Page 67 of Tempest

“How about you, Britton? All good?”

“Yeah, Gavin. Thank you.”

“It’s our pleasure,” he tells her. “Come on, Odette. I’ll take you home.

“You’re trembling,” he says, finally breaking the silence as we approach my neighborhood. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?”

“I’m okay,” I say. Physically, I am. Emotionally, not so much. He takes my hand in his and I don’t fight it. I was worried, scared for the first time in I don’t know how long. Fear isn’t something I live with.

Well, that’s a lie. But the fear of heartache is different than a fear of surroundings or people in general. One I am mostly able to control, the others are spontaneous and unpredictable.

Gavin parks in front of my house, and as he always does, tells me to stay put so he can come around to open my door and help me out. As soon as I stand, he wraps me in his arms.

“Will you fight with me?”

“What?” I ask, looking up.

“Invite me inside and let’s fight this out. You can say all the things you’ve been holding in. Let me have it, Ode. Let me carry the full burden of what I’ve done,” he says. “Let’s see what we can work through, and what we can’t.”

“I don’t…”

“I know you don’t want to talk about it. I’m asking if you will, though. Please, Ode? I think there’s a lot we still need to say.”

It’s then I notice a bloom of redness under his jaw.

“Did you get hit?”

“By his camera. It’s nothing.”

It’s not nothing. Gavin put himself in harm’s way for me and my friend he only just met tonight. I inhale a long breath, letting out an audible sigh.

“Come in, Gavin.”

He follows me inside, through the kitchen, and to the small bar I have set up in my living room. I don’t offer anything to him as I pour myself a finger of whiskey. One single swallow to bolster myself for a conversation I once wanted so badly.

“Why were you trembling?”

“I was scared,” I say.

“For me?” he asks, but I don’t answer. “So, you don’t hate me?”

“No, I’ve told you I don’t.”

“Did you ever?”

“I tried to,” I say. “I tried to hate you both so that I’d hate myself a little less.”

“Why did you hate yourself?” he asks, standing closer now, though I haven’t turned to look at him. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Nothing was your fault. I explained that.”

“With words, Gavin,” I say, spinning toward him. “Your words were something I thought I could understand. I hated them, but I understood them. What I saw was a contradiction to everything you said. I spiraled with thoughts that you had lied to me, that our time together was a sham, a fling. That I was nothing but a good time that you’d both laugh about later. That’s why I hated myself. For falling for the ruse and for you.”

“It wasn’t a lie,” he argues. “We were not a lie.”

“And neither was your marriage.”

“Not in every way, no.”

“How was it a lie, Gavin? You lived together, supported each other, raised a child together, slept together. In what ways was it a lie?”

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