, Matthew, no,” she sighed. She shook her head, the motion slow and resigned.
“What’s happening right now?”
I watched her approach, though I wasn’t sure if she was inching toward me or time was grinding to a halt. She pressed her palm to my chest, frowning, and met my eyes. “No. You said what you needed to say. We can’t force it anymore. I have my priorities, and I can’t let you be one of them.”
She retreated, her hand falling away, and I felt rooted in place in Shannon’s dark kitchen. The pressure in my chest doubled, and I gasped at the pain of her rejection. Not husband material, not hook-up material.
Not even for now, not even for fun.
She never wanted me the way I wanted her.
*
Sprawled on thecold floor, I pillowed my head on my arm and hugged Lauren’s scarf to my chest, breathing in the remains of her delicate scent while I watched snow accumulating on my terrace.
My legs and lungs ached from an eighteen-mile run—suicide sprint, if I was being honest with myself—in white-out, blizzard conditions around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir and back. I couldn’t remember ever seeing Beacon Street as desolate, the deserted city mirroring the hollow feeling in my gut. My only companions were snowplows and salt trucks, and even they surrendered to the storm around midnight. I jogged a circuit through the slippery streets of the North End until two in the morning, my body consumed with a sick mix of dread and anger and hurt, and I needed to get it out before I could go home. I needed to collapse into a dreamless sleep that would rewind time or wipe the memory of Lauren entirely.
Coughing, I yanked my phone from its protective shield on my bicep, snickering at the messages from my siblings and Nick, all inquiring about my whereabouts and mental status, and nothing from the only person I wanted.
I shouldn’t have expected to hear from her, but that didn’t change the fact Iwantedit. She wasn’t the door slamming, all caps text message type. She shrank, folding in on herself, and shrouding her emotions in hard, defensive layers.
She liked to think her shoes and her panties were armor, but she had no idea how many layers she really wore, how much space she put between herself and the world.
A shiver racked my body, and I knew it was time to change out of my wet clothes but I couldn’t muster the strength to move. If I contracted pneumonia, suffered, and died in this spot, it wouldn’t be nearly as awful as Lauren walking away. The outstretched arms of grim death were more favorable than reliving the moment when her hand left my chest.
