The One That Got Away (23 page)

“Kieran's girls are reddish-blond. Dad says he's finally getting back at Mom after a generation of genetic dominance.”

Eventually, the conversation works its way around to music.

“That's the only thing I hate about road trips,” Eamon says. “Being at the mercy of the local radio stations and their six favorite songs.”

“Actually, I made a driving mix before I left Floyd. Lots of Angry Country Girl road ballads about kicking that no-good man to the curb and hitting the dusty old highway.”

To my surprise, he doesn't laugh. “Does that mean you're kicking
your
man to the curb?”

The question is lightly phrased, but he's not really joking, and he's caught me completely by surprise. My heart bumps from side to side in my chest as one second of silence passes, then another. As soon as I tell him about Noah, all the cards will be on the table. I'll be offering him my heart, to do with as he will. To brush aside again, if he wants to. Eamon places a premium on what is hardest to achieve; what if his interest evaporates as soon as I lose my offlimits status? I need a little time to figure out how to handle this.

“I didn't mean that,” I falter.

“Oh,” he says softly. “I was thinking it was about time.”

In an instant all the blood pulsing through my body is heavier, warmer.

“You can tell me I'm completely out of line,” he continues, “but I think you should do that sooner rather than later.” It is not a request. He expects me to. But he lets it go, for now.

For the next push of the trip, my plan is to get as far as Dallas and stop for the night there, so that I only have a few hours left to go on the final leg the day after. When I finally pass the
WELCOME TO TEXAS
sign at the state line, with its familiar Lone Star flag, a huge grin breaks across my face. But even though the engine is roaring beneath me as the van devours the miles, it still doesn't feel like I'm getting any closer to Austin.

Eventually I even get tired of my road mix. Somewhere in northeast Texas, my restless shuffling through the radio turns up a local college station. The night DJ is clearly in a mellow mood, as he's playing slow, quiet sixties classics and murmuring sleepily into his microphone between songs. The opening chords of my
favorite Simon and Garfunkel song sift through the darkness, and I smile and turn it up. Simon and Garfunkel always remind me of childhood, perched on the cramped backseat of John's ancient pickup truck on our wanderings across the Virginia countryside, listening to him and my mother sing along with the beautiful, beloved songs. He would sing the melody, my mom chiming in with the higher harmony, as I do now, voice confident with long familiarity. “Home,” the chorus goes, “where my love lies waiting silently for me…”

The song continues, but the words are stalled in my throat.
Eamon. Home
. The promise of seeing him has been drawing me home these last few days, sure as the moon draws the tide.

Suddenly, the idea of stopping for the night is intolerable; all I want to do is crawl into his bed and fall asleep with my arms around him. I'm currently incapable of addressing any of the ramifications of that fact, but there's no question of going home without seeing him. I need to be with him.

He probably will have gone to bed by the time I get there, but he won't be surprised to see me, he'll just give me that heart-melting smile, and open the door to welcome me in. He'll curl his long frame around me, anchor me with an arm over my waist, and this unbearable sadness will start to seep away, just a little. And then in the morning I'll tell him about Noah, and for the first time, there won't be any barriers between us. I know I'm the only one who's fallen in love here, and maybe I'll always be all alone out on that limb, but I can't find enough pride to care anymore.

I pull into his driveway at 2:19
A.M.
, bleary-eyed with exhaustion but also more relieved than I've ever felt in my life. I hop down from the van, not able to go another minute without pressing my face against his skin.

I'm halfway to his front door when, belatedly, I notice there is another car besides the Jeep parked in the driveway. A sassy little
red convertible Miata, with a One Direction sticker slapped unapologetically on the bumper. A girl's car. At two o'clock in the morning.

Something in the region of my stomach twists viciously, and I stop in the middle of the driveway, buffeted by confusion.

He has a girl over? I've been vibrating with need for him for the last seventy-two hours, and he is—with somebody else?

I cup my forehead, struggling to fight through the wave of nausea back to reason. The thought flutters down like a leaf from above: he and I are not actually in a relationship. As far as he knows, I'm still dating someone else. He hasn't yet been made party to my eleventh-hour revelation.

I know it's true. Of course I do. But acknowledging it doesn't stop jealousy from splintering inside me as my mind conjures a stomach-turning vision of him tangled in his big, white bed with a faceless blonde, his broad back rising as he settles himself above her. What if I hadn't noticed the other car, if I'd gone bounding cluelessly up to his door, expecting to be welcomed with open arms? How does it always go in the movies—guy comes to answer the doorbell, extemporaneously draped in his blanket; Other Woman approaches behind him, concerned, her bare shoulders poking out of the sheet she's wrapped around herself—“Ame, is everything all right?”

Oh, don't mind me, I'm just the idiot who couldn't wait to tell him she was in love with him. Please, carry on
.

I picture his discomfort, his dismay, his mingled pity and embarrassment on my behalf. The face of a good guy stuck in an awkward spot. I hurry back to the van, so scorched with hurt and humiliation I want to peel off my own skin. For all I know, he's been seeing this girl the entire time I've been indulging in daydreams that he and I were finally going to be together. Maybe there are even others. Eamon, with his rings tattoo and his comet tail of accomplishments, can have anyone and everyone that he
wants. Sure, he likes me, but clearly I'm not the only one he likes. And I can't stand not to be.

The first time I met Noah's friends, a few weeks into our relationship, his voice was bright with pride when he introduced me as his girlfriend. Affection curved his fingers against the small of my back. A few days later, he invited himself along to one of my after-work happy hours, for no other reason than he wanted to meet the co-workers he'd heard so many stories about. And as I relayed all of this to Nicole one day over brunch, fizzing like the bubbles in my mimosa, something in her smile told me: I should never have been surprised. This was how it was supposed to be. This was what I
deserved
. Not excuses and mixed signals and “Let's just keep things light.” And suddenly, I was mortified by what I had tolerated for so long.

Noah may not be a part of my life any longer, but I will not go back to that place again.

I make the drive to my house on autopilot. There isn't even a light on for me.
So much for that “Home is where Eamon is” nonsense
, I think bitterly as I thump the van into park. Home is where
I
am, where I make it.
And where Newman is
, I amend, as he yawns reproachfully at me from the middle of my bed. At least I've learned one lesson—never to adopt romantic song lyrics for personal significance. Right now the only person waiting silently for me is my fucking cat.

For the first four seconds after my alarm explodes in my ears the next morning, everything feels normal. Newman is a warm ball behind my knees, and my body aches with the kind of fatigue that comes from having put it through the wringer at muay thai the day before. Then I remember.

I pull the covers over my face as it all seeps back in, pain pooling in my chest. It's not any less raw in the daylight. I'm home, but John is still gone. And I'm in love with Eamon, who right now is probably getting ready for round three with the Miata girl. He can't sleep in unless he's sick or hungover, I remember, taking pathetic pleasure in knowing such an intimate thing about him. I wonder if that rule still holds when he's been up half the night having sex.

“Ugh,
stop
,” I say aloud. But I can't stop thinking about it, wondering where he met her and what she looks like, this stupid girl who's fucking him on that big, welcoming bed I thought I belonged in.

After I eat, I recruit a grumbling Danny to help me move the Virginia stuff inside. His objections fade once he gets an eyeful of the artwork, though.

“These are more of your mom's?” he asks, gently lifting the Anne of Green Gables portrait from against a stack of boxes.

“Most of them are.”

“She was incredibly talented, Ree,” he says softly. “Runs in the family, clearly.”

It's funny how, when you're upset, the thing that yanks you from holding it together to bawling uncontrollably is a display of compassion from another human being. My face crumples, and the next thing I know, I'm clinging to Danny's solid chest like it's a buoy in the ocean and sobbing into his T-shirt, breath shuddering in and out.

“Oh, sweetie,” he sighs, and wraps his arms around me. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I don't want to talk about it. I just want to cry, because it hurts, and crying makes it hurt a little bit less. Danny holds me until the sobs fade to sniffles and I can sort of breathe again.

“I wish there was something I could do to make you feel better,” he says after a while.

“It's…it's not just that,” I confess, and I tell him about the red Miata. When I finish the story, he's frowning.

“So you never told him how you feel? Or that you broke up with Noah?”

“Thank god, no,” I say. “I managed to avoid making that much of a fool of myself.”

He hooks one hand over the open van door and drums his fingers on the metal. “I think you ought to tell him, love. He asked you to break up with Noah so you could be with him.”

“He didn't ask me to, he told me to. And anyway, I don't even know what that means anymore,” I say, reaching into the van for the Anne painting. “For all I know ‘be with me' means ‘be available to have sex with me.' ”

Danny grabs an armload of boxes and follows me into the house. “Give me a break. You know him better than that.”

“Really? It's not maligning his character to say he might only be interested in something casual. It's just not what I want.”

“Right, and I'm telling you it's not what he wants, either.” He plops the boxes on the kitchen counter for emphasis. “The boy's a serial monogamist, and he's really into you.”

“He's into Red Miata too.”
Literally
, I think, and have to resist the urge to gag.

“Look, here is the thing about Eamon,” Danny says, then hesitates. “He is such a good soul. He is a fluffy little angel on fluffy angel wings.
Except
for the fact that he's always kind of had a tendency to think with his dick.”

My eyebrows shoot up to my hairline. “Danny!
Not
helping!”

“Just listen to me. When he's with someone, there's nobody more loyal. He's never cheated, and I'd bet my ass he never will. But when there's nobody he's made a promise to, well…”

“At what point does this clarify my situation?”

“Okay. Take when you met him, for example. He was dating Hannah at the time.”

“He actually just
finally
told me that,” I grumble. “But he said they weren't exclusive.”

“And they weren't,” Danny continues as we walk back to the van. “But it was mostly because they lived in two different states, not because they really wanted to be dating other people. At least, she didn't. But even given that, and the fact that he knew damn well he was leaving Austin soon,
and
the fact that you were my roommate, he still went after you.”

I clutch my forehead. “So in the current scenario, I am Hannah, and Miata Girl, whoever the hell she is, is me? This is not making me feel better. In fact I'm feeling a hell of a lot of sympathy for Hannah here.”

“Nobody is anybody. I'm just telling you he doesn't always think through when to sleep with somebody and when he should
keep it in his pants. It doesn't mean he's an operator; it just means he's stupid. Trust me, if I don't know who this girl is, she's nobody important. Why don't you give him the chance to tell you you're the one that he wants? Ooo-hoo-hoo?” He does a little Olivia Newton-John dance move until I glare him into submission.

“Because he won't. If you care about someone this much, you're not going to be sleeping with somebody else at the same time. You wouldn't want to. Especially not while the person you care about is out there in the middle of the night somewhere, and they're hurting and they
need you
.” I swipe angrily at another tear.

If he doesn't care that much about me, I don't
want
to need him. I'm not going to spend my time pining for someone who's never fully there. I did that too many times before. With Eamon, I simply couldn't bear it. And I honestly don't think I can take any more pain right now.

Eamon calls me a couple hours later, as I'm unpacking the painted chicken statue from back home.

“Hey, Ree.” The intimacy of his voice sets my teeth on edge—how dare he sound so glad to talk to me, when he was with somebody else just a few hours ago? I mean, Christ, has he even changed his sheets? “Where are you right now? When will you be back in town?”

“I'm home,” I say shortly. “I got in late last night.”

“Oh,” he says, sounding taken aback at my tone. “I thought you'd decided to crash for the night along the way.”

“Nope, I wound up just coming home.”
With one brief but informative stop
.

“Well…I know this is a long shot, but do you think you'd
feel up to coming out today? I've got tickets to ACL, and Phoenix is playing…”

And there it is. Tired as I am, I would love to go stand in a muddy, crowded field with Eamon and eat food truck tacos and watch Phoenix. I would
love
to. But I can't settle for a place in the rotation, not with the way I feel about him.

“No,” I say. “I'm exhausted and I just want to chill out here, and get ready for the week.”

“That makes sense,” he says. “Then how about I bring you some takeout later?”

He has the implacable confidence of a man who has never failed to get a single thing he wanted, and the notion of my own feelings being regarded as so devoid of mystery fuels my hurt and resentment like a kerosene bath. Never mind that I am aching to see him; the fact that it doesn't occur to him that I might blow him off infuriates me.

“No thanks. And I've got a ton of work to get caught up on, so I really have to run.”

“No problem,” he says, audibly confused by my abruptness. “I'll just see you Thursday at the meeting, then. I'm glad you made it home safe.”

When I hang up, only a long-standing policy against destroying expensive objects keeps me from hurling my phone across the room.

After an unusually rewarding sparring session at muay thai, I fill the rest of the empty day with settling back in and getting caught up on work. I clean my office, filing samples and wedging magazines into my overcrowded bookshelves; then I organize the landslide of papers on my desk into regimented stacks. I thump the chunky crystal paperweight that Anne-Marie gave me for Christmas
two years ago on top of the pile of active stuff for Eamon's job, and banish both to the far left corner.

It occurred to me, when I scrolled past one of her old emoji-peppered texts earlier, that I will probably never talk to Anne-Marie again. Six weeks ago she was welcoming me into her family, and now I have to reimburse her for the wedding dress I will never wear to marry her son. I emailed her this morning, abjectly apologizing, and couldn't repress a deranged little flicker of hope that she would respond with some small word of kindness
—If you really feel that way, then it was never meant to be
. But I'm sure she's as disappointed in me as she was in his ex-wife. God knows she has reason to be.

The last thing I do is replace the photo of Noah and me in Paris, which has held pride of place next to my draftsman's lamp for years, with a picture of John that I dug out from his memory box. I haven't heard from Noah since our conversation the other night, which doesn't surprise me—he's too proud to keep trying to talk his way out of a breakup. What does surprise me is how badly I miss him. When I check my email before bed, I see his name in my chat contacts, with the little green dot that means he's online. All I have to do is click on his name and write something. And then he will write something back. And then maybe, just for a minute, I will feel a little less alone. I want to tell him, again, how sorry I am, but I know it's meaningless. He doesn't want me to be sorry; he wants me to love him. Just like I want Eamon to love me.

Surprisingly, I barely hear from Eamon all week. I am relieved, until it occurs to me that he is undoubtedly respecting my heavy workload—the one thing I wasn't lying to him about—and, furthermore, being considerate of the fact that I have just lost a family
member. Mercifully, at the site meeting on Thursday, Joe runs through the project status quickly and efficiently. Throughout the meeting, I sense Eamon watching me, so I avoid his eyes. But he catches up to me as I'm about to get into my car.

“Hey, wait up a minute. I've been wanting to talk to you.”

My heart spins. “What about?”

He jams his hands into his jeans pockets. “Just wanted to check in on you. How've you been doing?”

He means because of John. Of course. “Okay, I guess. It helps to be back at work. I've got his favorite thermos with me now,” I add with a half smile, waving it in one hand.

He studies the sturdy shape of it and smiles. “Yeah, that looks like him.” After a pause, he continues. “And how's Noah?” His voice is neutral as paint primer.

Noah is miserable
, I think.
Due in large part to you
. This is my opportunity to tell him what happened—not even the why and how, but to succinctly let him know, as I would if it were anyone else asking the question, that my relationship with the person he is inquiring about is over. And yet, I don't. I don't even want to open that can of worms, don't want him to suspect that he had something to do with it. Don't want him to start asking me out on dates for nights when he isn't already busy screwing the owner of the red Miata.

“He's fine,” I say. “He'll be back in a little over a month.”

He nods. “That will be good.”

“Yeah,” I say, although I know it will be anything but good. Though Noah has been silent so far, I think once he's home he will probably want to see me, to talk about things in person. It is going to be painful for both of us. I know I'll be tempted to give things another try, just to take his pain away—but I can't give in to it. Not when I know it would only be kicking this can a little farther on down the road.

That afternoon, my client Jamie's friend with the retail store does, in fact, call to ask about working with me, and he does, in fact, have no budget. But I'm so grateful for something to work on besides Eamon's house and the Balm expansion that I lowball my contract so he can afford me. When I call Jamie to thank her for the referral, I inquire—out of both politeness and morbid curiosity—how things are going with the plans for Dallas and Houston.

“Not so great,” she confesses glumly. “This guy we hired is a bit of a prima donna. He keeps getting hung up on ‘architectural purity.' I keep telling him, ‘Yes, but people have to use this space, and work in this space, and I have to make money in this space,' but he just spins his wheels over all these details that don't matter to me. Like, there's a row of huge columns that runs along the north wall in the Dallas space, and he can't stand the sight of them. So instead of just encasing each one individually, he wants to run a clean sheetrock wall all the way across the front of them.” I remember those columns. They were cool old concrete pillars, and I'd wanted to leave them exposed. “But wouldn't that take away like eighteen inches of depth from the treatment rooms?”

“Why yes, madam, it would. And when I pointed that out to him, he acted like I was some clueless yokel. ‘Well, if you insist, we can do it,' ” she intones, mimicking Roger's pretentious drawl, “ ‘but the aesthetics are not optimal.' Well excuse me, princess, but shrinking my treatment rooms by a foot and a half is not optimal, either, so wrap the damn columns. Ugh! He gets on my nerves!”

Yep, that sounds about right for Roger Harris. “That sucks.”

“Girl, I really wish we had hired you. This guy—not only is he a diva but his best ideas are just recycled from what you did at
Cesar Chavez. Ah well,” she sighs, “you win some and you lose some. We'll get back on track. I'm just glad you nailed this store job—you deserve it.”

“Thanks again, Jamie. I hope things get better with your planning,” I say, and it's the truth. Just because I was crushed not to get the job doesn't mean I'm pleased to hear things aren't going well for her. I'm not
surprised
, but I'm not glad, either.