“But maybe I — maybe I want more than whatever I want.” He heard the incongruous sentence and revised it: “Like you were saying on the balcony. It isn’t always just about sex, for me.”
Lillian was quiet for a moment, continuing to match his stride as they walked. “Look,” she said, in a voice so artfully gentle that Carver knew he wouldn’t like whatever came next. “It’s fine to have a crush. But it doesn’t make sense to throw everything away for love when you can’t possibly be in love with this person.”
Carver found himself grinding his teeth and stopped. “I didn’t say I was in love, but I would like to be in love.”
“So you aren’t actually in love with me,” she mused.
“Are you in love withme?”
Lillian was quiet.
“Please be honest,” Carver begged her. “You can be brutally honest with me right now, honey, I want you to. All the things you normally choose not to say because you suspect they’d upset me, or they’d sound, you know, socially incorrect — those are the things I need you to say right now.”
“Oh, okay,” she said. “That makes things a lot easier. No, I don’t think I’m in love with you.”
Despite everything he’d just said, this was more offensive and painful than he expected it to be. “No?” he said, his breath hitching.
“No, because I don’t think that’s really the type of person I am,” Lillian confessed. She stopped and took him by the sleeve, and he turned to her. She cupped his face in her cool hands; her hawk’s eyes were bright with sincerity. “But I really am so fond of you, Carver. I thought you could be like me, so I made an error there, I guess. But I don’t hold it against you that you’re sensitive. You’re also very smart, and very driven, and we make an excellent team. There aren’t that many people who I feel like I can really respect — most people are just so, you know, bluh — but I respect you. I really enjoy walking into a room with you.”
Tears leaked from Carver’s eyes and skidded sideways across his face in the breeze. “But you don’t love me.”
“I think I do, in a way.”
“If we were going down on the Titanic, would you stay with me, or get in a lifeboat?”
Lillian laughed. “Darling, I’d get in the lifeboat, I’m not a moron. Is that the acid test? Am I supposed to be a moron?”
“No, just…”
She wiped the tears from his cheek, then wiped them on his hoodie. “Where is all of this stuff coming from? I can’t believe the sex with Scott wasthatgood.”
“What if it was?” Carver said. “What if that’s what I’m telling you?”
Lillian looked at him with a certain blankness on her face, then dropped her hands and started walking again. He followed suit.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to be married to someone who isn’t so obviously unhappy?” he said to her.
“That’s not a requirement for me,” Lillian said, shrugging.
“Okay, well, maybe it is for me. For my life.”
“But you’re making all of these wild assumptions. We’ll get a divorce and you’ll suddenly be happy? You’ll be happy with Scott? You have no guarantee that you’re improving on your situation.”
“I might also leave Blackbrick,” Carver said, and winced as she turned to him.
“Carver,” Lillian said in a bloodless voice. “Are you insane? Have you even thought about your carry?”
“Yes! Yes, I’ve thought about my carry!”
“What’s going on, seriously? You have a weird vibe today, there’s this strange look in your eye. What aren’t you telling me?”
Carver looked across the dark, agitated water to the green stretches of land visible on the horizon. “Um,” he said. “I did — I found something out last night.”
“Well, what was it?”
He turned back to her. For a moment he was frightened to say it, in a way he hadn’t been frightened to tell Scott. For some reason it mattered more to him what she thought of his mother; for some reason it was worse to imagine Lillian thinking of his mother as a whore.
“My mom had an affair,” he said, “and I’m not my father’s son.”
