He turns to face me as he rubs a hand over the back of his head. “I’m good, thanks.” He stares at me for a beat, taking in mymessy bun and checkered pajama pants, and I cock an eyebrow at his perusal. “Yes, Dr. Charlebois?”
He chuckles, shaking his head. “Nevermind. Thank you, again. I don’t know if I said it properly, but I appreciate you letting me come over here, taking care of me when you already have your hands full.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s the least I could have done considering you only got sick because you were helping me out. Plus,” I tease, “I won’t admit it to anyone else, but I care about you too much to let you die alone.”
He snickers, adjusting his position so his legs are strewn across the cushions, poking his feet into my hips. I curl my legs, tucking them under me and arranging the blanket over the both of us.
“I want to repay you…let me take you on a date.”
His offer is more tempting now than it ever has been. I consider it, for a moment. The idea of us out at a fancy restaurant, drinking, dancing, coming back to my place to revisit each other’s bodies just like we did that night so many months ago.
Except then what? Then he comes over more, takes me and Jackson to a Cubs game, and then another. He helps me remodel my kitchen. He gets to know my sister. Spends overnights here and we all wake up together as a big, happy family?
Then one day he gets pissed at me for whatever reason. Realizes that being stubborn and moody isn’t just a phase, that I likely won’t change and he doesn’t want to have to push someone his whole life. I can’t fathom a world where a man falls in love with me for exactly who I am. So he’d likely leave. Then it’s not only my heart that breaks, but Jackson would lose him, too.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
“Why?” he asks, his voice just as soft.
I take a deep breath, pushing aside the embarrassment that comes with admitting feelings and push forward. “Because if it doesn’t last forever, that’s one more person Jackson loses. That boy has lost enough.” He already had a dad who didn’t care to meet him. I refuse to let him think that Jim didn’t want him, either.
Jim opens his mouth, but before I can let him speak I put my hand up. “And don’t give me some speech that maybe we would last forever because that’s creepy as shit to think that there isn’t the possibility where we wouldn’t break up. I’m not that na?ve.”
“Christ,” he sighs, head falling back to hit the cushion behind him. “If I didn’t know any better I’d say there was some asshole ex-boyfriend you were still hung up on.”
I run my pointer finger over the lip of my tea cup, letting the silence linger on.
“Or is there? Shit, Megan.” He pushes forward until he’s next to me, my knee resting on his leg. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed, I had no idea there was someone—”
“Whoa, wait.” I put a hand up. “There is a shitty ex that I’m hung up on, but it’s not like you think. I’m not hung up on him because he was this amazing guy that I lost. I certainly don’t kick myself every day that he’s not in my life. No, I definitely didn’t love him. Hell, I’ve never loved anyone in that way. It’s more like…” I look over the back of the couch cushion, preferring to study the dark kitchen instead of making eye contact with Jim. The words burn at the back of my throat, and I feel my bottom lip start to quiver at the honesty. “It’s more like I hate that I was ever with him. Most days I think there is too much anger festering inside to ever think I’d be capable of dating anyone else.”
A warm palm comes to rest on my forearm, gently squeezing to garner my attention. “I’m going to ask you something, and youbetter tell me the truth. Did he…did he ever lay a hand on you? On Jackson?”
My head whips back in his direction, and I set my cup down on the table abruptly to cover his hand with mine. “No. No. I promise. Nothing like that. Do you really think someone would physically hurt me and live to tell the story?”
Jim visibly relaxes, shoulders falling with my response. “Okay, good. But this anger…what did he do that has you so convinced you aren’t worth trying for?”
I pull my bottom lip between my teeth, worrying it back and forth. “Did you know that Jenna and her husband actually met when they were teenagers? They harbored secret crushes on one another, but both were too chickenshit to say anything. That went on for years, and when they were in their early twenties, he called her one day and broke her heart.” I remember that day so vividly. We had been at work, and she took a call from him mid-day. She came back not five minutes later, tear-stained cheeks and devastation etched into her beautiful face. “She was so broken she swore off love, and then a few years later, he moved back to the city and was desperate for her to give him another chance. At first I was disgusted because I had a firm rule that if someone doesn’t love you right the first time around, then they never really loved you at all.”
Jim nods. “That’s a pretty fair rule.”
“Agreed. Except Emmett was relentless. He basically stalked her, laid his heart at her feet and begged for another chance. Obviously it worked out because they got back together and are married with two kids now.” And his reasons for breaking her heart weren’t at all what I had thought. It made me change my mind about him, about second chances.
“I’ve only had one real relationship in my life,” I chuckle awkwardly. “How embarrassing is that? I’ll be thirty soon and my longest monogamous relationship barely lasted six weeks.” Itwas with this cocky, rich engineer I met during happy hour at a local bar. He challenged me, and I thought that’s what I needed, someone who wouldn’t crumble under my stare, who would take me down a peg when I was being a bitch. “Looking back, our relationship was so fucked up. Six weeks should have been filled with sex and lazy mornings and I miss you texts, but we were never like that. It ended when he took me out of town one weekend to some weird family reunion, but we got in a fight in the car on the way there. He pulled the car to the side of the road, reached over me to open the door and told me to get out.” He abandoned me an hour outside of the city, in some podunk town I had never heard of. I stood on the side of the road shivering in my summer dress until Jenna came and got me.
“What the fuck,” Jim mumbles.
“Yeah,” I snort. “I choose well.”
“What does that have to do with Jenna and Emmett?”
“About a week before Marissa’s accident, I ran into this ex at an art exhibit. He heard Marissa was going to be showcasing her art, and he attended the event hoping to run into me there. He asked me to dinner, and I was about to tell him to fuck right off, but I took a second to think about it.” Jenna and Emmett were more in love than ever, and had just gotten married. Lainey and Ryan had just gotten together, and it took nearly a month for them to come up for air and remember that there were other people in the world. He told me things had changed, and he realized what an ass he had been, and he wanted to try again. “I wondered if he would be my Emmett, that if I’d give him a second chance, we’d find out it was just bad timing.”
I should have seen all the warning signs just the same. How a week into our relationship he picked me up for our first date and criticized the dress I was wearing. How when I considered ordering dessert at the restaurant, he took one look at mystomach and asked if I was sure. I should have thrown a drink in his face and walked away.
“We were together when my sister had her accident,” I whisper. “God, Jim. I felt so alone. I was sick to my stomach with fear over what would happen with her, with Jackson.” I sent out a mass text to Jenna, Lainey, and my ex when I was sitting alone in the waiting room, waiting to hear if my sister would survive surgery. “Jenna and Lainey came immediately, sat with me for hours, all three of us crying. My ex couldn’t make it. He said he got caught up with ‘business,’ but had his location turned on and I saw he was downtown at the bars.” I breathe in a slow, shaky breath to dry up the tears forming. All those nights spent at her bedside, I never heard from him. Not a text asking how she was. Not an offer to bring food or keep me company. Nothing. “I later told him that I was going to petition the court to get guardianship of both of them, and you know what he said to me?”
Jim’s hands have a firm grip on my ankles, his body leaning into me, so close I could grasp his shirt and crush our lips together.
