We stitch ourselves together, numb, and walk to Richard’s office. I try to take her hand but she makes a fist, walking ahead the whole way and never turning back. The closer we get to his office door, open just a crack, the farther my stomach sinks to my feet.
It’s stupid, considering what we were doing, but I can’t believe this is happening.
Just before the door, Corrine stops. Her back is rigid and her shoulders heave with each breath. She turns to me. Her arms come around my waist, her face buried between my arm and chest. I can’t hear, but I feel the deep sob that wracks her body. For the longest second, I do nothing. I am so surprised by this, her complete physical affection in the middle of the office. But the shock quickly wears off and I put my arms around her, curl over her, resting my cheek on her hair. I wish I could do something, say something to protect her.
“I’m sorry,” is the best I can come up with.
She takes a deep breath, her whole body shuddering on an exhale. “I am, too.”
She steps back, trying to right her clothes, but throwing them on so quickly has given her this messy, frumpy aesthetic. “Listen, I don’t think you should come in with me. I... I don’t think I want you to see or hear whatever happens.”
“No.” I take a step forward. “I’m just as much responsible for this as you are. We face this together.” I reach for her hand but she makes a fist, pulling it behind her back.
She pauses. Her lips pressed together like they’re holding something heavy in. “Why didn’t you answer your phone, Wesley?” she asks, her voice colored with hurt.
“I... I was at my sister’s launch party.”
“If you had been here, if you had come when I first called. None of this would have happened. Do you know that?” The disappointment in her face triggers an ugly thing inside me.
“That’s not fair. Have you ever thought that if you had come to Amy’s party in the first place none of this would have happened? This isn’t my fault.”
She blinks quickly. “You’re right.” She nods, a blank expression on her face, her voice toneless and flat. “I can’t blame this on you. I have no one to blame but myself. Maybe I was just scared. Of losing my mom, of losing in general. Maybe that’s what this was from the very beginning, a distraction.”
My brain stutters to catch up with her and so does my heart. “That’s not...that’s not what this was. Not for me. And I know not for you either,” I tell her.
I shake my head. “Don’t do that to us. Don’t question this. Don’t rewrite our history.”
But it’s like she doesn’t hear me. A switch has been flipped somewhere inside her in the time it took us to walk from her office to his.
“And you.” She looks at me like she’s seeing me for the first time. “You were probably just trying to find someone else to take care of.”
I physically bow inward. Her words are like a hit to the chest I didn’t see coming.
“Don’t say that,” I say, my voice hard. “We’re not going to say things just to hurt each other. You’re panicking right now.” I try to reach for her but she moves out of my grasp. “And that’s okay. But we’re doing this together. I’m not leaving you alone with him.”
She looks at me with the same indifference that she used to.
“We’re real, Corrine,” I say, pointing between us. I say it slow and loud so she’ll hear me. But nothing changes. I start to falter. “We...we were real all along.”
For the first time, I know that it’s true: even though it was a secret and that secret made everything more difficult, more intense, her feelings were still real and so were mine. The horrible part is that it took getting caught to realize it.
I don’t recognize this woman standing in front of me. “We’re not real. We can’t be. We’re not right for each other. Do you realize what’s going to happen in there? You’re going to befired. So will I. And it’s my fault.” She shakes her head as I try to argue. “Don’t you see, Wesley? I’m just like him. I’m no better.”
I keep my mouth closed, afraid if I open it all the wrong things will come out. I shake my head. “You are nothing like him.”
Because Iloveyou.She never reacted to my declaration in her office. Unless you count ignoring it as a reaction, which, in this scenario, is a pretty straightforward answer.
Her jaw clenches, her nostrils flare, like my silence pisses her off. “Don’t you get it?” she spits. She sounds like she did on my first day. Angry and barely containing herself. “This was a mistake, Wesley.”
Each word is a cannon in my head. Percussive, destructive. Painful.
“You,” she says slowly, like I’m an idiot. “Were a mistake.”
A tear falls down her cheek but she dashes it away. She’s angrier now than I’ve ever seen her. Angrier than when she thought I’d called her a cunt. My head won’t stop shaking.
“Don’t fucking say that to me.”
She’s just trying to hurt me.I think it again and again but it doesn’t help. I’d rather go back to the time when I thought she hated me than endure this. This hurts more than any cruel thing she’s ever done before.
