Exit Event #4
“Three weeks,” he says. Traffic and the sounds of the park grow distant as she focuses on him. “I didn’t know where the fuck
you were, or what had happened, for three fucking weeks.”
“I know,” she whispers. “I’m—I’m sorry.”
Insufficient words, but what else is left? What else is left, between her and him?
Aleksandr sighs again, still watching the park.
It will get better, her friends had said. These people who care about her, people who saw her pain, and could not touch it—that she did not let
touch it—but who still tried to soothe her.
He did both, once. He did both.
And now, he finally looks at her.
As she meets his gaze—hard, and exhausted, the sharpness of gentle things, kindness once, closed to her—she thinks, again:
It won’t get better. It will just change.
It is changing, already: between them.
His glance slips down to her throat. The marks on her skin are probably not yet bruising but were placed there with enough
force that the shape of his hand is likely already visible.
The splinter of something he quickly shutters in his eyes—but it’s clear.
Regret.
For having touched her, or for having hurt her?
Lili brushes her hair over her shoulder, hiding the marks. She curls forward around her drawn-in knees, waiting for him to
speak.
“What do you want?” he asks, finally. “Why did you come here, really?”
Why did you leave?
“To apologize,” she says.
He laughs, without any humor. The sound startles her. “For what? For running away because you wanted to fuck someone else,
rather than ending things like an adult, first?”
Lili frowns. “What? No, that’s not—I didn’t end things because I wanted to sleep with someone else, Jesus, that’s . . . no,
no—” She breaks off, dragging her hands down her face. The mess, the sheer mess she has made. “I didn’t realize,” she starts
again. “What it all was—what it meant. How deep in we were, I didn’t realize it until the gala, and you—you—sorry, fuck—” Wiping her face, she tries to get rid of her fresh tears. Selfish, it feels so selfish to cry in front of him.
But Aleksandr frowns, crease between his brows. “What about the gala?”
“Afterwards,” she whispers. “When we were waiting for the car . . . I was teasing you about your ex, Nathalie, and you’d said—you
said, when I asked why it ended, that it wasn’t fair to her. That you hadn’t let her into your life—your home, your days,
your thoughts—that you didn’t see yourself marrying her, and I—I got so scared. Of what that meant, for how you had let me
in. For how we’d both started letting each other in—I . . . I was so scared.”
His jaw tightens. “And that made you go fuck somebody else? You ran because I implied that I could see myself marrying you?
That’s how much you didn’t want it?”
“No, I want that,” Lili admits, hugging her knees closer. “I want that so badly.”
The tense anger in his face shifts suddenly, taken off guard. “What?” he asks, cautious. “What do you mean?”
“I want you so badly it makes me feel sick,” she whispers, hoarse throat. “The not-having you, I mean—I feel sick with it.
And in the car, after the gala, when I was holding your hand, you were talking to Michael and Andrew, and I was looking at
your hand, without a wedding ring, and I—I wanted that, and I wasn’t prepared for it—the idea of you and me, making a life together, how we’d already started? I wasn’t watching
out for that, or intending for it to happen, and it was just—too much. It was too much to lose.”
“And that was a problem, to you?” Urgent, insistent, his gaze is severe and hurt. “Christ, why didn’t you fucking talk to me? Why did you—why the fuck—” He breaks off, dropping his head into his hands.
Lili can barely breathe. “Ask me,” she whispers, eyelashes cluttering together with tears. “If that’s what you want, I’ll
tell you. I’ll tell you anything.”
He exhales, heavy. “Why did you do it?” he asks. “Why did you leave, instead of saying any of this?”
“Before you did.”
He glances at her, a hard frown of confusion. “What?”
“I thought it was easier to hurt myself first. Before you did.”
A cold huff, the shape of laughter. “Have you considered that you hurt me, too?”
“Yes—but I didn’t think it would matter enough to you. In the long run, I mean.”
“Excuse me?” Sharp words, angry gaze.
“I tend not to think that I matter,” she whispers.
“Fuck, Lili.” He leans back against the bench, with exhausted exasperation. “I showed you how much you mattered to me, didn’t
I?”
“No, no—you did. You did. You . . . you took care of me, in a way I didn’t think was possible. I wasn’t looking for that—hadn’t even begun to think
about . . . the idea of a relationship that could last, that I would want to last. But it—it was there, and I only really
saw it, all of it, that night. How different our lives are, but somehow, how easily they’d started to come together? How you
travel too much, and I’d distrust and disparage most of your work, and you’re too rich, and I’d think that’s immoral, and
you’d likely find my agitation and activism irritating, and I’d think it’s a corruption of democracy, your business, and it’d
be such a cliché, the older man and younger woman, from the outside, but as a person, as people—I don’t think we were that
different. I think—I actually think you might be one of the closest people I’ve ever had in my life.”
Aleksandr’s gaze is hard. “And you thought somebody else was going to give you that?”
Lili shakes her head. “That’s not—that’s not what it was about.”
“Who was it, then? Who was worth this?”
“No one,” she insists. “It could have been anyone, it wasn’t about them. I think I just—I knew it was the one thing you wouldn’t
forgive.”
“And yet still, you come here, asking for forgiveness?”
“I know,” she whispers. “I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do,” Aleksandr says. “I don’t think you have any idea—any fucking idea—what this sounds like to me—what
this felt like, for me. And now, you just show up, with bullshit about apologies and mistakes, after three fucking weeks. You didn’t answer a single phone call or text, I had no idea where you were, until this morning. So, no, I don’t think you
have any fucking idea, what this felt like.”
“I tried calling you,” she whispers. “A few days after, but you—you’d blocked me.”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me, now?”
“Sasha, I—” He flinches. Her throat tightens with tears; a name she can’t use anymore. “Sorry, Aleksandr. I—I . . . I don’t
expect anything from you now, truly. But I just—I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t mean much—”
“Where were you?” he interrupts.
Lili pauses, taken aback by the unexpected question. “France,” she says. “Amina and Jamie were already going, and I—I wasn’t
in a good state. After I told Michael.”
“Michael,” he repeats, harsh. “Why did you tell Michael? Why didn’t you talk to me when I called?”
“I couldn’t look in your face,” she whispers. “I know that’s cowardly, but I . . . I didn’t know how I could look at you and
face what I’d done. But I’m—I’m trying to tell you, now.”
“For what purpose? Where could we possibly go from here?”
Nowhere, she thinks. There isn’t anywhere. This is done, between us.
She sighs, defeated. “I care about you. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I really do. And I thought I owed this to you.
To tell you what I did, and why, even though it was such a mistake. To help you let this go, if that’s what you needed—if
you hadn’t already moved on.”
“Move on,” Aleksandr repeats, some twist of spite. “I haven’t fucking moved on. Do you have any idea what I looked like? Losing
my head over some twenty-three-year-old child, who’d decided she’d had her fill of a fling, and disappeared? Like a fucking
fool, Lili—you made a fool of me—”
He breaks off, hard breath.
“What . . . what was it like, for you?” she asks, hesitant.
“Why, want a picture of the damage you caused?”
Lili stiffens. Tears sting again at her exhausted eyes. “No, that’s not—that’s—”
Aleksandr glances up. There’s a split second of softness—regret—when he sees her crying. Against his knee, his hand flexes,
once.
“I had no idea what happened,” he says, after a few moments. “At first, I thought something happened with your family, again.
I had no idea it could be about us, your roommate didn’t seem angry with me. She was just as confused as I was. I was just—God,
those first few days were hell, and I had no idea what it was about to become. I couldn’t sleep. I’d go for runs, or keep
working, and just constantly—constantly—look at my phone. Thinking about you, if you were alright, if you were safe. That’s . . . that’s what it was like for me,
at first.”
Aleksandr lets out a breath, before he continues. “I kept looking at the space where you’d kept your fucking toothbrush, like
some idiot. Like it had something to say. I kept trying to find the tipping point—the gala, I wondered if it was too much,
overall. When we’d gotten home, afterwards, and we’d fucked, I thought maybe—for a moment, there—that something was wrong,
but I—you said you were alright. When I asked afterwards. You’d said you missed me.” Incredulity twists his voice, as if disgusted with himself that he’d believed that. “I had so little to go by, until
out of the blue, you tell Michael that you’ve fucked someone else. That’s it. For all I knew, you were fucking happy—”
“Did Michael think I looked happy?”
His jaw clenches. “No. But it’s hard to ever really tell what you think or feel.”
“That wasn’t exclusive to me,” Lili replies. Too late, she realizes it sounds close to a retort, and fuck, she didn’t mean
to snap at him.
But Aleksandr just shrugs, heavy with concession. “Fair enough,” he says. “I suppose we both failed with that, at different
scales.”
“I think it makes sense,” she murmurs. “Why we’re like that, guarded. I don’t mean that excuses what I did, but . . . given
our childhoods, what we each went through. It makes sense.”
Aleksandr frowns. “My childhood?”
“Oh. Michael—Michael told me some of it. When he tried to talk to me.”