Page 104 of Backslide
“Thank you for saying that,” I say now. Because that’s what I can offer. That’s what is true. I’m grateful for what he’s saying, how it’sreleasing me from the shackles of this decades-long hurt. “I think I owe you an apology too,” I add, forcing the words out. “I hated that feeling of needing you, of not having you show up for me so much that a switch just flipped inside me. And I decided I wasn’t going to consider you in any of my plans.”
“I’m not going to lie,” he says, exhaling. Even now, some light goes out of his face at the memory. “It stung so bad. But that was the smart thing to do, after what I did. Considering how I’d been acting.”
“Maybe,” I nod. “Like I said, I’d rather be alone than wrong. So, I wiped you out of my future.”
“Well, to be fair, I wiped myself out of your future—at the party. As long as we’re airing all the dirty laundry.”
I open my mouth to respond, but all that comes out is an almost inaudible “Why?”
He closes his eyes for a brief beat, shakes his head. “I think I was just in search of an escape… from myself, from reality. It’s hard to explain, but it was torture for me to seeyouseemein those days. I felt like garbage every time you looked at me—pity or confusion or hope in your eyes. And, with you, I couldn’t hide. You have always been able to see me. Likeactuallysee me.”
I nod. Because this all makes sense but also doesn’t change anything.
“But that’s not an excuse,” he adds, as if he knows exactly what’s in my head. “The first mistake was egregious enough. I didn’t need to compound it by hooking up with someone else.”
I sigh. “Yeah, maybe let’s not dwell on that.” Because, even so many years later, I can’t think of that night without hurt taking over. I shake my head, memories flooding through me like something visceral. “God. If you could have seen the look on Lydia’s face when she told me—”
“Told you?”
I cringe. Am barely able to form the words: “She made sure I saw. Pointed you out, kissing her friend.”
He swallows, hard. “Lydia pointed us out?”
“Yeah. And she was over the fucking moon.”
He nods carefully. “Explains why you hate her.”
“I always hated her.”
“Fair enough.”
But now I’m worked up. “She beelined for every good-looking guy who showed a modicum of interest in me,” I say, still irate after all these years. “Even you! And when that didn’t work, in a vulnerable moment for us, she basically pimped out her friend to you.”
He rubs a hand across his eyes, sighs.That’s fact.
“I’m so sorry I took the bait, gave her extra ammunition.”
He looks like he really is.
But now I’m on a tear. “She still does it, by the way—chases every hot dude who looks at me anytime we’re forced together for Cara. I mean, she hasn’t been able to keep her hands off you this whole trip!”
“Wait.” He cocks his head to one side, a bit of fire sparking in his eyes. “Are you calling me hot?”
“That’s what you took from what I just said?”
“Pretty much.” He shoots me a small smile that takes me down. “At least that seemed like the good part.”
“Yeah, well. You’reokay.”
He gives me a look that calls me on my bullshit. “You’re okay too,” he says, his gaze dropping from my eyes, down to my lips, down my body, and then back up again.
With effort, I stop myself from doing the same to him.
My hand is still covering his, but now it feels conductive. It’s hard to focus on anything else. But again I feel like moving it is even more conspicuous.
“Anyway,” I say, trying to play it cool. “Now it’s all water under the bridge.”
“Right,” he says, eyeing me. And it feels like I’m being lit up from within.
