“I was never unfaithful to you,” he says.
It’s not an answer. He might not have had an affair, or seen her in the flesh; I don’t even know if he’s still in communication with her, but his indirect answer implies I was right. He still wears her ring. And while he still had feelings for her, we were never going to work.
“I should have left months ago,” I admit. “We’ve let it drag on too long.”
“Probably.”
His dull admission fills me with sadness. If he’d fought for me, declared that he loved me, asked me not to go, apologized properly and said he still wanted me… I might have stayed. But just like how the sunlight is fading, so is our love, dissipating and leaving only shadows of what there once was. Maybe it wasn’t even there at all, the way I thought it was.
Did you ever love me?
I don’t know.
His answer is going to linger in my mind for a long time.
I glance around the room, surprised I have so few memories of the two of us together here. Just two and a half pointless years of routine and drudgery. Why did I stay so long?
I look back at him. “Noah’s offered me hiscottage for a few weeks.”
“Yeah, Archer said. I asked him if you two were dating and he said that you wanted some time alone.”
“Yes. I need to get over us before I start seeing Archer.IfI start seeing him. I know it’s possible he might choose you over me.”
That makes his lips curve up, just a little. “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he says. Before I can ask him what he means, he continues, “He said he’s offered you a job at PAWS.”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to take it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You should. Senior Veterinary Nurse is a good offer and you’d be great.”
I swallow hard, surprised. “Thank you.”
He gestures toward my cases. “Do you need a lift to the cottage?”
“Um, that would be great, yes. And I’d like to take my bike.”
“We can hook it to the back of the car.”
“Okay, thank you.”
He walks past me, picks up his keys and slips on his shoes, picks up both cases, and takes them outside. I shoulder my backpack and look around one more time. Then I follow him out, closing the front door behind me.
He lifts the cases into the boot, then collects the bike from the shed and hooks it on the back. I climb into the passenger side, and he gets in the driver’s side. He starts the engine and heads the car down the road.
We’ve been in this car a lot together, but suddenly it’s awkward and hostile. You sit close together in a car, and it’s weirdly intimate, but he feels like a stranger. We don’t say anything as he drives the short distance to the Ark, then goes around the drive and takes the road to Noah’s house. Before reaching it, he turns to the right and heads toward the cottage, and parks outside it.
We get out, and he helps me take out the cases, lifting them onto the deck for me. I wheel them both inside the cottage and drop my backpack in there too while he unhooks the bike.
Finally, I come back out, and we stand by the car. It feels like the end of a movie, and there should be a crescendo of an orchestra, or a thunderstorm, or a comet falling, or some other momentous event to mark the finale. But there’s just birdsong, and cicadas, and the sound of the sea in the distance.
“Well that’s it,” he says.
“Yeah.”
He hesitates. Then, surprising me again, he walks up to me and puts his arms around me.
