Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 69858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“Yeah.” I smile a little. “Mary told me. I finally met your mother, and she dropped a bit of a bombshell.”
Thomas turns towards me. “Mac—”
“No, you said I get my say,” I say hurriedly, so I can get this out. “I wish you wouldn’t have done that; quit for me. Or maybe I just wish I’d never learned about it, because now that I know . . .”
I turn to face him too, our knees bumping, his gaze level, if a bit pained.
“You’ve been managing this whole thing since the very beginning, haven’t you? I was the project, and you had a plan from the beginning. Everything that I thought was spontaneous, everything I thought was us ‘winging it,’ even your speech about how we could take this one day at a time, and that we don’t have to be exclusive, that we don’t have to put a label on it. That was crafted so that I wouldn’t freak out, wasn’t it? You were just corralling me into the relationship you wanted, but doing it so silly, under disguise, that I wouldn’t know until I was trapped in it, right?”
He closes his eyes. “When you put it that way, it sounds so manipulative.”
“Alright.” I keep my voice light, because I truly don’t want to hurt him. “Put it in a different way.”
He opens his eyes. “I never wanted to trap you, Mac. Never. But did I hope that someday, you’d . . .” He blows out a breath. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t start out with a plan, as you put it. That night on your couch, I wanted to kiss you. I wanted to do a hell of a lot more than kiss you. But there was Anna, who I was sort of seeing, and I’m not a cheater, I’ll never be a cheater. And then there was the job thing. And . . . do I at least get a little credit for acting out of character?” He smiles. “I mean, I quit my job because I wanted to kiss a woman. It’s the most un-me thing I’ve ever done.”
It’s a little romantic. A lot romantic. I don’t want romance.
“Why didn’t you just tell me that? So I could make my own decisions.”
“I meant to! It was the plan. That day I was outside the office we shared. I couldn’t come in, because I didn’t have a security badge, and I had this . . .” He laughs, and rubs a hand over his face. “I was going to kiss you right there in the street, romantic-comedy style. But I’m not good with emotions, or . . . any of it, and before I could get the words out, you were going on about rekindling things with Crotch V.”
It’s my turn to groan.
“So, I’m standing there,” he continues, “and I don’t know, I guess I just felt furious. I’d given up a job I didn’t want, and that didn’t matter so much, but I’d lost my chance with the woman I did want, and . . . I was pissed, Mac.”
He laughs, quietly. “I was so pissed. At myself, at you, definitely at V-Cut. When Jon asked if I could give you a ride to Vermont, I said yes because he’s my brother, and it was his weekend, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want anything to do with you, you turned my life upside down. You have done from that very first day at the bar, and I was over it, over you . . .”
I pull my coat a little closer around my chin and look down at the ground again.
“But you’re everywhere, Mac. Not just everywhere I turn, though that’s been true, but you got everywhere here.” He puts his hand on his chest. “And no matter how hard I tried to tell myself that I could let you go when you wanted, I also knew that I’d hate myself if I didn’t at least try to make you feel what I felt.”
The space that follows his statement feels huge and empty and massive, and I know—I know that if I asked him what he felt, he’d tell me, just like I know that when he tells me, I’ll crack under the pressure of not knowing what to do with it.
Of knowing I’ll hurt him.
“My mom told me that the kindest thing we can do for someone is to let them go before things turn ugly,” I say, forcing myself to meet his eyes. “This is me, doing that. We can’t afford to explode, Thomas. Implode, maybe. But this can’t go down in a fiery ‘go to hell’ shitstorm. Collette is like a sister to me, and Jon is your brother. Even if we weren’t always going to be a part of each other’s lives through them, there’s that whole fated-to-bump-into-each-other thing.”