“What if I were willing to compromise on some of that long-term stuff, at least for now? Think you’d be able to meet me in the middle?”
“I’m not going to be the reason you don’t get your happily ever after,” I tell him, shaking my head.
There’s another thud. “But what if youaremy happily ever after?”
I bring my hand up again when my chin begins trembling. “I can’t be.”
“Can’t … or won’t?”
“Both,” I reply, my voice cracking.
“Claire, you know I don’t care that you’re not Catholic or that you’ve been married before, right? Of course, I’d love nothing more than to share my faith with you, but those things aren’t dealbreakers for me.”
“Maybe not in theory, but they’re dealbreakers in practice,” I say with a sniffle.
“Because I won’t sleep with you?”
I squint against the stinging in my eyes. “You know that’s not it.”
He groans. “Then can we please talk about this face-to-face?”
“No,” I say quickly. “If I let you in here, one of us is going to end up breaking some kind of deal.”
“It’s not helping your case when you’re the one to point out it’s safer if you don’t let me into your bedroom.”
“Or my heart,” I accidentally say out loud, and he whimpers.
“It’s too late for that. At least, it is for me.”
“Come on, Rowan, you can’t really believe God would lead you to someone like me, and I can’t let you give up everything that’s most important to you. Let’s face it—if we were meant to be, this would all be easier.”
“Maybe it would have been easy if we hadn’t skipped all the important steps in the beginning and tried to go straight to the finish line,” he grumbles.
What if he’s right? What if our story had gone differently? What if I’d have just put him up in his own hotel room instead of bringing him back to mine? Would we have met up for coffee in the morning and started dating like a normal couple? Would we still have fallen for one another? Would he have even gone through the trouble of tracking me down later or approaching me at his sister’s wedding?
No. He wouldn’t have. Because I’m not what he’s looking for.
It doesn’t matter, anyway, because that’s not how it went. And at the end of the day, I’m still a hot mess—broken, divorced, infertile—and I can’t give him any of the things he’s been working for his whole life.
At the same time, he may be all I have right now, and I’m just a little too selfish and much too lonely to let him go.
I cringe at the ache in my chest as soon as I consider a future completely devoid of him. I need Rowan in my life in some way, even if we have to settle for something platonic. So I’ll just have to be on my best behavior from here on out.
“But at least this way we became friends, right?” I offer after a while.
“Yeah,” he replies, his voice cracking suspiciously. “Friendship is still … something.”
“I’m sorry,” I say softly.
“Me, too.”
“I’ll try to be better about respecting your boundaries. I promise.” I sniffle as I wait for him to reply. “Rowan? You still there?”
“Yeah, I’m still here.” But he sounds gutted.
“Would it make you feel any better if I admitted that I’m suspiciously close to peak day, so all of this was probably just a result of my raging hormones?” And there’s my inappropriate and poorly timed, self-deprecating humor. I can’t help myself.
He huffs out a laugh. “Not really. Then I’d just feel guilty for taking advantage of you while you’re ovulating.”
