In the morning, I will apologize. And then I will do better.
31
SAGE
“I’m sorry.”
Before coffee, before the babies, before anything else, he comes into the kitchen while I’m standing at the counter in his shirt, staring at the sink. I peep over at him and see the earnest look on his handsome face. “What?”
“I made what you were feeling about me last night because I had a moment of insecurity, and that’s mine to manage, not yours. That was wrong of me. I’m sorry.” He says it plainly, no over-explanation. No games.
I slept badly, and the Leigh situation is still sitting in me like a stone, and I have not had coffee yet, and Ronan is standing in the kitchen in his scrubs, holding his mug and looking at me with his steady, direct gaze.
He looks so organized and neat that I feel like a pile of crap in front of him. I know he doesn’t mean to insult me by looking so together right now, but it feels like an attack all the same. How dare he.
Yes, I know I’m being crazy. I don’t much care. So, I shrug. “Okay.”
“Okay, you accept it, or okay, you heard me?”
“Both.” I turn back to the sink. “I know why it happened, Ronan. I understand the fear underneath it. I just needed you to not aim it at me.”
“I know,” he says. “I won’t. Not ever again.” He means it, the same way he always means everything. All the way through, no hedging.
It’s a comfort, but at the same time, it leaves no room for flexibility.
What if he goes back on his word? Will he feel like he betrayed himself or me? What if he never goes back on his word? He never has before with me. Why would he start now?
What if, one day, he comes to me, wanting a throuple, and I’m the one who isn’t ready for it?
I’ve been cheated on in the past, not only by Connor. I’ve been lied to by friends, though not at this scale. Each time, it left me feeling unsteady or like I wasn’t enough.
This is the colossal version of that feeling. Something that is trying to swallow me whole. I’m not sure how to not let it, and right now, I’m smelling betrayal everywhere.
Even just the potential for it from Ronan is enough to set me on edge. He’s never given me a reason to doubt him, but Leigh has given me a reason to doubt everyone and everything. I don’t want to. But I don’t know how to stop.
So, I make coffee and hand him one, and we stand at the counter and drink our coffee in the morning quiet, and that’s it. Done. We simply move on, together, into the day.
It feels very grown-up to have a fight and to let it go.
Except, I don’t know if I can. At least, not on the inside.
I think about that, later, when the babies are down for their morning nap, and I’m sitting at the desk in the study looking at the thing that’s been in the back of my mind lately. But my thoughts aren’t on the college curriculum page.
It’s the thing I didn’t have before. Not the absence of conflict, because conflict is inevitable and I’ve always known that, but this. The ability to have the difficult moment and then move through it cleanly, without residue, without the next three days spent managing the fallout.
Connor and I had conflict like sediment. It accumulated. By the end, we were wading through it and couldn’t remember the original shape of the floor. I’d lost track of the reasons we were together long before we broke up.
I’m not sure what it means for Ronan and me. We have big differences between us, and this is only the first time one has been brought up at the wrong time. The age thing, obviously. But there are others. The wealth gap, for instance.
His legacy dwarfs mine, and his daughters… I adore Myrna and Orla, but they’re so accomplished compared to me. His family founded and owns Callahan Labs.
The legacy thing might be the biggest one of all, because it’s the most flexible. I can’t change our ages, and I wouldn’t want to. The wealth thing—he was born into it, on top of making his ownmoney, because that’s how it grows. You start with a pile of cash and keep growing it. I was not born with a pile of cash, so it’s hard to grow something from nothing.
But a legacy is based on your accomplishments, and that I can change. If I try. But if I try, will that upset the apple cart? Will Ronan be put off by it, or will he be glad that I’m trying to improve myself?
Do I want to be with someone who doesn’t want me to improve?
It all adds up to a situation that I don’t know we can navigate. Definitely not like this, if we’re going to get into fights all willy-nilly.
