The One That Got Away (27 page)

I don't know if Joe is deliberately punishing me for dressing him down in front of a client—I wouldn't put it past him—but the meeting drags like a legless zombie. Part of me had been hoping that spending time together would thaw the chill between Eamon and me, but instead he remains polite, affable, and brutally distant, without so much as a flicker of his usual warmth. By the time we wrap up the last item on the work list, my hands are trembling from the effort of acting normal.

“Well, I'll issue a revised paint schedule this week,” I say, glancing somewhere in the vicinity of his collarbone. I can't bring myself to look at that cool, blank face for one minute more. He nods, says thank you. Then I duck into my car, and, finally, I'm away. My sense of relief lasts exactly as long as it takes to get out of sight of the house. Then the gnawing ache descends again.

Back at my desk, I click open my Outlook calendar. Months ago, I'd put in a projected completion date of February 26. Just under a year after he blew back into my life. I scroll forward a few weeks—there'll be a month or so of punch list items and follow-ups, during which I'll still have to talk to him all the time…so, April. Beginning of April. I have to get through four more months of this. It will get a little easier; everything does. That's one thing I know from experience. Maybe eventually it won't hurt so much.

And then what? He'll fade out of my life, after having been the most important thing in it. He'll call me now and then, with a question, easily answered. I'll bring a photographer in over the summer, while he's out of town, to shoot the place for my portfolio. Danny will mention him every once in a while, though he'll try to avoid it. I'll see him from time to time, at Albion, Clementine, Danny's and Jay's parties. Inevitably, at some point, there
will be a girl in tow. Maybe Red Miata, maybe one of her clones. Or worse, someone like Hannah. A keeper.

Eventually I'll meet somebody else, too, who will or won't be a keeper; either way, it will be fine. I will be fine.

The week that follows feels empty and muffled, forcing me to realize how deeply Eamon had infiltrated every aspect of my life. I spend literally hours each day talking about and thinking about and walking through the house I've been designing with him. Pouring my time—and my heart—into it
for
him. And when I close my laptop each evening, there's no escape. I look around my own home and see reminders of him everywhere—the kitchen counter, where he cooked omelets the first weekend he visited; the dining table, where he waited while I packed to go to Virginia and say goodbye to my family. The same table, where we almost made love.

I can't even look at Danny anymore without thinking of Eamon; every time I see him, I wonder if they talked today, if he mentioned me, if Danny, unable to restrain his curiosity, has asked what's going on. What, if anything, Eamon would have answered. I feel nauseatingly jealous of Danny, for having been Eamon's friend for so long, for the fact that he always will be, that he can take that for granted.

Danny, for his part, watches me with worried blue eyes. Since the Tito's vodka incident, he hasn't attempted to draw me out with drinking or socializing, undoubtedly sensing that I have moved from the hectic, defiant phase directly into the morose and withdrawn one. Danny has nursed me through a breakup or three.

The most depressing thing, though, is that I can't even call it a breakup.
Breakup
implies we were at some point
together
. Which is the grim irony of my situation: here I am, with all the heartache
I'd been trying so hard to avoid, and absolutely nothing to show for it except a few intoxicating kisses. Aside from that one day, eight years ago now, I never felt him inside my body, never watched his face as we moved together; for all the months I spent gradually falling in love with him, there was not even one bittersweet day in which he was, just for a few hours, mine. It's supposed to be the wild, untrammeled joy of flight that makes it worth the crash, but I never even made it off the ground.

And god, I miss him. Miss his Bambi eyes and his cute little overbite and his beautiful smile, miss the familiar sound of his voice on the phone, his incessant teasing. The transparent—and completely adorable—pride that he takes in his newly acquired construction expertise. I even miss the smell of chlorine.

I've never missed anyone like this, so fiercely. My mother slipped away for months before she died; I had time to get used to the idea that I was losing her. Even John, much as I loved him, was less of a daily presence in my life than Eamon was—and now, he's just…gone. Except for the fact that I know he's only a few miles away, moving through his days: waking in the darkness and driving to the pool, falling asleep at night in his big white bed. Giving that smile to age-groupers, friends, gas station attendants. Nearby, but totally out of my reach.

It's the banner ad on my browser that gives me the idea. “Last-minute flights!” it crows. “Cancún! New Orleans! Miami! Tulsa!”

One of these things is not like the others
, I think, but the idea of getting out of town for a few days is highly appealing. I can't stand the thought of moping by myself in the house all weekend again, but the prospect of attempting to socialize while enduring the sympathetic coddling of Danny or Nicole is equally intolerable. And, yes, it is rank cowardice, but I'd be ecstatic not to have
to put myself through another site meeting with Eamon right now.

But where to go? I gnaw on my pen as I weigh the options. Lounging on a beach by myself sounds depressing, and, as an adoptive Texan, I cannot in good conscience set foot in Oklahoma voluntarily.

So, New Orleans. I've never been there before. And it's supposed to be lovely. And, I suddenly remember, it's where Jamie wants to open her next branch of Balm. Jamie, who is exceedingly unhappy with her current architect.

Twenty seconds later, I am punching in my credit card info.

Hey team
, says my email to Joe and Eamon,
I'm going to be out of town for another job on Thursday and Friday—please go ahead without me. It's a slow week, there shouldn't be a lot to go over
.

No problem
, Eamon writes back.
Touch base on Monday when you're home
. Not a flicker of interest in where I'm going or what I might be doing there. I wonder if he had to stop himself from asking—or if he just doesn't care.

The next afternoon, I am packing in my bedroom while Newman supervises in meat loaf position, all four paws invisible beneath him. I feel guilty leaving him in the care of his uncle again, especially because I'm going to be away yet again when I head to Janet's home in Virginia for Christmas next week. Danny is a diligent caretaker, but he doesn't actually enjoy having the cat around, and responds to all of Newman's attempts to cuddle by placing him gently but firmly on the floor.

“Just one more trip after this, and then it's all Mama, all the time,” I promise him, scratching him under the chin. He purrs,
but his yellow eyes remain suspicious. Then, I hear my cellphone ring, half-buried under a pillow.

My heart skitters, as it has every single time my phone has rung in the last week and three days. I changed Eamon's ringtone back from “Back in Black,” just so I wouldn't always know, instantaneously, that it
wasn't
him every time somebody else called me. For some reason those three or four seconds of mystery were very important to me. So this could be him now.

And, all of a sudden, I'm sure that it is. He is calling to set things right, unable to stand the thought of me leaving for this trip with the two of us still estranged. The universal impulse to reach out to a loved one before they set foot into one of the glorified aluminum tubes known as airplanes.

But when I retrieve the phone, just before it goes to voice mail, it isn't Eamon's name flashing up on the screen. It's Noah's.

The human voice, sometimes, is an absolutely extraordinary thing. It's amazing how much emotion can be imparted with one soft, simple little syllable. All Noah says to me when I answer the phone is one word, but in that word I hear that he's home, and he's missed me, that he's glad to hear my voice but that it also hurts him, and that he and I are not going to be friends for a long, long time. All this from one tiny word:

“Hey.”

I sink down on the bed and gather my legs under me. “Hey, Noah. I was wondering when you were going to be back home.”

“Just landed a couple of hours ago.”

“Wow. And this is it, right? You don't have to go back again after the holidays?”

“Nope, this is it. No more Argentina. It feels weird.”

So this is the actual day that I spent so many months looking forward to—the day he'd be home for good. Except instead of waiting at the airport, scanning the crowd in the baggage claim area for his beloved brown head, I didn't even know he was coming.

“I'm so happy for you,” I tell him.

“Yeah,” he says distractedly. “I guess I'll settle back in after a little while. I don't have to start back at the office until after New Year's.”

“Well, that's good. Did you catch up with your family yet?”

“No, I need a day or two to decompress before I head up there. I'm at home.” He pauses for a moment. “It's weird here, Sarina. I didn't expect it, but the first thing that came to my mind when I walked into my apartment was you. That stupid rug, in the living room.”

I remember. I helped him pick it out, at the same warehouse sale where I got mine. He insisted we get ones that looked nice together, so they wouldn't clash when they eventually wound up in the same house.

“And there's photos of you everywhere,” he continues in the same flat voice. “The one of us in Iceland, and the one I took of you up at the lake last year, holding the sparklers.”

I close my eyes, aching. I wouldn't trust myself to speak, even if I knew what to say. But he doesn't seem to expect me to say anything.

“Maybe this is a bad idea,” he says, “but can I see you? I just need to understand, 'cause I still don't understand, and I think we need to talk about this some more.”

Of course I can't say no to him. Even though I don't think meeting in person will accomplish anything other than hurting us both even more. If he wants this closure, then I owe it to him to try to provide it.

The afternoon sun is slanting low over the naked-limbed trees lining Town Lake as I wait for Noah to arrive at our meeting point on the pedestrian bridge. Shivering in the unusually brisk wind
blowing off the water, I dig my hands deeper into the pockets of my hoodie and bounce on the balls of my feet. When I glance back toward the south, there he is, striding along the walkway. Already scowling.

He draws to a stop in front of me, not speaking, and my eyes drop uncertainly to my shoes. I want to touch him but I gave up the right. When he says my name, softly, I raise my head. Then, slowly, with such hesitance that my throat tightens with sadness, he wraps his arms around me. I close my eyes and let myself hug him back, hard. I am feeling so many things at once that, for safety's sake, I just concentrate on the scratchy wool of his jacket against my cheek.

He buries his lips in my hair and rocks me back and forth. “Ree, Ree, Ree, why are you doing this? Why are you doing this to us? I love you so much. I always have. I know I let you down while I was away, but I'm home now. I want to fix this. That has to count for something.”

With his face so close to mine, I can smell the familiar minty scent of his toothpaste. Tears seep from my eyes, making little damp spots on his jacket. “It counts for everything,” I whisper. “It's more than I deserve. I just…I know that I don't love you enough to make you happy. I'm so sorry.”

He makes a frustrated noise. “I don't even know what that means. You love me plenty.”

“But—”

“Listen. In a weird way, part of me was not completely surprised by this. You know that thing about how in every relationship, somebody loves a little more, and somebody loves a little less? I think…I've always loved you a little more. And I was fine with that. I was
happy
with that,” he whispers intently, “because it meant I got to be with you.”

I squeeze my eyes shut tighter.

“So, if you think you want to set me free to find somebody
else who will love me more, I'm telling you right now that's not what I want. I don't want somebody else. I want you.”

I pull free of him, and wipe my eyes with the balls of my thumbs. I beckon him over to a picnic table, and we sit down side by side on the top, our feet lined up in a row on the bench. We sit like that for a long, long time, not speaking.

While I watch a pair of scullers glide along the surface of the lake, I ask myself, one more time, whether this is the right decision. Taking a mallet to a flawed but basically good relationship, causing such pain to someone I love. Because I do love Noah, still. More than I'd realized before I saw him here today. If Eamon had never come along, I don't think I would have realized that I was capable of loving someone more than this. But he did, and I am; and I do. And even if Eamon never decides to trust me again, Noah deserves better than to be the backup option.

I take his hand and smooth mine over it, again and again. “But the thing is,
I
know it's not enough, and that would make me miserable. I don't want to be the person who loves less.”

“Why not? I want to take care of you, and make a home for you. We'll have a good life, sweetheart. Let me make you happy.”

It is so easy to imagine how it could go. I could say yes to him right now and wipe away the pain and confusion of the last few months. Now that he's home again, surely we could rebuild everything that was good and strong between us. I would be welcomed back into his heart, into his family, and then one day I would walk toward him in that wonderful gray dress and watch his face light up with joy. And spend the rest of my life basking in the warmth of his gratitude and his love.

But the thing I can't forget is my last night on my way home to Austin. Driving halfway through the night, exhausted and brokenhearted, and aching with need—and not for this man here offering me his beautiful heart in his hands.

I smear another tear away with the side of my hand. “I'm so
sorry, but I can't. I just can't. I cannot tell you how badly I wish that I could give you a different answer, but it just…it just isn't enough.”

He shakes his head, staring at the graffiti on the railroad bridge to the east of us.
NEVER GIVE UP
, it says. “I don't understand how you go from being contented and happy to not being happy enough. It's not like you've said that you just don't love me anymore.”

“No.” This would be easier if I didn't.

“Because you still do. I can see it.”

I'm silent.

“So
why
, then? How? What happened to make you so sure that what we have is not enough?” He turns to me, face tight with emotion.

And I realize that there is only one thing that will make him understand. It will also make him hate me, but it will make him understand, and it will make him let go, and that's more important than anything
I
want.

“I developed feelings for someone else,” I say quietly, staring at my knees, pressed together. “I never slept with him. There was no affair. We're not together now. But…my feelings were strong enough to make me realize it wasn't right to be with you anymore. I lied about it because I thought it would just hurt you more, for no reason. But I should have told you the whole truth. And I'm sorry.”

I dart a glance at him; he looks like he wants to throw up.

“You said you didn't sleep with…this person,” he says after a minute, his voice quiet and tight. “Did you do
something
?”

I should have known a lawyer would notice the specificity of what I said—and didn't say. “We kissed. Once. It was a horrible thing to do. But that's all, I swear to you.”

He jerks his hand free of mine and jumps down from the bench. “Who?” The word is like a lash.

“No one you know.” I lie without hesitation. If he knew the truth about this, it would torture him. He'd fill in the gaps between the things he knows and wind up inventing something even more painful and humiliating than what actually happened.

He narrows his eyes, trying to decide if I am telling the truth. Then panic rises in me as I see him starting to do the math. “It's that smug prick Eamon, isn't it?”

I shake my head, forcing myself to stay calm. “No.”

“Come on, of course it is,” he says, with lacerating scorn. “I noticed he was pretty chummy with you when I was home in September. But, stupidly, I trusted you. And to think I actually encouraged you to take that job in the first place!”

“It's not him,” I insist, brazening it out in spite of my shame. I will lie about this as many times as I need to, to throw him off the scent.

“Then who? Somebody from kickboxing? Somebody from the restaurant?”

I hunch my shoulders inward, my self-loathing driving an instinct to physically shrink. “Please, Noah, it doesn't matter who it was.”

“Fuck!” he yells. “I can't even believe this is actually me and you having this conversation right now! But you know what? I guess you're right. It doesn't matter who it was,” he says, slashing the air with his hands. “I just wish you'd told me a month and a half ago, so I could have spent this whole time forgetting you instead of thinking I could convince you to give us another chance. Believe me, if I'd known you were hung up on somebody else, I
certainly
wouldn't have bothered.”

And then he's walking back the way he came, away from the sunset that's shimmering on the surface of the lake. Walking away from me.