And I realize something: I never felt this way with Matt. I never felt content and heartbroken and complete with him. I never felt seen. He was never so deep in my blood that I felt his sadness and his joy as if it was my own, as if it mattered more than my own.
There wasn’t a sign from Matt because he was never right for me in the first place.
And Hayes is, but I’ve discovered it too late.
We’re quiet on the way to the airport, his hand tight around mine. He pulls up to the curb and flags down a porter to help with my bags.
It’s time to say goodbye, and I’m not ready for it.
My mouth opens but Hayes pulls me toward him instead, his hands framing my face. He kisses me hard, as if he can squeeze in a lifetime’s worth of kisses into a single moment. “Tell me what you want,” he says.
My throat swells. I want him. I want a life with him here. But even if he agrees to it now, over the course of the next year he’d wind up breaking my heart.
“Nothing. There’s no point. It isn’t going to happen.”
He stiffens, and the color seems to leech from his skin. A part of me wants to take it back, but we’re best off being honest about this. I can’t ask him to wait a year for me. It wouldn’t be fair, and eventually it would feel like one more failure to him, one more way he convinces himself Ella was right when it was never reasonable in the first place.
I go on my tiptoes and kiss his cheek one last time, memorizing the delicate scrape of his unshaved jaw, the smell of his soap, the feel of his skin. “Goodbye. And thank you. I’ve loved every minute of this.”
And then I turn and leave California, and the thing I loved here most, behind.
35
When Matt and I lived in New York City, I used to dream of home, awake and asleep. I dreamed of heat lightning on summer nights, and the way the sky would turn still and yellow before tornadoes rolled in. I dreamed of huge snowfalls in winter, balmy air rolling in through my windows in late spring. Even those fucking box elder beetles that came through every crevice of the house in the summer...I missed them too.
Now I’m back, and it’s no longer home. Everything has remained the same—same time-worn carpets and scratched oak table, same beaten-up couch in the family room—but there’s no meaning attached to any of it.
There isn’t a ton to do, other than taking my mother to see an attorney and getting the house ready for Charlotte’s return, yet I feel overwhelmed. So, I ignore Jonathan’s texts, and Drew’s. I avoid the calls—from old friends who’ve heard I’m home, from Fairfield, claiming there’s a billing issue, from my agent, wanting those last few chapters of a book I can’t seem to finish. Most of all, I don’t read the gossip blogs. Not a single one of them.
Hayes has texted a few times, asking how it’s going. Nothing personal. Nothing indicating we are anything other than distant friends. From the sound of it, his life has gone on as it was. I guess that’s for the best, even if I can’t claim the same.
Everyone—from neighbors to cashiers to the librarian—asks me if it’s good to be back. I have to lie, because I can’t tell anyone that home, for me, is no longer a place. It’s the sound of Hayes’s laugh, and the sight of him brushing his hair out of his eyes, or reluctantly drinking a smoothie he hates solely because I made it for him. It’s the way he struggles not to smile when I imitate his accent, his singular willingness to always say the worst possible thing.
Home is Hayes, and I am going to miss him every minute of the day for a long, long time.
I lie in bed on the morning of my mother’s first AA meeting—her lawyer’s suggestion, though it’s me she seems to resent for it—wishing I could just remain here. Eventually, I force myself to get up, to shower and take out the trash and collect the paper and feed the cat. I even make my mother a smoothie, the way I once did for Hayes.
“What’s this?” she asks, pushing it away before I’ve even answered.
“It’s good for you,” I reply. “Six kinds of vegetables. It’ll help your leg heal.”
Her eyes narrow. “Don’t patronize me.”
I roll my eyes and walk away. It’s only when I’m out of sight that I feel tears come. Hayes had every reason to refuse the smoothies, and the vitamins, and the vacation. Instead, he took every single thing I was willing to give. Who’s going to make sure he’s okay if I’m not there? Who’s going to force him to take a day off? Who’s going to love him with her entire heart, the way he deserves to be loved?
I grab my phone. It would be pointless, and embarrassing, to ask him these questions. To show all my pathetic cards when nothing can come of it.
So, I ask him in my own Tali way—caustically and with little emotion.
Me: The olives in your martini don’t count as vegetables. Just wanted to mention before you revert to your old ways.
I wait breathlessly for his response, watching those three dots swirl as he types.
And then it comes. A single line that fills me and destroys me at once.
I miss you.
Tears drip down my face as I stare at those words. And they continue to fall as I sit, helpless, wanting to say a thousand things in response. I want to tell him I love him, that I wish I’d never left, that I’d give anything to be back there.
I want to ask if there’s any chance he’d be willing to wait for me, but I’m not brave enough.
Instead, I just write I miss you too.
I see the three dots again. They disappear and come back. They disappear entirely, and I sit with my head to my knees on the bedroom floor and weep like a kid.
I really wanted him to say something, anything, more. But he can’t be here, and I can’t be there, so what else was there to say?
At least I know how the story ends.
36
I’m not surprised when my agent calls to express her displeasure with the book. While it was certainly realistic to have Aisling leave Julian behind at the wall, with everything they felt unspoken, people aren’t paying good money for realism. Realism and sad endings are something most of us get for free.
“It’s not going to fly, Tali,” she says. “I’m not saying it’s bad. But you sold them a romance, and a story that doesn’t have a happy ending isn’t a romance.”
“The Hunger Games and Divergent don’t have especially happy endings. They seemed to do okay.”
“They had romances but they weren’t solely romances. Unless you want to have Aisling actually overthrow the kingdom, this book is.”
I don’t really know what to do without rewriting everything. Aisling and Julian can’t end up together: she needs to be home with her brother—it was the whole point of the book—and it would be unrealistic to have Julian come through the wall to her. He’s fae royalty. What would he do among humans—farm?
I tell her I’ll think about it some more.
But the only conclusions I can think of at this particular moment are bittersweet at best.
Sam returns from his trip to California and comes out to see me the night before Charlotte is released. We sit together on the front porch, talking about his trip and potential endings for the book my agent won’t hate.
“Maybe there can be someone back home for Aisling,” Sam says. “Someone less flashy than Ewan or Julian, and it took the adventure in Edinad for her to see it.” His hand covers mine, leaving no doubt what he’s really talking about. It’s sweet, and if I were going to move on with anyone, it would be him, but I’m not ready for there to be an us yet.
“I started dating Hayes,” I say. “A few weeks ago. I just want to be honest with you. It’s not going to work out with him but I’m...not in a good place right now. It’s made coming home a lot harder than I expected.” I know the day will come when we will sit on this porch and I’ll feel something other than sadness, because humans are made to bounce back. If I can recover from my father’s death, I can recover from Hayes too. But it’s going to be a while.
Sam gives a short, unhappy laugh. “I can’t say I
’m surprised. He was jealous any time you even looked at someone other than him. But you must realize that guy isn’t waiting around for you out there. He’s not the type.”
I rub at my chest, at the ache his words create. I’m not sure why they hit me so hard, given it’s what I’ve been telling myself all along too. But even after Sam leaves, I can’t seem to get them out of my head. You must realize that guy isn’t waiting around for you. It’s the reason I haven’t been returning Jonathan’s calls, why I’ve shut down in so many ways: because I was scared the truth would break me. But dreading the truth is hurting nearly as bad.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Jonathan says when he answers.
“I just knew how busy you must be.” I fiddle with the hem of my T-shirt. “And I felt bad leaving the way I did, when you had no one to replace me.”
“I hired someone the day you left,” he says smoothly. “Things are fine. Delia, your replacement, is amazing.”
My stomach falls.
“Delia?” I ask weakly. I’m not ready to hear Hayes is dating if I can’t even stand the thought of a female assistant.
“Super competent. MBA.”
“That fucking figures,” I mumble.
I sink to the floor as I picture her—blonde and beautiful like Ella, good at everything. She comes up with an innovative way to organize his inventory, has better lingerie than I do. Her MBA is, undoubtedly, from Harvard.
“Are you not even going to ask how he is?” Jonathan asks. There’s an edge to his voice I haven’t ever heard directed at me.
“Are you mad?” I ask. “I’m sorry I left the way I did, but you know I had no choice.”
“Yes, I’m mad, and it has nothing to do with the fucking job,” he says. “How could you leave him like that? Without ever telling him how you feel?”
My throat seems to swell, and it’s hard to swallow around the lump there. “Because there was no point. We barely dated. It wouldn’t have been reasonable to ask him to wait, and hearing him say so would break my heart.”
Jonathan snorts. “You have this set up in your head like you’re Little Red Riding Hood and he’s the Big Bad Wolf. Has it ever occurred to you he might be even more terrified to trust someone than you are? I know what Matt did sucked, but can you please look at how different that is from having your fiancée leave you for your father?”
“I didn’t know it was a competition.”
“You’re intentionally missing the point, which is that you’re acting like you’re the only person here who’s broken, or vulnerable, and you’re not.”
The desire to argue with him springs up, reflexively, but my stomach is bottoming out at the same time, because I know he’s right. I didn’t suffer having the rug pulled out from under me the way Hayes did. I was naïve with Matt, but even if I never admitted it at the time, I knew we were having problems.
“You say all this as if Hayes begged me to marry him and I said no,” I whisper. “He didn’t say a thing.”
“That’s not what he told me,” Jonathan counters. “He says he asked point blank what you wanted, and you said you didn’t want anything at all. While moving twenty minutes away from the friend you planned to date.”
My eyes close. It sounds bad, when he puts it like that. Far worse than it sounded in my head at the time. “I was just letting him off the hook,” I argue. “I wasn’t about to ask a guy I’d barely begun sleeping with to wait a year for me.”
“You took the decision out of his hands,” Jonathan replies softly, “and maybe you should consider how much that must have hurt. Because no matter how awful you feel right now, you’re not the one who just got dumped.”
I think back to that moment in the airport, and suddenly realize how wrong I was, how sickeningly wrong, because I’m seeing Hayes’s face clearly for the first time...and I know he was crushed.
Hayes, who trusts no one, trusted me. He opened up to me and took the first risk he’d taken in a long time. And what he heard in response was that I didn’t care enough, that I didn’t trust him enough.
I feel like I’ve been punched in the lung.
“Ask me what the surprise was, Tali,” Jonathan says softly.
My eyes close. “What was it?”
“He bought the house you stayed at in Laguna,” he says. “He bought it for the two of you. His somewhat inept way of telling you what you meant to him, and what he was hoping for.”
I cry for a long time after we end the call, fully realizing how badly I messed up.
Every step of the way with him, I’ve wanted to avoid pain. I’ve been the one to jump and run, to make the poorly timed joke before any exchange felt intimate. But I hurt him in the process of protecting myself, and that’s so much worse.
The point was never whether or not I could trust again, because love isn’t an exchange. It’s not something you hand out only if it can be returned in equal measure. Love is handing your fragile heart to someone else because you want him to have it, no matter what he’ll do in response. You do it because you love him more than you love yourself.
I couldn’t even bring myself to let Aisling, who’s fictional, take that risk. Maybe it’s time both she and I become a little braver than we’ve been.
I pick up my phone. No matter how Hayes feels about me, what matters is that he knows—if it were at all possible—I’d have chosen him.
Hey there, I begin typing, but the tone is too breezy, too conversational.
So I was talking to Jonathan…That doesn’t work either. I can’t soft-shoe my way into this. I need to lay it all on the table.
I told you I didn’t want anything, I type.
Really, it was that I couldn’t stand to hear you tell me no to the things I do want. I don’t expect you to wait for me, so I’m not writing this now asking anything of you. I just want you to know I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone.
And then, before I can change my mind, I hit send.
The message is delivered. He doesn’t have to respond, but if he wants what I do, he simply has to say let’s try. I see those three dots. He’s typing.
Typing more than a simple answer, which isn’t necessarily bad, but isn’t necessarily good.
They disappear again. Return again. And then they disappear entirely. Failing to answer...is still an answer. And it hurts. My stomach is in free fall. My chest aches, exactly as I knew it would. It’s too late.
But I’m still glad he knows.
37
The next morning, I sit next to my mom on the couch for an online meeting with Dr. Shriner to discuss Charlotte’s transition home.
I know I need to focus for my sister’s sake, but it’s hard to hear anything when my head and heart hurt like this. When, every few seconds, I find myself thinking I can’t believe he didn’t write back. Even if it was simply to politely decline, to tell me he didn’t see it working...I really thought he’d leave me with something.
Dr. Shriner is reviewing ways to help Charlotte when she’s struggling. I feel overwhelmed, listening to it—mostly because I suspect it’s all on me. Liddie nods along from Minnesota, and my mom seems focused primarily on throwing out objections as if Dr. Shriner is asking too much of us when nothing matters except what Dr. Shriner’s asking.
“She’s supposed to be applying for college,” my mom says now. “She’s not going to have a lot of time for therapy over the next few months.”
Dr. Shriner, who has remained almost entirely expressionless during the time I’ve known her, stops just short of rolling her eyes. “Therapy needs to be a priority right now,” she says to my mom.
“But college—” my mother begins.
“I’m not even sure Charlotte will be ready to go away for college in a year,” Dr. Shriner says.
My mother sits up straight at this, ready to do battle. “She will definitely be going to college.” I love how she thinks she can pull off the concerned parent routine at this late date. “It’s not like she has to be off in a dorm alone. Tali co
uld get an apartment and live with her there off campus.”
My head jerks toward her, and for a moment, I wonder if I heard what I did. I paid for Charlotte’s time at Fairfield, I’m paying my mom’s mortgage, I gave up my life in LA to take care of her and Charlotte this year and now...she wants more?
She didn’t even ask. She just assumed it would happen, as if I’m some chess piece to move around their board, protecting or attacking when called for.
I wait for someone—Liddie or Dr. Shriner—to object. To say enough is enough. But Dr. Shriner simply looks at me with that placid face of hers and Liddie nods, looking toward me on the computer screen, as if my agreement is a given.
I laugh, and the sound is distinctly unhinged. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I demand.
“What?” my mom asks, turning toward me. “You’ll be fine. You can work anywhere.” Her tone is so dismissive. As if I’m needlessly whining.
“Let Tali take care of it. Let Tali pay,” I reply, my hands pressing tight to my scalp. Hayes was right. I’ve been shouldering all the weight...and I’m officially done. I lost Hayes, and I’m not giving up anything else. “Your only plan for this family going forward appears to be me. Has it ever occurred to you maybe I deserve a life of my own? That I’ve been living in an eight-by-eight room and eating ramen for a year to pay for everything you all need? What have any of you given up?”
My mother and sister are both open-mouthed, undoubtedly preparing their arguments. And I already know what they’ll be: It’s easier for you. You don’t have a child, you can work anywhere, you’ll figure it out. And all that may be true, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean I should have to do everything.
“Have you expressed these feelings to everyone before?” asks Dr. Shriner.
“I didn’t think I had to!” I cry. “I thought maybe they already knew I’m a human being with wants and needs of my own, but apparently that has to be pointed out. And I also thought things would eventually sort themselves out. But they don’t seem to be.”
A Deal With The Devil: A Steamy Enemies-to-Lovers Romance Page 24