It was a little unnerving, the way Spencer studied her, tipped her head to one side, those eyes not allowing her to look away. With a glance behind her, Spencer grabbed a chair, pulled it toward her, and sat. “Are you okay?” she asked finally.
“Me? Sure. Of course. Why do you ask?” Rebecca knew her eyes darted a bit, tried to prevent that, but was unsuccessful.
Again with the head tilt. “I know how close you are with Nick. You must have been terrified for him.”
“I was.” Rebecca nodded, cleared her throat. She looked down at her hands, scraped at her thumbnail. “But he’s doing pretty well.”
There was a beat. Another. Finally, Spencer gave a nod, though her expression showed skepticism. “Okay. Good.” Then it was her turn to clear her throat as she reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small black pouch. “Listen, um, I was just goofing around with my stuff the other night and I made this for you.” She held it toward Rebecca.
It was like Rebecca’s arm moved in slow motion and she couldn’t speed it up. Very, very slowly, she reached out and finally felt her fingers brush Spencer’s. A huge lump of…something…had developed in her throat and she worked to swallow it, to clear her airway. “For me?”
Spencer nodded, waved a dismissive hand. “It’s nothing much. Just…an idea that came to me.” She shrugged.
Rebecca tugged the drawstrings open, turned the pouch over, and dumped the contents into her hand. She blinked at it.
It was made of a black leather strap, not thin, but not wide. Small, so a bracelet rather than a necklace. Spaced out evenly were three small silver squares, each with a simple line drawing. One was a person on a bike, one was a person in the yoga pose of downward dog, the third was a person balancing a barbell above their head. It was simple, classy, and absolutely perfect. If Rebecca had seen it in a store, she’d have purchased it for herself. The lump got bigger and she stared for several beats more before raising her eyes to Spencer.
“This…” Rebecca cleared her throat for the tenth time in five minutes. “This is amazing.”
“Well.” Again, Spencer shrugged it off as less than significant, looked away.
“Seriously. Spencer.” Rebecca waited until those blue eyes turned back to her. “Would you put it on me?” she asked quietly.
Spencer’s nod was almost imperceptible as she reached for the bracelet.
Rebecca watched her hands—God, her hands were beautiful—as she opened the clasp and fastened it around Rebecca’s wrist. The fit could not have been more perfect. Not too tight, not too loose. She stared at it, noticed Spencer’s warm hands touching her skin longer than they needed to. Longer than they should have. And suddenly, Nick’s voice was echoing through her head again.
Life is too. Fucking. Short.
“Don’t marry her.” The words were barely a whisper and were out and floating in the air between them before Rebecca even realized she’d spoken them out loud. But they gave her strength and she pulled her gaze from the bracelet that she already loved and looked at Spencer. Her blue eyes were wide, and Rebecca grasped her hands before she could pull them away. She kept her voice soft as she said, “Please, Spencer. Don’t marry her. Not for me. For you. You are an amazing, vibrant, stunningly beautiful woman and you deserve so much better.”
Spencer blinked at her. Blinked again. Too many emotions zipped across her face for Rebecca to identify them all. “How?” she whispered, and it almost seemed like she wasn’t even asking Rebecca, just the world in general. “How could you say that to me now? How?”
In that moment, Rebecca would have happily explained it, would have been glad to have a discussion about why she thought this, why she believed Spencer deserved so much more. But she never got the chance. Spencer stood quickly, as if ejected from her chair, and her eyes darted around the gym as if she’d suddenly forgotten the way out. Then she moved her gaze to Rebecca, directly to Rebecca, held hers, cradled it for a moment as her eyes welled. Rebecca reached for her hand, but Spencer turned and fled before any contact was made.
I had to tell her.
That thought played over and over. She’d had to. Right? It was the right thing to do. It wasn’t Rebecca being selfish, was it? She’d simply needed Spencer to know, needed her to understand what others thought of her. No, that wasn’t it. She’d needed Spencer to know what she thought of her.
Right?
Her gaze stayed glued to the front door, and while a part of her wished for Spencer to come back through, to sit back down and talk to her, she knew that wasn’t happening. With a long sigh, she scanned the front desk area and stopped at Sherry. Standing behind the desk, looking right at her, disappointment clearly etched across her face.
“Shit,” Rebecca muttered.
Chapter Twenty
Spencer was pretty sure she was being punished for her indiscretions. It was the only explanation for why this was all so hard. She’d made a decision. It was the one she was supposed to make. She was certain of it. She had to set her feelings for Rebecca aside…
Wait. Feelings?
She gave her head a hard shake. No. Nope. Not going there. She did not have feelings for Rebecca. She refused to. She was engaged to marry Marti. She’d made a commitment and she needed to honor that. She was a good person.
She was a good person.
She was a good person.
She was a good person.
Wasn’t she?
In the driveway of Marti’s house, Spencer dropped her head forward and rested it on the steering wheel. She felt like she was going crazy, like she was barely holding on to herself, and if one more thing hit her, she was going to spin off into oblivion. Alone. Forever.
Marti was home. Her car was in the driveway, the lights were on in the house, and Spencer realized that her entire very-planned-out schedule for talking to her fiancée had just been stepped up. She’d been waiting for the weekend to have this discussion, but in that moment, Spencer was ready.
“Okay,” she said, to the empty interior of her car. “We’re going to do this now.” With a nod of determination, she pulled on the door handle and got out of her car. She shouldered her gym bag and her purse, looked up at the house, took in a deep, fortifying breath, and headed inside.
Marti was on the couch, her feet on the coffee table and crossed at the ankles. Spencer was surprised she wasn’t on her laptop, since she was almost always on her laptop. The television showed somebody ripping a wall out of a bathroom, and Marti seemed engrossed.
“Hey,” Spencer said, setting her duffel on the floor and her purse on the kitchen counter.
“Hey,” Marti said, not turning around. She held a glass of wine in one hand and Spencer immediately decided she was going to need that. She helped herself to a glass and the open bottle on the counter.
Wine in hand, she went around the couch and sat on it, next to Marti. “Can we talk?” she asked after a large gulp of wine and a moment of steeling herself.
Marti turned to look at her and there was something different in her eyes. Something new. Something that gave Spencer pause. They were a little bloodshot and nearly devoid of mascara. “I think we need to,” she said, her voice quiet, her face shuttered.
Spencer furrowed her brow. “Okay.” She’d had a whole speech, a whole rehearsed monologue that she’d been rolling around. And suddenly, it was gone from her head. Just…gone. The expression on Marti’s face—tired, determined, maybe a tiny bit sad—was not what Spencer had been expecting, and she felt like her world tilted just enough to make her plans slide off the edge.
Marti took in a deep breath, let it out slowly, then sipped her wine. She looked very much like she was gearing up, very much like she did before she practiced her opening argument for a trial. Silent. Pensive. Preparing.
Spencer waited with a growing sense of dread.
“I love you, Spencer,” Marti said, still not looking at her. “I love you very much.”
“I love you, too,” Spencer said, automatically.
Marti did turn to her then, and Spencer was surprised to see her brown eyes filled with tears. “No. You don’t.” Spencer opened her mouth to protest, but Marti held up a hand, stopping any sound. “It’s okay. Spence. It’s okay. I get it.”
Spencer blinked at her.
“We’re not working. We haven’t been for a long time. I know it and I’m sure you know it.” Marti swallowed and her eyes cleared. Spencer knew she was now in the meat of her speech and all emotion had been removed. It was how she operated. “I was hoping we wouldn’t go down this path, but”—she shrugged—“I shouldn’t be surprised, really. There have been many signs along the way, especially recently. You can’t seem to bring yourself to move a single box here from your place. You have yet to put your house on the market. Our intimacy is…sorely lacking, and has been for a while now.”
Spencer’s nostrils flared, but before she could protest that their lack of intimacy certainly wasn’t all on her, Marti went on.
“We’re not working.” Her voice went soft, and she uncharacteristically let a sliver of emotion seep in. “I don’t think…I don’t think you know for sure what you want. And I think you need to figure it out.” With a clearing of her throat, Marti took another sip of her wine.
Spencer sat. She blinked some more. She felt weird. This was so not how she saw this conversation going. She’d been prepared to apologize to Marti, to let her know that she’d been absent, but she was back. That she was ready to commit fully to their partnership. Marti had turned it all on its head.
So many emotions washed through Spencer. She chewed on the inside of her cheek as she sat there, vision blurred from unshed tears, and tried to name them. Sadness. Shame. Guilt. Embarrassment. Relief.
Wait.
Relief?
I don’t think you know for sure what you want. And I think you need to figure it out.
Those were probably the truest, wisest words anybody had ever said to her.
“Marti.” Spencer swallowed the lump in her throat.
Marti turned to her, her expression open for the moment.
“I’m sorry,” Spencer whispered.
“I just wanted you to be happy,” Marti said quietly, and if she had any hopes of them working things out, she didn’t show them. At all. “I’m not perfect. I know that. But I really do care about you.”
We’ve gone from “love” to “care about” in a matter of five minutes, Spencer thought. Which meant Marti was disengaging. Already.
God, it was happening so fast. Spencer couldn’t help but feel a little blindsided. And then she did that thing that most people do when they see their relationship about to end, when they see their entire life about to change: she panicked and scrambled. “I can be better. I can. I promise I can. I’ve just been…distracted lately. But I’m better now. I really am. I can fix it. I can work on it.”
Marti slowly shook her head as Spencer babbled. “I don’t want my girlfriend to have to ‘work on it’ to be with me.” She made air quotes as she spoke.
Spencer opened her mouth to protest more, but something stopped her. A thought. A realization. Divine intervention. She wasn’t sure, but it was something, some feeling. She stayed quiet as unexpected tears suddenly formed and spilled over, coursed down her cheeks. Whether they were from sadness or relief, she wasn’t sure. Maybe a little of both?
Marti sat up, scooted to the edge of the couch, and turned to face her. Her voice was gentle, which surprised Spencer. “You don’t want to be here. If you did, you’d have moved boxes in weeks ago.” She took Spencer’s hand in hers, turned it, studied it. “You’re an amazing woman, Spencer, and I’m really sorry I didn’t make you feel like you are. That’s on me.”
Spencer cleared her throat and stared at their hands for a moment before meeting Marti’s eyes. “You’re right,” she said softly, not wanting to cause more pain, but knowing she needed to say it out loud. “I’m not happy.”
“No. And you haven’t been for a very, very long time. I’m not even sure you know what makes you happy.”
The tears were flowing freely now. “Me neither.” But she had an idea…
Marti squeezed Spencer’s hands, and in that moment, Spencer felt closer to her than she had in months. “Don’t you think you owe it to yourself to find out?”
Spencer let the question hang in the air, but her brain was screaming an answer. God, yes.
* * *
An hour and a half later, Spencer sat in her car in her own driveway, her back seat empty but her trunk almost full. It had been painfully obvious as she gathered her things from Marti’s house just how right Marti had been. It had taken less than an hour to pack up the things of hers that she kept at Marti’s. Her jewelry-making stuff, some toiletries, one drawer of clothes, two pairs of shoes, a jacket, a cookbook, and a coffee mug with Wonder Woman on it.
She’d cried. Marti had left, thank God, because Spencer was feeling a mix of stupid, humiliated, and devastated. She didn’t want Marti to see that. More accurately, she was pretty sure Marti didn’t want to see it. They’d hugged. It had been awkward. Then she left to meet her work friends for a drink. Maybe to mourn the loss of her relationship. Maybe to celebrate her freedom.
It didn’t take more than three trips from the car to her foyer, and Spencer left all her crap in a pile on the floor, too depressed to deal with it any further.
What the hell had happened?
This was not at all how she’d expected the evening to go. Not at all. As she contemplated this, a little bubble of anger began to well up.
“Seriously?” she said, as she crossed the empty living room and headed toward the kitchen. “This is what you get for doing the right thing?” There was a half-full bottle of Chardonnay in the fridge, and she poured herself a glass, carried it back into the living room, and flopped onto the couch.
Spencer was at a loss.
What did she do now? What was the next logical step? Was there even a next step?
She sipped her wine and felt her tears well up.
No, this was not what she’d expected. Her whole life, her entire existence had just been altered. In a matter of a half hour, everything had changed. The year was almost over, and the view she’d had of the upcoming year had just been drastically transformed until she didn’t even recognize it. By next spring, she was supposed to be married, living in one house instead of two, and feeling happy (which, she knew, would not have been the case). Instead she would be single, living alone, and feeling…what?
That was the weirdest part of it all: Spencer wasn’t quite sure how to feel, and that scared her more than anything else. If she was good at only one thing, it was knowing what was expected of her. But right now? How was she supposed to feel?
She’d never felt so adrift in her life and it terrified her.
What was she supposed to do now?
* * *
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, woman. What the hell is wrong with you?” Zoe was half joking, a grin on her face and a teasing eye roll to accompany it, but Rebecca also knew she was partly serious. Mostly because she’d asked herself the very same question multiple times.
“I don’t know! Can’t you help me? Please? I’m a danger to myself and others.” Rebecca sipped her latte and looked around.
Grounded seemed unusually busy for a Wednesday night. Rebecca had been at Nick’s place for a short time, but he was exhausted and Rebecca could tell that Michelle was, too. So even though she had a few things she wanted to go over with Nick, she left them to get some sleep without her hanging around, staring at them.
Thank God there had been a text from Zoe because Rebecca couldn’t face going home and being alone with her thoughts. Even Veruca Salt had begun to look at her with pity in her green cat eyes.
Stopping for caffeine. Time to meet up?
Rebecca had arrived first. Zoe had shown up five minutes later on her break.
Now they sat at a table near the window and watched the headlights zip by. Something hip
and folksy was playing over the speakers, and the hum of conversation was steady.
“You just blurted it out? Please don’t marry her? Just like that?” Zoe’s expression still registered disbelief; it hadn’t changed at all since Rebecca had told her.
With a defeated sigh, Rebecca hung her head. “I did.”
Zoe seemed to get that Rebecca wasn’t happy about it either. She closed a hand over Rebecca’s wrist. “What happened?” she asked softly.
Rebecca shook her head, tried to take herself back to the headspace she’d ended up in when Spencer had given her the bracelet. She wore it now on her left wrist, fingered it with the other hand. “Ever since Nick gave me his ‘life is too fucking short’ speech, I can’t get it out of my head. It’s so weird.” She took a sip from her cup. Zoe was watching her carefully, intently. “It made me look at my own life. Am I happy? Am I doing what I want to? If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, what regrets will I have?”
“I get that,” Zoe said, with a nod. She removed her hand, picked up her espresso, and sipped. “I’ve seen people die on my watch. I’ve also seen them come back from the brink, and that’s the overwhelming lesson those who return have learned: life is too fucking short.” She paused. “So, where does Spencer fit in?”
“That’s just it,” Rebecca said. “Everywhere. How is that possible?”
Zoe’s brow furrowed and she shook her head.
“When I asked myself those questions, my brain asked them about Spencer, too. Is she happy? Is she doing what she wants to? What regrets would she have? I have no idea why. And then she showed up and gave me this bracelet, and all I could think was that she’s so incredibly kind and sweet, and I’m worried that she’s settling for less than she deserves.”
The Shape of You Page 22