I nearly sit on the edge of the bed beside Elise, but manage to stop just in front of her. “Well, I couldn’t let you know just how out of my league you were.”
She rolls her eyes at my self-deprecating smile, but this moment has a hold on me that tightens with every breath I take.
“You have got to stop flirting with me,” she scoffs, but she’s smiling so wide, I doubt she believes it.
Elise is staring at me with her big brown eyes. I’m both terrified of what’s going on behind them, what she’s thinking, and desperate to know. She left me, I don’t want her to knowabout the bits of her I’ve been holding onto. I can’t tell if I’m trying to find a hint of hope in her eyes about what that means.
God, I don’t even know what it means.
Maybe it’s the way the afternoon sun streams in, cutting the same faded path on the carpet and furniture, bringing out a warm red in her hair. Maybe it’s the way Elise and my home are worlds that were never meant to collide. But here they are and if I don’t leave this room, this moment, maybe they can exist together perfectly, fitting together seamlessly without disturbing a thing.
Maybe I could tell her I don’t regret a thing about getting married to her.
I ache to. The words almost tumble out of me at the same time I feel the urge to just bury my face in her shoulder and take a deep breath. There’s something about the way she smells. It makes the pounding in my head stop, the clawing in my chest cease. All I need for the rest of my life is to just breathe it in.
But I would always want more.
And maybe that’s why we have to go our separate ways. I wouldn’t be able to just leave her alone, to let her live her own life, when I daydream about putting my chin on her shoulder and my hands in her back pockets.
“I’m going to take those plates downstairs,” I say instead of anything else, and with that sliver of reality, somehow talk myself into leaving the room.
She doesn’t follow me out to the linen closet again, and I’m glad for that much. I need to actually work on staying away from her, not just keep telling myself I’m going to.
11
Elise
Whenever I pass the bakery section of our local grocery store, I stop at the pastry display case for a little while, usually for inspiration. Sometimes I think about what I’ve already got in my cart and how I could combine it with something as simple as croissants, or if I could swap a different spice into a cinnamon roll.
But this time, I’ve been standing in front of the pastry display case staring at a fresh tray of Danishes, watching the little decorative lines of icing slowly drip off of them.
You can’t call him. You blocked his number forever ago.
I can’t even rationalize to myself that I’m thinking about how the pastries should have been given more time to cool so that the icing wouldn’t be melting off, or that there’s something wrong in the liquid to powdered sugar ratio for the icing to have that consistency.
A movement on the other side of the case pulls me from my thoughts, and looking up, I see the baker in his white smock.
He glances between me and the Danishes, and then raises his eyebrows. “Can I help you with anything?”
“Oh, no, thanks though.” I shake my head quickly.
I stare for a beat too long, trying to convince myself to be attracted to the baker. Someone who I haven’t been legally bound to before.
He gives me a friendly smile, but it doesn’t spark that same heart-thudding, breath-stalling sensation that Shawn does.Fuck.
I shuffle away, moving my cart towards the checkout. Now that the menu for the reception has been finalized, I can start getting some of the ingredients before the prepping stage. I’ve spent most of the day successfully avoiding Shawn, and not wondering about him in the slightest. Re-contextualizing some things about our relationship, maybe.
“Oh, hey.”
I still, the checkout conveyor belt snagging a box of flaky salt out of my hands. I know it before I even look up.
I brace myself, and—dear god, he’s wearing gray sweatpants, and an old maroon college sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows.
It’s not just the way the fabric drapes over his legs and everything in between, it’s the way itmoves. The way the waistband ties frame the imprint of his dick. It makes my mouth go dry. I don’t need to be doing this. I remember what it looked like, don’t I? Or was my memory on that a little faded as well?
Rationally, I know I don’t want his attention, or to be in the same town as him even. I moved across the state to get away from him and avoid this kind of moment.
“Hey, yourself,” I answer, as nonchalantly as I can manage, even though I’m definitely on the chalant side of the spectrum. It’s fine. I can exist within the same ten feet of Shawn and not be completely weird about it.
