“You’re too hard on yourself,” I said.
Smith sighed and dropped his head against the headboard. Shifting off of him, I situated myself with my shoulder beside his. We both moved to lean against the other, our heads bumping together.
“I learned it from him,” Smith said. “I wouldn’t have any of the things I have if it wasn’t for Marshall.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Maybe some.”
“Agree to disagree,” I told him.
“How do you see me so differently than I see myself?”
I was grateful we were looking at the wall and not each other. This didn’t feel like a conversation we could have face to face, but still was something that needed to be put into the open.
“Because I don’t know you from before you knew me,” I said. “All I know of you is that you’re handsome and you’re talented and you’re successful and you’re very brave.”
“I don’t feel brave,” he muttered. “Not in the way you are.”
I snorted, unable to restrain the sound in my throat. “How am I brave?”
“Your husband died.” Smith crossed his legs at the ankle and quickly uncrossed them again, then he rubbed his feet against the sheet like a cricket. “And you didn’t quit.”
“I did quit,” I said. “For a while. I wouldn’t have started again if it wasn’t for Damon.”
“He’s a good friend.”
“The best.”
I needed to text Damon and let him know about Toren. He’d get a kick out of knowing we’d gotten drinks, and he’d be mad I didn’t invite him along, jealous of Smith for getting to share a round. The two of them had always gotten along well enough, and with the change of events, it felt like two versions of my life were colliding into each other. The life from before Smith and the life after. The life with Ev and the one without.
“I just got very stagnant for what felt like a very long time. And when I decided to open the shop and do all of this, it was more a distraction than anything else. If I was busy, that was the same as healing, right?”
“No.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I didn’t realize my life had stalled until I met you, and that’s how I know you’ve not been unfair to Marshall, that you’re a good and strong person on your own, separate from him. You got me living again, and it takes someone very special to do that.”
“You’ll make me cry,” Smith grumbled, rubbing at his eyelashes.
“Not bad tears, though?”
“No,” he agreed. “Not bad.” Smith cleared his throat. “Do you really mean all of that, though?”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
His tongue made a sound in his mouth, a little suction against the top of his mouth like he wasn’t sure it could make words anymore. “No,” he finally said.
“When do you want me to meet your brother?” I asked.
Smith reached for his phone, swiping through a long string of text messages before saying to me, “Tomorrow.”
I took the phone out of his hand and set it back down on the nightstand.
“Tomorrow,” I repeated.
“Is it too soon?”
“Not too soon. What did you have in mind?”
