He hangs up without replying.
I hold the phone in both hands and look at the bathroom floor.
The tile is white. Small square tiles, the kind in hotels that have been in business since the seventies, slightly uneven in places. I count them without meaning to. One, two, three—
Something breaks open in my chest.
The sobbing comes before I’m ready for it. It’s ugly and lacks any of the dignity I’ve been holding on to all day. It’s not just one thing—that’s the worst part. It’s everything all at once. All my emotions feel contradictory and impossible to sort out: the grief of losing something I chose, the relief of losing it, the grief over the relief, the guilt of both. The three years of small, suppressed feelings suddenly hit me all at once now that something has shifted, and I don’t know how to bear the weight.
He loves me.
I think he loves me.
I think he loves me in the only way he knows how, and I think his way has been hollowing me out for years. I can’t tell anymore where the love ends and the damage begins.
You couldn’t even do a wedding right.
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes and push, but nothing happens. The tears come anyway. I’m shaking, and I can’t catch my breath.
I don’t hear the door.
I don’t hear the footsteps.
But I feel the hands.
Warm, closing around my wrists, pulling my hands gently but firmly away from my face.
“Piper?” Griffin’s voice sounds raw.
He looks at me for one second and then curses under his breath.
“Fuck.”
He sits down on the bathroom floor.
This man, who has been upright all day while I fell apart in every possible direction, puts his back against the tub and says, “Come here.”
And I do.
I just crawl into the space he’s made. His arms come around me and hold tight. I press my face into his shoulder, and I cry in a way I haven’t cried in years.
I should care that I’m in a towel. I’m aware, somewhere in the back of my functioning brain, that this is something I should be embarrassed about. I think briefly about what conclusion Ezra would come to if he saw this scene.
The thought forms, and I push it out.
I don’t have the energy to care.
I don’t have the energy for anything except this: the solid warmth of Griffin’s shoulder, and his arms around me.
The towel has climbed up my thighs. Before I can, Griffin adjusts it over my legs without a word.
He doesn’t say,It’s okay.
He doesn’t say,You’ll be fine.
He doesn’t say anything.
He just stays.
