Chapter 31
Chapter
“Don’t come over here, it’s not ready yet!” I shout over the sound of the range hood, my mushrooms and onions sizzling in a pool of garlic butter.
“I’m going to take a shower,” he calls back from the front foyer. “Be down in fifteen.”
Okay, I can do this. Fifteen more minutes is all I need to complete the finishing touches. Fifteen more minutes will also help me prepare for this conversation.
By 6:27 p.m. , I’m carefully pouring my sauce over the thick pillows of ravioli and sprinkling a dash of parsley on top for color. I’ve never been prouder of anything I’ve cooked.
“It smells delicious.” Adam leans over my shoulder to see what I’m doing.
“It looks delicious.” He gives me a kiss on the cheek, and I close my eyes because it feels too good.
His lips, him coming home to me, all of it.
This is all I’ve ever wanted, and I know I shouldn’t pop this bubble. “You didn’t have to do this,” he says.
“I wanted to.” I turn, slinging my arms around his neck to see that his hair is still a little damp, the whiff of his shampoo overpowering the smell of the food.
He gives me a tender kiss and his hands touch the skin underneath my shirt.
I let out a laugh as he travels close to the hem of my bra. “Stop! Sit down and wait to be served.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He squeezes my waist and sits at the table. “Were you able to find the pasta maker okay?”
I hesitate for a moment, like the question was accusatory.
“Mhm, it was under the cupboard like you said.” I bring over two plates, setting one in front of him and the other on my side of the table, then take a seat.
He takes a bite of the ravioli, and his eyes go wide. “June, this is delicious.”
“Really?” I smile.
“Really,” he says, nodding enthusiastically. “The oregano is a great touch.”
I’ll never know how he can taste even a dash of oregano.
“Good, I’m glad you like it.” I cut one of my raviolis in half and it’s perfect, if I do say so myself. The cheese fills the pocket to the brim and the sauce is glistening. My eyes focus on the tiny swirls of steam ascending.
“So, how was your day?” he asks.
“Oh, fine.” I nod. “How was yours?”
He places one of his elbows on the table. “Hey, are you okay?”
I play with my fork, moving it through the sauce, and then set it down against the shallow bowl. I’m not able to hold it in any longer. I take a deep breath and feel like water in a kettle about to reach its boiling point.
“What happened with Riley?” I ask.
Adam’s brows furrow. “What do you want to know?”
“You were engaged, Adam,” I say, like this is new information for him. For a brief moment, his eyes close, my reaction making sense now. “I saw a photo in your apartment…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry, but I saw it and—”
“I don’t care that you saw it,” he says gently.
“How could you not tell me something like that?” It comes out more hostile than intended, but I don’t take it back.
Adam wanted to spend the rest of his life with her—maybe he still wants to.
A part of me, the part that can’t help my insecurities, because I’m only human, now wonders if when he looks at me, he wants to be looking at her.
He stares at me, stunned. “I don’t know, because yeah, we got engaged, but we didn’t get married. I would’ve told you, June. We would’ve gotten there.”
I stand my ground. “That’s something you should have told me.”
“I tried,” Adam says, regretfully.
“When?” I shake my head.
“That night at Alden,” he says. “But you didn’t want to talk about our exes and—”
I gape. “You’re putting this on me?”
“No,” Adam says firmly. “No.”
“What happened between you two?” I ask, knowing it’s probably not my business.
“What happens in any relationship,” he says. “It just didn’t work out.”
I let out a doubtful laugh. “That’s it?”
“What are you getting at?” Adam frowns. “June, we don’t talk anymore. I promise.”
“That’s beside the point,” I fire back. “This is a whole part of your life you kept from me, Adam.”
“There was never the right opportunity to tell you,” he says.
“I think when she first came up would’ve been a great time.” I counter.
He grabs the back of his neck and squeezes it. “I told you it ended— that is the only part that matters, June. We were just starting to open up to each other. I wasn’t going to air all my dirty laundry, and I wouldn’t think you’d expect me to.”
“But that’s the thing, Adam, I’m not some stranger that you open up to after five or six dates. It’s me. You should’ve been honest with me.” He lets out a scoff and shakes his head. “What?” I say.
“I would love to be honest, June.” His gaze burns into mine. “Why did you leave?”
His question causes my stomach to lodge painfully into my lower abdomen. The minute I agreed to this deal to live together, I knew deep down this conversation would happen, that it would be impossible for us not to haveit.
“Does that even matter right now?” I ask defensively.
“I think I deserve to know, June,” he says.
I look away from him, because it’s too painful to see the look on his face. “I left for my career.” In hindsight, that is a big reason I left. “It wasn’t working out on Broadway, and I had that screen test lined up. I needed to do what was best for me.”
“What do you mean it wasn’t working out on Broadway?” He frowns. “What about Rent ?”
“I got taken off and they gave the role to my understudy,” I say, and look away, still humiliated all these years later.
“I-I didn’t know that…” Adam says.
“How would you? I never said anything.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He sounds hurt. “You could’ve told me.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” I shake my head, not wanting to relive that pain. “Besides, I’m sure you were busy ring shopping,” I say, and it sounds immature and spiteful, but I don’t care.
“I jumped into that relationship because of you,” he snaps back, turning the tables. “Besides, you’re the one who didn’t even want to be in a relationship, remember? And then out of nowhere, you and Liam were together.”
“That has nothing to do with this—”
“It has everything to do with this because you fucking left, June, ” he says with more emotion than I can handle. “You didn’t even have a conversation with me. What was I supposed to do?”
“So, your failed engagement is my fault?” I say.
“No, that’s completely on me,” he says. “But I’m talking about the choices you made.”
Our words are coming out fast and furious; I guess that makes sense after years of built-up tension. My heart and mind are racing—I want to make sure Adam knows how I really feel.
“Look, Adam, I’m sorry,” I say for the first time. “If I could do things over, I would.”
He waits a beat and then gives an exasperated laugh. “You’re sorry? After all of these years, that’s all you can say?”
“I made an irresponsible decision, and I should’ve handled it better,” I say. “I should’ve given you a heads-up or time to plan or sent Chloe to help—”
“This isn’t about the logistics, June.” He shakes his head and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“I’ve replayed the last decade over and over in my head, and there are things both of us could have done differently.
I don’t know where or when it went wrong, but I know you were more than a roommate and you were more than my best friend.
You can sit there and deny it all of these years later, but I know you felt the same.
And one day, you just left. You left this, you left us, like it was so easy. Like none of this mattered.”
“Of course it mattered!” A pain stabs through my chest, making it hard to breathe. “But what do you care? You seemed to move on pretty quickly,” I say, knowing that while I was gone, he just continued on with his life and didn’t bat an eye.
“Do you know what it was like to receive a goddamn text message from you saying that you weren’t coming back? To call you over and over again for months knowing damn well you blocked my number but hoping maybe today is the day she comes around— ”
“You were happy with her, Adam, I saw it with my own eyes.” I fight back tears. “Our time had run out.”
“That is not true, June.”
“It is.” I say to him what I’ve always told myself. “Me staying wouldn’t have changed that.”
“Do you know I lived in this house for five months after you left because I was stupid enough to think you’d come back?” he tells me. “Do you know how hard that was?”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure opening up your own restaurant, getting engaged, and finding a penthouse overlooking Central Park probably helped,” I say.
His eyes lock onto mine. “Did you know?”
“Did I know what?”
“That you weren’t coming back—”
“Adam—”
“Did you know you weren’t coming back when we stood in that very spot,” he says, pointing to the bottom of the stairs. “We said our goodbyes before your flight. Did you know you weren’t coming back?”
I remember that day vividly. My stuff was in the taxi and Adam was on his way to a shift at Luca.
There was nothing special about our conversation.
He said good luck and I said thanks. We didn’t hug and I tried not to look him in the eyes.
I clutched the one-way ticket in my pocket knowing it might be the last time we saw each other.
It was the toughest performance of my life.
There are a few seconds of silence. I can practically hear my heartbeat interlaced with the sound of Adam’s breathing.
“Yes,” I say, and Adam looks away, breaking our eye contact like he was hoping my answer would be different.
I wish it was. We sit in silence as I look down at the pasta that I used as a coping mechanism all day, now practically untouched, my appetite gone.
I break the silence with the one question I’ve been wondering about all day.
The one question that I’m terrified to know the answer to. “Who ended it?”
“What?” He looksup.
“The engagement,” I clarify. “Who ended it?”
Adam averts his gaze to his feet, as if he doesn’t want to see my reaction. “She did.”
And now it finally feels like the bubble has popped.
Fragments of my and Adam’s story floating around us as tiny droplets only to shrink, flatten, then disappear.
In what felt like a love story between the two of us, it is now revealed that I am in fact the supporting character, the second choice, the afterthought.
The two of us were brought together not by some act of fate, but because of a clause on a sheet on paper.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Adam loves me—there’s no faking what we share. What hurts is that it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough until I was the only option.
“I think I’m going to head to bed early,” I tell him, because there’s not much else to say.
“Yeah.” Adam stands up and nods, like he’s finally getting something that he didn’t before. “It’s probably better if I just…go home.”
“Okay,” I say softly, not stopping him.
Unlike last time, I’m able to step back from this moment and see what’s happening. Adam and I had our second chance, and we lost it. We tried, really tried, and it didn’t work.
After a few minutes, Adam comes downstairs with his luggage in hand. He grabs his coat from the closet and the gold key I left on the counter. When I hear the front door close, I know he’s not coming back.