Page 40 of Echoes

“Why are you staying here?” Felicity turned to her.

“Got the scotch,” she said, holding up the bottle.

“Rosie?”

Rosie sighed and stood. She set the scotch on top of the cabinet and moved to sit on the sofa, leaving the bottle there. Felicity sat down next to her and turned to face her as if she expected this to be an important conversation.

“We’re having some problems.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Felicity said.

“How could you? It’s not like I told you when you texted measking about the seminar.”

“How bad?”

“Not good,” she answered.

“The travel?” Felicity asked. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me.” She shook her head.

“That’s part of it, yes. It’s a big part.”

“I sort of left not long after you two got back together, but I’m not sure what happened, Rosie. You were pretty clear about not wanting this life. Now, I find you here. And don’t get me wrong, this is a very nice office, but you never wanted to just teach. Did something change?”

Rosie wasn’t sure how to tell this woman that she’d gotten a glimpse of some alternative present or timeline. She wasn’t quite sure what it was, exactly, but it had shaken her to her core, and she’d not asked Felicity about her feelings because of it. Then, she’d let Ami back in because Ami had seemed safe, comfortable. For a while there, Rosie had thought that she’d fallen back in love with her, but now, she was no longer sure that she’d ever really had. She’d let the fear drive her toward the familiar instead of pursuing something with the woman she’d first met as more of a girl than a woman and had worked with for four years. It had been easier to accept Ami’s love than it had been to examine her own possible feelings for Felicity, which might have been there all along.

“I guessIdid, but not really,” Rosie began.

“I don’t understand.”

“When we got back together, Ami had changed. She said she’d been working on herself, and I could see it. She had some baggage from an unhealthy relationship when we got together the first time, and she’d been working through that. We got along again. She was cool with me going away for work. We compromised in the beginning, after we got back together, and that didn’t bother me because it seemed like she was willing to meet me halfway. Then, I started to notice some of the old Ami reemerge, and, I don’t know, I was already so far in, that it just seemed easier to give her what she wanted. I mean, we’d already dated for years at that point, even though we broke up in the middle there. Then, she was proposing, and I thought that was what I wanted. I thought we were good. But it was like, as soon as we were living together again and there was a ring on my finger, she wanted me to stay home more. She wanted to start talking about having kids that I never wanted, which she’d known since we dated the first time. She kept asking me to give up more and more, and Idid. I don’t think I realized at first that it was justmegiving things up, though. She asked me to stop traveling as much and limit the number of trips I could take in a year, and I found this teaching position. She was happy.”

“But you weren’t,” Felicity said softly. “You aren’t, are you?”

Rosie shook her head and said, “That night, after you left, she left, too. She stayed at her sister’s house for a few days. Then, she came home, and we talked. She wanted to go to a counselor, and I’d suggested that myself before, too, but I just realized that no counselor could fix two people wanting different things. So, I told her that she could stay there, and I’d get a hotel.”

“It’s your house. It was your house before she moved in.”

“I know. She works from home, though, so her whole office setup is there, and I’m here most of the time, anyway. I just never bothered getting a hotel. Besides, I was never much of a cook, so I don’t need a kitchen. I’ve got a small fridge in here, and I get food on campus or order something.”

“Rosie, you’re living in your office. How long have you been here?”

“About a month, I guess. I normally hide it better, but like I said, I had no office hours, and I wasn’t planning on inviting you in here.”

Felicity nodded and asked, “What’s next, then?”

“Well, it ismyhouse. We’ve only been married for a couple of years, and we thought we’d buy a bigger place–”

“For those kids you don’t want, but she does?”

“Something like that, yeah,” she answered with a little laugh. “But we never got around to it, and I didn’t bother putting her name on this one because we were planning on leaving, anyway.”

“Leaving?” Felicity asked.

“Well, before I took this position, I could’ve made my home base anywhere, and she already works from home, so we talked about moving somewhere else. She wanted a city. I said as long as it’s close to the water, I’m fine with that.”

“Seems like you’ve been making a lot of sacrifices, and Ami hasn’t been, which makes me hate her even more.”

“I let her, though.” Rosie shrugged a shoulder. “So, it’smyfault, too.”

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