“Where are you going now?” he asked.
“Gretchen’s.”
He gave a terse laugh. “Figures.”
“She cares about you, too, but she’s my oldest friend.”
He rolled his eyes. “So you’re just going to stay on her couch? Then what?”
“I don’t know,” I said, furrowing my brows. The last twenty-four hours had been a whirlwind, and I’d only planned as far as staying with Gretchen for the night.
He sighed heavily. “Stay here tonight. Let’s work this out.”
I thought of David, awaiting my call, pissed that he couldn’t be here. And of Gretchen, likely freezing downstairs on a cold November night. And then I thought of staying the night here with Bill and how, actually, no part of me wanted to. “I should go,” I said gently. “We can talk more later.”
He shook his head at the floor. “Maybe by then you’ll realize.” He paused and swallowed audibly. “Get this . . . thing out of your system. We’ll talk in a few days.”
I flinched at the wordthingbut nodded, then lifted my left hand up to my face and studied it. Bill’s grandma’s ring was beautiful, but I’d never quite felt a connection to it. I looked on it with appreciation and respect, but it didn’t make my heart spill over. It’d always felt strange, not forming an emotional attachment to my wedding ring. I touched it reverently before I twisted it off my finger and held it out to him.
Bill looked between the ring and my face so quickly that my heart dropped. “You’re giving me back your ring?” His voice dropped, eerily low and calm. His face reddened, and he stalked toward me. “You’re giving me back your goddamn ring?”
I backed away, tripping over a dining chair and dropping the ring. “It—it’s your grandmother’s—”
In one quick motion, he overturned the kitchen table so it crashed against the floor. I yelped as he punched a hole in the wall.
“Get out,” he snapped.
Unable to make my feet move, I said, “I thought you’d—”
“I said . . .” He stormed over to the door, grabbed my duffel bag and tossed it out into the hallway. “Get.Out.”
Without a word, I watched his hands twitch and flex as I slunk by him. The door slammed after me. I bent down gingerly and picked up the bag while locks bolted on the other side of the door.
I looked around at the place that was suddenly, somehow, no longer my home. I focused on circulating cold air through my lungs as I made my way downstairs and to the street, rattled by the way calm, easygoing Bill had suddenly exploded.
I glanced down at my hand, different without the ring that had barely left my finger in five years. Not right or wrong, just different. Final.
I found Gretchen pacing on the sidewalk. “Hey,” I croaked, my voice catching.
“Shit,” she said, whirling around and hurrying over to me. “I almost came up there to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Oh, honey, you’re not fine,” she said, pulling me close.
“No,” I stated. “I’m not. But maybe I will be.” Hurting Bill was gut-wrenchingly awful. Something had given me the strength to do it, though. That something was David’s confidence in us, his bolstering love for me, and the promise of moving into new territory with him. I found strength in the idea that now, David would show me what his version of home meant.
Gretchen put an arm around me, and we began to walk toward the train. “How’d it go?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “How are these things supposed to go?”
She shrugged. “No clue. Did he cry?”
“Almost. I gave him back the ring.”
I caught her grimace.
“I don’t feel right keeping it,” I said defensively.
