“If you’re dead set on this, then here are my nonnegotiables: Tell me exactly where you’re going. Keep the dinner SHORT—like thirty minutes max. Don’t drink alcohol, and don’t let him buy you anything. Park where YOU can leave easily, and don’t let him pick you up or drive you. The message is simple: ‘This is over.’ But Tori, I’m telling you—this whole ‘I need to keep him calm’ mindset is what keeps women stuck withmen who won’t take no for an answer. You’re already giving him way more power in this situation than he deserves.”
Tori clicked off Cyrus. He was crossing a line into being bossy. She appreciated the concern, but she could handle Van for ten more days.
The motel she booked was dingy and sad, with damp carpeting that squished under her sandals, a roaring air conditioner that rattled and wheezed, and a view of a parking lot marred with potholes and oil stains. It certainly wasn’t worth several hundred dollars, but it was a few blocks from the beach and right off the main drag in Rehoboth. Tori killed a couple of hours getting lunch and then wandering the aisles of Browseabout Books, running her fingers along the spines of novels she planned to read one day. She bought a novel with a blond woman staring out at the ocean on the cover, a scented candle that smelled of fake vanilla, and an iced coffee.
When it was time for dinner, she walked to the small Italian restaurant. Van practically jumped to his feet when he spotted her. When he leaned in for a kiss, she turned, offering her cheek before sitting down, keeping Cyrus’s advice in mind.
“Where do your friends think you are?” she asked over a shared starter of oysters Rockefeller, the rich butter sauce pooling on the ceramic plate. She was using her professional voice, distant and impersonal. Trying to re-create boundaries between them that they had destroyed over a dozen steamy nights.
“I told them I had to go back to Bethesda.” His eyesnever left her face, studying her as if memorizing her features.
“Are you?” She squirmed, uncomfortable under a gaze that felt like he was trying to consume her with his eyes. “Going back tonight?”
“I thought I would spend the night with you.”
Tori’s fork clattered as it hit the plate. “Van. I told you. It’s over. You’ll be at college soon.” She tried to channel Cyrus’s confidence. “Anyway, what about your mom? You said she tracks you.”
“I turned it off. You can’t just cut me out like this. What did I do?” His voice cracked, and for a moment he looked so young that the anger and fear she had felt this past week at his constant calls were replaced with shame.
“You didn’t do anything. Sometimes things just end even if it’s nobody’s fault.” She reached out and squeezed his hand. She used to ask her ex the same thing when they were married—“What did I do? Tell me what I did wrong and I’ll change.”
“Why did you even come here, then?” He pulled his hand away. “If you’re just going to mess with my head. Look at what you’re wearing.”
She looked down at the white linen strapless top that showed off her tan, the body-hugging skirt that hung low and tight on her hips. Of course she wanted to look attractive; she was human. It wasn’t about him. “I’m wearing clothes.”
“Yeah, right. Why don’t you like me anymore?”
The question should have made her feel sorry for him, should have broken her heart. But she found itslightly repellant. In that moment she saw how she must have looked to her ex those last two years, begging him to see her, to like her, to validate her. The more she asked for his approval, for his love, the further away he drifted, the crueler his treatment became. To her horror, she understood it all in a flash.
They ate in miserable silence. He sulked like a little boy, pushing food around his plate, and she saw how young and unformed he was. She didn’t like the way it made her feel—that she had been attracted to his youth and had used it to buoy her own confidence. She felt like a vampire, stealing the vitality from someone who had so much life ahead of him.
Outside the restaurant after dinner, she tried to say goodbye, but he insisted on walking her home, exactly what Cyrus had warned her against. As they drew nearer to her motel, her body began to tense up. She should have ditched him on the busy street. He wouldn’t have acted out then. Now they were standing outside her motel room door, a dark parking lot devoid of people behind them.
“Let me come in,” he pleaded. “Just for a little while. I need to talk to you.”
“We just had dinner.”
“In private. There are things I can only say when no one else is around.”
“I don’t think so, Van.”
“Why are you being such a bitch?”
The sudden anger shocked her. She took a step back, bumping into the motel room door.
“I have been nothing but nice to you. You thinkyou’re allowed to treat people like this?” He held out his hand. “Give me the key, Tori. I just want to talk to you. In private.”
She shook her head, unable to get a sound out of her mouth. It was like one of those dreams when you open your mouth to scream and nothing comes out. He came close to her now, so near that she couldn’t even turn around and unlock the door if she wanted to.I’ll run for it.She started to duck under his arm, but he grabbed her by her ponytail and yanked her back.
A guttural scream escaped her.
Van clamped a hand on her mouth. “Shhh.”
The door next to theirs opened and out came a scowling man in his late thirties in shorts and no shirt. Van dropped his hand and stepped back. The man was squat, his muscles bulging with veins that immediately made Tori think of steroids.
“What the hell is going on?” He had a thick New Jersey accent. “I got a kid in there who’s trying to sleep.”
His small dark eyes flashed from her to Van and back to her. “Hey, you okay?” he asked her.
