“I think we both want to do better. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you had such a difficult relationship with him.”
He looked at Heather out of the corner of his eye, where she was resting her elbow against the window, looking out at the city.
“He loved me in a way that my own father never did. I never even knew him. My mother marrying him gave me things that were so wonderful, but I never wanted to look at the cost of it. I just ignored that they had an affair. I really did. Because I didn’t want either of them to be wrong. It changed my life in such good ways that I didn’t want any of it to be wrong. And you had made everything so miserable for me at school.”
“I am sorry about that,” he said.
Now, with years of perspective, he couldn’t fathom why he had done it. Except that he had been angry. At everything. And she had made him feel things that he didn’t want to feel, and it had felt like a convenient target for all that rage.
It had felt like an easy thing.
He had really, truly wanted the easy thing.
The bandage for the wound that seemed to be festering there in his chest.
“Thank you,” she said. “I lost myself there for a little while too. I got wrapped up in what it felt like to be one of you. To win. So a lot of the things that I did to you when I was in high school, that was all because I was angry, and I wanted to get back at you. Later, though I…”
“You wanted me.”
“I did. It confused me. I also realized that it wasn’t a new feeling. But again it was confusing because…”
“Because I wasn’t nice to you,” he said.
“No. You weren’t.”
“And you really couldn’t want anyone but me?”
“No.”
“Even that idiot that you almost had sex with at that house party?”
“Even him. I just wanted to not feel like something was wrong with me. Like I was different. Because I was so tired of feeling different. You made me feel so different. It’s funny that you were so mad about that party. About me and that other guy, because you pushed me there. You’re the one that made me feel like I needed to do something extreme to fix myself. So yes, I am sorry for some of the things, but you are no small part of my insecurity.”
He tightened his hand on the steering wheel, looked straight ahead. “I’m sorry. That’s inexcusable of me. I have been…a bad person.”
“No. You did some bad things, I think. Or I don’t know. You’re not altogether bad though, is the thing. You really aren’t. Which is part of the annoying thing about you. Part of the reason that I could never fully hate you, and it isn’t just because you’re gorgeous.”
“What good thing have you ever seen me do?”
“You were always there for your father, even though your relationship wasn’t easy. And you love your mother. I have always understood that a lot of the reason you didn’t like me was because you loved her so much.”
“I suppose we do know each other, a little bit.”
“A little bit.”
He was still grappling with the things that she had said when they pulled the car up outside of the restaurant, and he gave the keys to the valet.
They were ushered into the small building into a private dining room, where it was luxurious and quiet.
“I asked the chef to prepare us a selection of his favorite things.”
“Oh, that sounds lovely.”
“I know that you and your mother moved to Italy from New York.”
“Yes. We did.”
“I never asked you what it was like to grow up there.”
