There was a pause, and I could picture her perfectly. Hair done even on a day off. Phone angled away from her face, probably pacing through her place in socks that cost more than my first hockey stick. Beautiful. Annoyed. Not wrong.
“We need to talk about Aspen,” she said.
My stomach sank.
Aspen had become this thing between us. Not a trip. A symbol with a rental house and curated snow pictures and couples content she kept pretending wasn’t couples content. She wanted a weekend away. She wanted us looking normal. She wanted a conversation I had been dodging because every possible answer made me feel like the worst version of myself.
“Yeah,” I said. “We do.”
“Okay. So talk.”
I stared at the cereal going soggy. “Today’s not great.”
She laughed, but there wasn’t humor in it. “It’s your off day.”
“I know, but I’m fried.”
“You’re always fried lately.”
That landed because it was true.
I put the bowl down. Milk sloshed over the side and onto my counter. I grabbed a paper towel, wiped it badly, missed half of it.
“I’m not trying to avoid you,” I said.
“You are avoiding me.”
I leaned my hip against the counter and pressed my fingers into my forehead. “I don’t mean to.”
“That doesn’t make it feel better.”
“No. I know.”
She was quiet for a second. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “Did I do something?”
Fuck.
“No,” I said too fast. “No, Ness. You didn’t.”
“Then what is this?”
I didn’t answer.
Because the answer was not a sentence I could give her while standing in my kitchen with milk drying on my counter and Declan’s last text still sitting in my phone like a hand on the back of my neck.
“I’m trying to figure some stuff out,” I said, which was cowardly and vague and sounded exactly like something I would hate if someone said it to me.
“About us?”
My throat tightened. “Yeah.”
Another silence.
“I deserve more than you disappearing in slow motion,” she said.
She did. That was the part that made it unbearable.
“I know.”
