Page 27 of See You Next Winter
“You said you couldn’t think of anything worse than loving me.”
“What?”
“The last time I saw you. That’s what you said.” His arm snakes around my back, and presses his cheek against my belly, the weight of it all rushing out in a sigh. “You said it and I snuck out the next morning and I felt so bad I puked in a bin at the airport.”
“Oh, God.”
The hot tub, my almost-confession.
I press the heels of my palms into my eye sockets until it hurts. That wasn’t what I meant, and anyway, it was ridiculous to pretend I couldn't love him when I already did. And still do.
I've interrogated the memory of that last night countless times, picking it apart to figure out where we went wrong. Tangled in sheets, he'd slipped out while I was in such a state of bliss I hadn't fully registered'see you next winter'passed my lips. Was he mad I didn't say a proper goodbye? Should I have been mad he didn't either?
“It was never because I didn’t want you,” he continues. “It’s because I wanted you so much it scared me you might not want me back. I thought it was for the best, throwing myself into work and trying not to think about you.”
“That's why you didn’t come back?”
He nods and sniffs. “The first year, I really did have to work. Production was behind, I pulled eighteen-hour days to keep things on track. It was the worst Christmasever.”
“And last year?”
“Honestly? There’s no reason I couldn’t have come last year.”
“The redhead. Was she the reason you stayed?”
He twists his head and takes a deep, shaky breath.
“I told you we were never serious. I was coming, I had a ticket booked, and I’d have called it off with her, but I got in my head and convinced myself you’d probably met someone.”
That is the exact reason why this is impossible, and why our pact needs to end. It isn’t sustainable. One of these days we’ll meet other people who we want something more from, and if that happened while we’d made some sort of commitment to each other, we’d never recover. I certainly wouldn’t be able to live here, surrounded by memories of him.
How long can we keep doing this? Am I going to die knowing I had a lot of great sex but nobody ever truly loved me because I held out for him?
“Well, what if I had Ryan? What if I was seeing someone this year?”
“I’d have kicked his ass,” he grumbles, throwing me his best frown.
“Same way you kicked Cameron’s ass earlier and got turfed out in the cold by your dad?” His eyebrows knit together, and I smooth them out with my thumb. “Hannah told me.”
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he says.
“You’ve been drinking. Let’s forget this conversation happened and go get some sleep.”
“I can’t forget anything about you. Not ever. You’re my North Star. You always guide me home.”
He pulls a blanket from the back of the sofa and drapes it over us. We lay entwined for a while, in silence but for the sound of our breathing and the low hum of the refrigerator. Outside, the moon is full and high above the mountain. When we were kids, it gave me suchcomfort to know we could look up and see the same sky, same stars. We never get the chance now we live in different time zones.
“Can you lie to me?” he asks sleepily.
“Hmm?”
“I know you said there’s no world where we work, but can you pretend, like old times?”
“Ryan.” My eyes squeeze shut, and he rolls to his side, burrowing his face against my stomach.
“Please?”
We should be happy right now. He’s here, in my arms, and in my house. It should be enough, but it’s torture, and the more we do this, the worse it gets. A little daydreaming can’t make it any more painful than it already is.
