He looked up. “What about you?”
My mind whirled, thoughts catching fire like the insects throwing themselves against the floodlight. “Me?”
“ ‘For now,’ you said. You following your boyfriend to Atlanta?”
“Chris expected…That is, he asked me to go with him. I’ve been thinking maybe I should have stayed with him and worked things out. Instead of…” I waved my hand. “You know. Running away.”
I didn’t want Joe to see me as another Brittany. But the truth was, I had nothing holding me in Chicago. Not even a job. Chris was the one with the career, the plan, the purpose. Which made me…what? The reckless one. The irresponsible one. The one who didn’t care enough about her partner to fight for the future they could have had together.
“I thought you came home to help Maddie,” he said.
“Well, sure. That, too. But I’m still the one who left.”
Joe straightened, rubbing his jaw with the back of his hand. The beard was new, but his hands hadn’t changed. Carpenter’s hands, scarred like my dad’s, with long, blunt-tipped fingers. “Unless he left first.”
Enough with the staring at his hands. “Only to find an apartment. He doesn’t go officially until the end of the month. His graduation is this weekend.”
Chris’s parents—Dr.and Dr.Harris—had planned a party at the Drake Hotel to celebrate the end of his residency, to mark the close of one chapter and the beginning of another. I thought of him sleeping exhausted in my bed, his hair still damp from his shower. The pizza, the plans, the past we had shared. The future I’d imagined. The reality we had survived. And now I wouldn’t even be there to see him graduate.
I swallowed.
Joe shifted his feet, tucking those nice, strong handsunder his arms as if he wasn’t sure what to do with them. With me. I recognized the posture from my dad. Keeping his opinions to himself, keeping his distance from anything too messy or complicated. I didn’t blame him. I didn’t expect him to be interested in my Sad Girl Life Crisis.
“After Britt and I got married,” he said and stopped.
I looked at him in surprise.
He fixed his gaze on the moths committing suicide in the light. “She started picking up extra shifts. Going out with her friends after work. Like she’d rather do anything than come home. She had one foot out the door weeks before she took off.”
Wow. I had not seen that coming. Joe Miller, sharing a piece of his history, baring a piece of his heart to make me feel better. “I’m sorry,” I said softly. “That must have been hard.”
“Not at the time.” His lips twisted. “Since I was too big a dumbass to see what was going on.”
I smiled back tentatively. “Chris works late. Which is totally fine, he’s a medical resident, it’s not like he has a choice. But…” Memories crept in. The nights he was too exhausted to see me. The days when I felt like one more obligation he had to take care of, one more person he needed to fix. His comments about the dishes in my sink or the dying plants on my windowsill or the hair clips I left scattered on the bathroom counter. “The pandemic changed things.”Changed us.I made a face. “Understatement of the year, right? But Chris…He was on the front lines at the hospital, watching people die, and I was home with Mom and Dad. It was like we were shipwrecked on different islands, trying to communicate by throwing message bottles into the water. We don’t talk anymore. Not like we used to. Well, you know.”
The corner of his mouth indented. “Talking wasn’t really our thing.”
“Maybe you need to work on your listening skills.”
There was a gleam in his eyes that might have been amusement. “Before we got married, all Britt wanted to talk about was wedding stuff. Once it was over, we didn’t have much to talk about.”
Another memory rustled. Twelve-year-old me, spying at the lake. “You were probably too busy having sex.”
He laughed low, kindling warmth in my face and in my stomach. “You always were good at saying what’s on your mind.”
“To you. I don’t have to pretend with you.” With Chris, I made more of an effort to be the best possible version of myself. His version of myself, all the messy bits, the different, squiggly, awkward pieces, tucked and hidden away. “Which is why you think I’m a pest.”
“That’s not it.”
I waited for more.
“I never have to wonder where I am with you. How you feel. What I did wrong.” He smiled slightly. “Saves guesswork.”
“Did you ever try asking Brittany about her day? About her feelings?”
“Some. At the beginning. She said it made her feel like I was keeping tabs.”
Yikes.
