by Abby Jimenez
I wanted to put out the stupid romantic candle flickering between us. I grabbed the glass votive and dumped my water into it, and Tyler wrinkled his forehead at me like I’d gone insane.
“What do you want from me?” I asked. “Closure? Forgiveness?” I picked up the sloshing votive and moved it next to the salt and pepper shakers.
His gorgeous green eyes canvassed my face. “Do you remember the day we met?”
I scoffed. “Of course. You were so lame. How could I forget?”
He smiled. “You’d convinced the piano player in that bar to let you play. It was incredible. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”
The corner of my lip twitched. It was the last time I’d played. Two years ago.
I had a booth at a pet trade show in Orange County, and I was staying the night alone in a hotel. I had a few drinks in me, and nobody there knew me. The notes had soared from my fingers, and I saw him there across the room, under a light at a cocktail table like a scene from a movie.
Everything around him had blurred.
He continued. “I asked you your name, and then I wrote it in calligraphy on a napkin. And you laughed at me and asked me if that ever actually worked on anyone.” He smirked a little. “It did, you know. It worked on every girl before you.”
This made me smile, and I felt myself soften. “You were so well dressed I thought for sure you were gay.”
He laughed, his eyes distant like he was pulling up a memory. “After you gave me a hard time for my stupid pickup tactic, I tried to buy you a drink. You said all you wanted was a new napkin. So I got you one, and I folded it into an origami swan. That really pissed you off.”
I snorted. The damn origami swan. I still had it, though I’d never admit it. “I was pretty salty that day. I had no patience for desperate acts of origami.”
He chuckled. “You told me if I could beat you at thumb war I could have your number.”
Yeah. I hadn’t seen that win coming. I’d never been bested. He had surprisingly agile thumbs.
I remembered how my heart had fluttered when our hands had touched. I’d been immediately attracted to him. The chemistry was instantaneous.
He shook his head. “I’d never met a woman like you before. You told me to go to hell and made me look forward to the trip.”
He scooted his chair around so he was sitting catty-corner to me. Our knees touched, and a small thrill ran through me.
How close I had come to living with this man. To sharing my life with him. It could have been him sleeping in the bed next to me instead of Josh, my cuddly teddy bear.
Tyler’s piercing eyes seemed to reach into my soul, and I couldn’t look away.
“I couldn’t throw my career away, Kris. I worked too hard to get to where I am. They dangled an opportunity in front of me, I panicked, and I did something stupid, and I’ve regretted it every day since.”
He let out a shaky breath. “The morning after I left you that message, I woke up and I felt like I’d buried myself alive. I tried to call you right away and…” He shook his head. “This silence has been like a siege. I’ve been so desperate to get to you I almost went AWOL. You have no idea how hard it’s been. I’ve been out of my damn mind.”
He reached for my hand again. His expression was so raw I thought it might break him if I jerked away, so I reluctantly let him take it. His touch sent an unexpected jolt through me. A shiver of memory.
He looked down at our hands as he threaded his fingers in mine. My heart began to pound.
I remember you.
Tyler came flooding back to me like his touch broke a forget spell.
I knew this man. I knew the way he smelled and tasted. I could recognize his moods in a single word. I remembered the look in his eyes when we made love and the smile on his face in the morning when we’d lay in bed talking, sharing a pillow. I recalled the pain of kissing him goodbye at the airport and the emptiness when he left.
I remember.
He looked at our hands like it hurt him to touch me. His eyes moved back up to mine. “It’s been a sucking void, Kris. Like some black hole that keeps getting wider and wider. You’re the thing that I look forward to. The reprieve in the middle of whatever bullshit I’m dealing with. I have conversations with you in my head. I store things up to tell you. For the last two years, I’ve been on a countdown of nothing but you, living my life in the days between our talks and my leave.”
He paused and studied my face. He was painted in regret and sadness.
“I messed up,” he breathed. “I should have never done it. I should have just come home.”
I let out a long breath. “And then you would have just resented me.”
Fuck, was there no scenario in which a man could just be with me without having to give up on the one thing he wants for himself?
At the rate I was going, the only way I’d end up with someone for the rest of my life was if I choked on some queso and died on a first date.
Our food came, and we ate in silence. I stared at my plate, and he stared at me. When the dishes were cleared, my anger had officially run out. I replaced it with guilt.
“Tyler…”
He looked at me, his eyes hopeful at the change in my tone.
“I am in love with him. I think I’ve been in love with him from the day I met him.”
I didn’t see the need to lie to him. If he was going to be tortured over his choice, I didn’t want him seeing me with rose-colored glasses.
He wiped a hand down his mouth and sat back in his chair, his fist clenched on the top of the table. “I figured,” he said finally, his voice low.
I wondered how he knew. What about me had given it away?
Maybe seeing Josh had given it away.
“Are you with him?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
He looked away from me. “Then he’s a fucking idiot,” he said, his eyes glassy.
“It’s not his choice. It’s mine. And I would be with him if I could.”
He stared wearily at the bread basket. “But you don’t love me?” His eyes went back to mine.
I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I think a part of me was with you because you weren’t really real, you know? You weren’t here to deal with my shitty periods and get sexually frustrated like the boyfriends before you. You didn’t want kids, so my issues didn’t matter to you. Mom loved you. You were easy. And then we decided to make it real, and I was just so freaked out that you were coming home. I was scared to live with you and make that kind of commitment. But then when I saw you today, I…”
He hung on my words.
I let out a breath. “I saw you and I wondered why I was scared. I think I would have fallen right back in love with you the second you came home. But you never did.”
And I needed you to. Because you were the only thing keeping me from throwing myself into the flames.
He squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, they were full of hurt. “And what about him?”
I shrugged. “What about him? I can’t be with him. Ever. He wants kids. So that’s the end of that.”
He shook his head. “This is my fault,” he said quietly. “All of it. I knew something was there with you two. I could feel it. And I fucking reenlisted anyway.” He looked at me, the anguish etched deep in his forehead. “I did this. I practically handed you to him. I was so stupid.”
“You’re not wrong,” I mumbled.
I wondered what would have happened differently if Tyler had just come home. If he would have moved in. Been there. Reminded me, like I was reminded now.
But deep inside, I knew Tyler never stood a chance against Josh. Josh would have hovered on the edges of any happiness I could have ever found with Tyler.
Josh would hover on the edges of my everything for the rest of my life, I suspected.
So I might as well get used to it.
Tyler paid the check and as we got up to go, he looked at me. “I want to take you some
where.”
He brought me to a hotel right off the beach. I thought we were going up to the roof—I’d seen a sign for a rooftop bar. But we got off on a guest room floor. When he pulled out a key, I realized he was taking me back to his room.
“Tyler—”
“Just…please, Kris. Just for a few minutes.”
He opened the door into a sprawling space. An enormous panoramic window looked out over the ocean. He led me with a hand on my lower back into the room, and I realized it wasn’t a room at all. It was a presidential suite.
A dining room table for eight sat to the left with a fresh flower arrangement on it bigger than I was. A spiral staircase led up to a loft with a library in it overlooking a gourmet kitchen.
A sleek black piano with flickering candles, two champagne glasses, and rose petals on top of it sat by the open balcony door. Champagne nestled in shifting ice next to the piano bench.
He’d obviously had something romantic planned for us before I’d made it clear we weren’t getting back together and I’d dropped the news about Josh on him.
The day hadn’t gone the way he’d hoped.
It hadn’t gone the way I’d hoped either.
“I wasn’t sure if I should bring you here,” he said. “I wasn’t sure you even wanted to see me. It took me a while to find one that had a piano.” He looked at me, his green eyes searching. “I was hoping you’d play for me. Like the day we met.”
I looked back at the piano. I didn’t want to reenact the day we met. I didn’t want to perform for him or play these games.
What I wanted was to go home. I wanted to be with Josh.
We stood there in silence, the distant sound of the ocean crashing through the open balcony door.
He put a hand to my arm. “Kris?” He tipped his head to catch my eyes. “Will you play for me? Please? One last time?”
One last time.
So this was it. Our goodbye.
This was how it started, and this was how it would come to an end. Me, sitting on a piano bench while he watched me play. It was a fitting finale. I was glad we had it. Glad that he’d come and we’d said the things we needed to say. It was better this way.
I looked at him a moment. “All right, Tyler. One last time.”
I took a seat, placing my fingers on the keys. A cool, salty ocean breeze rolled through the drapes, and I drew it deep into my lungs and began.
My mind disappeared into itself. I didn’t feel Tyler sit next to me, and I couldn’t tell you what music my fingers chose, or how long I played. Fifteen years of muscle memory made all the decisions.
When it ended, it felt like coming out of a dream. I put my hands in my lap and found Tyler sitting next to me, smiling gently, his eyes teary.
Then a hand came up under my jaw, and he was kissing me.
It was soft and careful, a closed-mouthed exploration. But it drew me up into him like a warm breeze lifting a kite. My arms found their way around his neck, and the memory of the shape of his mouth and the feel of his lips filled in the places that used to hold question marks and dark corners.
Yes, I remembered him. I remembered us.
But he wasn’t Josh.
The scruff of his beard felt wrong. He was too tall. And while my heart pounded, it didn’t reach out for him.
Maybe once, this would have been enough. I might have even mistaken this feeling for love.
But now I knew better.
He pulled away, a hand still cupping my cheek, and I looked at him, despair pouring over me.
This is as good as it will ever be.
If Tyler couldn’t eclipse Josh, nobody could. And it made me start to cry because the whole fucking thing was completely and utterly hopeless.
His thumb moved along my jaw, and his eyes blinked back tears. He probably thought I was moved by the kiss. I guess I was. But not in his direction.
“I love you, Kris. I’m always going to love you,” he whispered. “Please forgive me.”
I looked away from him, wiping a tear from my cheek. “I can forgive you if you can forgive me back.”
He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pressed his cheek to the side of my head.
Our embrace was full of loss and regrets and what-ifs.
Tyler was a version of my life. A path I could have taken. But now I was so far off course I didn’t even know where I was going anymore. All I knew was I was headed for a dead end.
And when I got there, I’d be alone.
“Kristen, have you ever heard of the red thread of fate?” Tyler said over me.
“No.” I sniffled.
He turned me until I sat facing him.
“I’ve been studying Mandarin,” he said, speaking to my eyes. “Learning a lot about the Chinese culture. And there was a story I read that really resonated with me.”
He reached out and tenderly wiped a tear off my cheek with his thumb. “In Chinese legend, two lovers are connected by an invisible red thread around their pinky fingers. The two people connected by the red thread are destined lovers from birth, regardless of place, time, or circumstances. The cord might stretch or tangle, but it can never break.”
His eyes moved back and forth between mine.
“You are on the other end of my thread, Kris. No matter how far apart we are, you’re tied to me. I stretched us and I tangled us and I’m sorry. But I didn’t break us, Kris. We’re still connected.”
He paused. That pause that he always did on the phone, the one that told me he was about to tell me the good part.
Then he pulled a tiny, black velvet box from his pocket and opened the lid.
My heart stopped dead. Oh my God.
“Marry me.”
TWENTY-THREE
Josh
I finished the last order Kristen had for me, but I stayed. I wanted to be there when she got home.
I wanted to see that she did come home.
The waiting was physically painful. My chest hurt like a bear trap was clamped over my heart. My mind ran wild. Where were they? At a restaurant talking? Or at a hotel, in his bed, making up?
No. She wouldn’t. We’d just been together last night. She wouldn’t, right?
Fuck, even the thought of her letting him hold her hand sent me into a meltdown.
He was here to get back with her—I had no doubt in my mind. The only thing I didn’t know was what she was going to do about it.
Watching her leave fucking killed me.
But I had no right to her at all. I didn’t even have the right to be upset. This was the guy—the one she’d been heartbroken over for the last month.
He was the guy, and I was no one.
I paced the garage. I paced the house. She was always home when I was there and the vacancy inside made my anxiety worse, reinforced the wrongness of it all. So I went back outside where at least I wasn’t looking at her empty couch.
My stomach grumbled, but I couldn’t eat. Even Stuntman Mike was worked up. He kept crying and looking at the driveway, following me around my workstation like he’d witnessed her kidnapping and was pissed I hadn’t done anything to stop it. Finally I just put him in his satchel and carried him around with me.
6:00.
7:00.
8:00.
There was only so late I could stay before it became obvious I’d been waiting for her. I’d never worked past 9:00 p.m. before. But if I left and just went home, I’d never know when she came back, or how she came back. Happy? Sad? Tomorrow, wearing the same clothes?
And what if he didn’t just drop her off? What if he came back to stay the night? I bet the fucker would love to rub that shit in my face. He’d probably do a goddamn victory lap.
Every car that drove by made my heart pound and head jerk up.
Maybe I should leave. I didn’t know if I could handle seeing them as a couple. I told myself if she wasn’t back by 9:00, I would go. Because the later it got, the more likely it was they were staying the night together—here or elsewhere. And either w
ay it was better if I didn’t know about it.
Finally, at 8:17, a maroon Nissan pulled into the driveway.
She came back in an Uber.
Alone.
My relief was a thousand-pound weight off my chest. I could finally breathe again.
Three hours. They could have just been in a restaurant. The drive there, the drive back—that easily could have been one hour of the three. She didn’t stay the night with him. And after everything, she only gave him a few hours and didn’t let him come back with her? Maybe this was a good sign.
I took off the satchel—I’d rather die than let her see me use her dog purse—and made it look like I was busy laying carpet on the already finished steps and not sitting in the garage waiting for her to come home like a lovesick puppy dog.
She got out of the car and came in through the garage, holding her sweater in her hand, dragging the sleeve along the driveway. Stuntman Mike ran to meet her, bouncing and crying at her feet, but she didn’t reach down to pick him up.
“Hey,” I said casually as she approached. “I’m just finishing up here.”
She stopped in front of me and studied me wordlessly. I tried to figure out what happened from the way she looked.
She hadn’t gotten dressed up to go out with him. That was good. But her lipstick was gone. Was that because they ate? Or because they’d been kissing? Had they fought the whole time? Is that why her shoulders were slumped? Her eyes were red. A little mascara smeared, like she’d been crying.
“Josh? Do you want to go sing karaoke with me?”
I blinked at her. “Karaoke?”
She sniffed, looking at me tiredly. “I feel a spree coming on. It’s either a cleaning spree or a singing spree. Singing might be healthier.”
I grinned at her. “Yeah. Sounds like fun.”
She smiled weakly at me. “Okay. And you have to feed me. Like, soon.”
I raised an eyebrow. “He didn’t feed you?” She hadn’t eaten before they left. They’d taken off over three hours ago. Damn, that fucker played with fire.