When we make it to Bennett’s car, he opens the door for me, but I don’t take the hand that he offers.
He gets in and fat, slow raindrops begin to hit like pellets against the windshield the moment he closes the driver’s side door.
“What you’ve done over the last few years with other people is none of my business.”
He turns to watch me, but I hold my head straight, watching the wet leaves blow off the trees overhead.
“Clover, I’ve rehearsed this apology in my mind over and over again since that night.” He sighs, and from the corner of my vision, I can see his hands twisting his steering wheel. “And I saw that look on your face again just now. That—that look of embarrassment. Of being caught off guard. And it took me back to that night all over again. I’ve wanted to say I’m sorry since the moment I saw you at the diner, but the words I managed to string together in my head were never right or big or—god, I was such a fucking awful human. Sometimes, I still am.”
I turn to him now, but I don’t know what to say. I had resigned myself to the fact that the whole ordeal would live in the past and we would dance around it until the end of the semester when we would get a divorce. After that, maybe we would be polite. Wave to each other from across campus. And we’d never have to confront the hulking shadow of our past.
“I need you to know, Clover, that everything I said to you—everything I shared with you—as… as Josh, was real. I meant it all.”
My heart thunders in my chest as I remember the heaviest words of all. The words that have haunted me since that summer.
My cheeks are wet and I’m crying without even realizing it. “Why did you try to meet me?” I ask, my voice cracking.
He shakes his head. “That was Val. I passed out at a party while you were in Texas and she got into my phone and… she’s a vicious bitch, okay? But all of this? It was always my fault.”
“You had a whole week to warn me.”
He looks down at his hands, now in his lap, fingers twisting, ashe searches for what he wants to say. “I was a coward. I kept holding out hope that something would work out. That I would find a time alone with you to confess and that I could make you understand.” He pauses for a long moment. “I’m just so fucking sorry. I have regretted it every day since.”
My chest heaves and I have to breathe through the threat of sobs burning in my chest. “I forgive you,” I tell him. “I think I did the moment you showed up at the courthouse. But I’m still upset with you. I wish you would have told me about last year.”
It’s unfair. I know that in every possible way. But I’m jealous and angry for always feeling like I’m on the outside when it comes to him.
His head rolls back against his seat and no tears fall, but his lashes are wet as they kiss the thin skin under his eyes.
“Can you take me home, please?” I am exhausted on every possible level, and the only thing I want is to lay my head down and close my eyes.
He lifts a hand, fingers flinching as he reaches closer to me, and then pulls away. “I can do that,” he says. “I can do that.”
CHAPTER 26
Clover
On Monday night at the library, I am exiled to the top floor where the only lights are motion activated and where books go to die.
I step off the elevator with an empty cart and a massive list of call numbers for books that need to be pulled from the shelves because they are too old, no longer relevant, or a combination of both. The bold font at the top of the page reads:BOOKS TO WEED.
Things with Bennett aren’t just magically better. I feel less anxious around him, but we are not suddenly fixed. It’s not our past that I feel myself holding on to. In fact, forgiving him out loud was easier than I thought. But I can’t stop thinking about every girl before me and how they compare. Were they thinner? Wealthier? Taller?
I know it’s unreasonable. He doesn’t owe me the details of his past. The fact that both of us have agreed not to get involved with other people right now is a courtesy more than anything. But I feel caught off guard and gullible.
The lights above flicker on as I push the cart down an aisle,looking for some local history texts. My finger passes over each label as I scan for call numbers starting with nine four one.
I make it through three rows of shelves before my brain is circling the drain again. I don’t want to feel this way. My eyes burn with the threat of tears. Without fully meaning to, I spent the last three years keeping careful boundaries around myself and only ever feeling anything in small, rationed measures. Now, I don’t know what to do with all this unfiltered, raw emotion.
The elevator on the other side of the floor chimes as the door opens. The lights in the ceiling tiles come to life as someone walks up the neighboring row.
My heart hiccups in my chest.Please don’t be a murderer.
“Clover?”
He’s here.
I have to remind myself that I am still upset.
