He didn’t say anything.
This was becoming a habit. Him, a mostly silent witness. Me, a hot mess. I hated it.
“I’m just confused,” I said.
“And angry.”
“I don’t get angry,” I protested automatically.
Did I?
I took a swift physical inventory—the tension in my face and neck, the dryness in my mouth and throat, my grinding teeth, my shaking hands.Angry. Yes. The word settled inside me, hard and sure. I was angry at my mother for leaving. Angry at Sam for pointing out her choice. Angry with myself, for all the times I’d given up or gone along or failed to speak out because I was afraid of being abandoned. Rejected. I was angry at Aunt Em for not loving me enough, at Gray for using me, at Toni for needing me and dropping out, at Dr.Eastwick for dying, and Maeve Ward for being alive.
Oh God.I was angry all the time.
There was a certain relief in naming the emotion, as if giving it a label gave me power over it.
“Maybe I am a little angry. I guess I didn’t...” I swallowed. “How did you know?”
“Anger’s always difficult to admit.” He fiddled with the car’s controls. Heat rushed from the vents. “Or express.”
“Not for men,” I said, my tone truculent. “When men get mad, they get to punch things.”
“Shall I punch someone for you?”
“Haha. No.” The windows were steaming up. My knees were thawing, the tension easing from my shoulders. I stretched my fingers toward the hair-dryer blast from the dashboard. “Have you?” I asked, curious. “Ever punched anybody?”
“I was a soldier,” he said mildly.
“I mean, in anger.”
“Not recently.”
“Not even...” He was leaning against the driver’s-side door, leaving me space. Making me say it. “Not even Charles?” I asked.
“No.”
We were back to monosyllables, I noticed. But at least we were talking. This conversation couldn’t be pleasant for him, but he hadn’t shut me up. He hadn’t shut me out. “Did you ever say anything to him? Or to Laura?”
“There wasn’t much point,” he said stiffly. “Rehashing the situation doesn’t change what’s done.”
“The point is, he betrayed your friendship. Your trust. They both did.” Poor Tim. I knew how that felt. Although now that I thought about it, being humiliated in your ex-lover’s novel was a degree less horrible than having your fiancée sleep with the man who saved your life while you were recovering from a suicide-bomb attack. Several degrees less horrible, in fact.
“They’d made their choice. I made mine.”
He’d broken off the engagement, I remembered. “A man of action.”
“Yes.”
“And few words.” His cheekbones colored. I resisted the urge to pat his hand. “Did you ever talk to anyone?”
His glasses gleamed in the gray light from the windows. “You think I need counseling to get over my hurt feelings.”
“I think everybody can use a little support sometimes.”
“Thank you, but I managed. One has one’s pride. I wasn’t going to be a burden.”
“It’s not a burden to tell someone how you feel.” It occurred to me that this was a pretty hypocritical thing for me to say, givenmy reluctance to talk to Gray. Or about Gray. But maybe I was getting better. Now that I had friends who listened.
