"What’s that supposed to mean?"
Journey releases a huff before squeezing her hands around the steering wheel. "Mel, when you leave a relationship with no notice or warning, there will be side effects. I’m not taking Ace’s side before you go assuming anything, but he thinks you’ve lost your mind because of Dad. He’s sure you will accept a proposal, especially if it means you can stay in Vermont and have a family to follow. He was very convincing of this to Brett too."
"Well, we both know it’s bull," I tell her.
"Is it?" she asks. "Anytime I’ve spoken to you in the past year, you’ve said everything was great, and you thought Ace was planning to propose soon. Despite having a feeling you were lying, not once, did you tell me you were miserable—miserable enough to pick up and leave when tragedy strikes our family."
"So, youareon Ace’s side,andBrett’s," I snap at her, slapping my hands on my lap.
"No, I’m not on their side, but you need to have a civil conversation with Ace, alone."
"He wants to buy your share of the shop so he can gift it to me. This doesn’t sound fishy to you?"
"I mean—if you were to accept his proposal, no, it wouldn’t be fishy. Ace thinks you’re having a mental breakdown because of Dad. He’s fighting for you."
I toss my head back against the seat. "Yet, it took Ace three weeks to fly out here to check on me?"
Journey groans. "If I’ve learned anything about a man, they are great at obeying orders—especially when it’s in their favor. You told him you were going home, you didn’t ask him to come, andyou said you needed to be with Dad. He listened."
I’m shaking from fury rather than the cold, and I want to scream and cry to make my sister, of all people, understand the truth.
Journey twists her head, peering in my direction, but past me out the window. With a squint, she points across the street. "Ace is in the coffee shop. Go talk to him. Go tell him what you’re feeling and clarify things; your grief isn’t playing a part in your decision."
"The last thing I want to do is talk to him," I grunt.
"He’s in a public setting. It’s not the worst situation, and I will wait here until you are ready to leave."
I run my hands down the side of my face, feeling the heat burn from my cheeks into my cold palms. "You wouldn’t sell your share of the business to him, would you?" I need to know for my sanity.
Journey’s lip snarls. "I’m not a moron, Mel. Unless you two are married, I wouldn’t consider something so ridiculous. Honestly, even if you were to marry him, I’m still not sure I’d consider something so ridiculous. Neither of you knows a damn thing about bourbon."
Hearing her say this, gives me a sense of relief, but the pit in my stomach, knowing I have to go deal with this fallout once again is making me nauseous. "Fine, I will be back in five minutes.”
"Mel, he needs actual closure. Don’t be a dick."
Me, a dick? She does not understand what I’ve been dealing with these last few years. This is a consequence of hiding the truth about the reality of my picket fence dream.
I open the Jeep door, look for oncoming cars and jog across the tire-flattened snow. I’m not graceful as I yank a chair out from the table Ace is sitting at, nor am I polite when I tear my snow-covered jacket off and slap it over the side of my chair.
"What do you want?" I ask him.
Ace and his somber look are doing nothing to pull at my heartstrings. I don’t know when my frustration for our relationship has become filled with this much anger and rage, but it has. "I want to make things right," he says, staring me in the eyes, something he has rarely done.
"It’s—"
"Let me talk," he says, calmly, appearing to control his anger. "I knew you weren’t happy with me. I knew you wanted commitment, and children, which is why we moved to the suburbs into a small community filled with happily married couples and their gaggles of children."
"It was four years," I tell him.
"We’re only twenty-three/twenty-four then," he says.
I shrug. Age doesn’t matter to me. We were ready; living together, I was cooking, cleaning, and slaving over him like a 1950s housewife who also has a full-time career. "You never mentioned waiting because of age," I remind him. "Money isn’t an issue for you, obviously." He comes from money, took baths in money, ate from golden forks. Ace wouldn’t have to work a day in his life if he didn’t want to, but he does to keep his stature unquestioned. He wants people to think he earned his inheritance himself. "So, what other excuses are there?"
Ace places his hands down on the table, they’re red and chapped—his skin is in shockfrom the climate change. "I come from a broken family—a family broken because money doesn’t bring people happiness as most think. With marriage comes expectations and separation of assets to protect myself in case of divorce. The thought of going through this, made me realize it would hurt you, and things would never end up in marriage between us, anyway."
I’m staring at him like he has two heads because he has never addressed this concern. "I don’t care about your money. I don’t buy fancy things or go on spending sprees. It’s not how I live, so why would you think I would care about money in such a way?”
He doesn’t have a response, so instead, he shrugs. "I also didn’t want to be those lame people walking down the street at dusk with their kids riding tricycles."
