Chapter 5 #2
If strangers is what we are, then we are the most intimate of strangers.
I glance at the inside of the restaurant, searching for the waiter who will have my drink.
A frozen margarita does sound good, though I find it mildly annoying that he paid attention to our conversation at the pool yesterday and that he ordered it without asking me and that now I’m stuck here if I want that drink.
And I do want that drink. Once again, I find myself stuck somewhere, waiting on a drink.
“I’ll stay until my drink arrives,” I say. “But I’m not sitting.”
I cross my arms in front of myself, making it clear that I am here practically against my will. I drop my gaze to the ground, my freshly manicured toes peeking out from the top strap of my worn sandals. I scrape my foot along the concrete. He can momentarily trap me here, but he can’t make me talk.
“Then I’ll cut to the chase. I want to apologize,” he says.
I snap my head up, searching his eyes for more information. They reveal nothing but honestly spoken words.
“For what?”
He raises his eyebrows at me as if to ask, “Isn’t it obvious?”
My jaw loosens. I hadn’t realized I was clenching it so hard.
My heart beats too hard, a rapid fluttering at my neck and in my chest. He wants to apologize…
for what happened over a decade ago? What is that going to do?
He apologized when he broke up with me. I’ve lived eleven years without more apologies.
I can live the rest of my life without this.
I’m about to tell him that when something inside of me protests. A small voice I can barely hear over the clanging of my pulse, the blood whooshing in my ears.
He knows he hurt me, but he has no idea how bad. Tell him how much he hurt you. Let him tell you to your face that he regrets what he did.
I round the table he’s sitting at, pulling out the chair farthest away but directly across from him just as the waiter arrives to drop off our drinks.
“One drink,” I say. I’m a grown-ass adult and I can have a drink with my ex-boyfriend without opening old wounds or being charmed by him again. In fact, after a cry in the shower yesterday and a good night’s sleep, I feel confident I can escape this conversation without any tears.
“Did you bring a book to read during dinner?” He gestures to my e-reader, set on the table screen-down under my purse.
“My books are my dinner companions.”
“And your pool companion and I’m guessing your bed companion as well.”
His tone is suggestive, and my cheeks burn at the implications of bedmates. He did this yesterday: spicy, flirty comments. But I’m not falling for it. I am perfectly capable of resisting his charms.
I sip on my frozen margarita. It’s tangy but not too sour, sweet but not saccharine. At least if this conversation goes sideways, the margarita was perfection.
“Time is ticking,” I say, tapping a nail against my margarita glass.
But Miles is cool as a cucumber. This quality in him, calm under pressure, is what made him an excellent hockey player.
He’s the most focused, the most locked in when he’s against the clock.
He probably likes the pressure of a countdown.
In college, he’d be calm and cool during finals—a welcome steadiness to my stressed-too-easily tendencies.
He’s leaned back in his chair, one arm resting on the table.
His fitted, collared, short-sleeved top isn’t hiding anything except the silver chain tucked underneath, just a sliver of it glinting at his neck.
In fact, it only accentuates the bulge of his biceps.
He’s always had a good physique, but now he’s got the body of a man, not just a college boy.
His forearm, casually resting on the table holding his drink—some brown liquid over ice—like he’s got all the time in the world, looks good enough to bite.
His dark brown hair is styled well, and although it’s longer than it was in college, it’s still shorter on the sides than it is on the top.
Running my hands through that hair was a favorite activity of mine in college, and even now, my fingers itch to feel the silky strands fall between my fingers again.
He can’t read my thoughts, but the way he’s looking at me right now makes me wonder if he might actually be capable of it.
There’s a dark, amused look in his eye. Self-conscious, I pick up my glass and take a few hefty gulps of my drink.
I need to get away from this man and his temptation, and the only way I’ll do that is by finishing this drink.
But I drank the frozen beverage way too fast. I pinch the bridge of my nose, scrunching my face.
“Oh no, did you—”
“Brain freeze,” I say, holding up a hand. “I’m okay, just…”
It passes, the icy cold slap on my sinuses fading with every second.
“Here.” He nudges the basket of chips on the table toward me, and I indulge. I can’t pass up a salty snack. “I have guacamole on the way too.”
“I’m not eating with you, Miles.” I blink away the last of the brain freeze.
“We don’t have to talk. You’re welcome to read and ignore me the whole time.”
“Tempting.”
“Is that all that’s tempting you, Abby?”
The way he says my name sends a shiver down my spine, but I clench every muscle in my body to keep from actually moving. There’s no way I’m going to show him the effect he has on me. Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile.
“You had an apology for me, Miles?”
His lips turn up into a smile, and he casts his gaze downward, acknowledging my resistance to his charms.
“I do.” He clears his throat. “I know I apologized when I broke up with you, but I don’t think I had any idea how truly sorry I was. Or how sorry I would be. You deserved better than a phone call. I should have come talk to you. I should have had a conversation with you. And I’m sorry.”
He leans forward as he speaks, resting both forearms on the table. He clutches his glass with both hands, like it’s what’s anchoring him to the spot.
To his credit, he never averts his eyes from mine.
And his apology lands. Rather than hit me like a freight train, it settles on me like a blanket.
It isn’t surprising. He’s articulating something I said myself many, many times.
He’s exactly right. I did deserve a face-to-face conversation.
I did deserve better than a phone call. And his acknowledgment of that, even after all this time, feels good.
If not for me, then for twenty-two-year-old Abby, who thought she was going to marry this man.
“Thank you,” I say.
He gives me a solemn nod.
Tenderness stretches across the space between us, and as the seconds pass, remnants of the love we once shared rise to the surface, objects with no weight in a body of water.
Nostalgia rips through my chest, not a soft feather-light feeling tickling at my memory, but rather a violent thing.
My chest aches and the backs of my eyes sting with tears.
In another world, we’re at this same table in Cabo in the heat of the summer, celebrating an anniversary. Our fingers intertwined, our lives woven together. In that world, our love isn’t a memory, but a reality.
In this one, though, we just have this moment. Connected briefly by his apology and my gratitude.
The spell breaks when a waiter stops by to ask if we’re ready to order.
We beg him off, insisting on a few more minutes, and he leaves us alone.
Miles and I meet each other’s eyes again, but the moment has passed.
“You still have a lot of drink left—does that mean you’re staying?” he asks.
I sink my top teeth into my bottom lip. I got my apology; I suppose I could leave.
But curiosity paws at me, an insistent cat who wants answers.
“If you’ll indulge me a few questions,” I say.
“Ask away,” he says, a slow smile breaking over his face. “Do I also get to ask you questions?”
“A question for a question seems fair.”
“Ladies first.” He leans back again and lifts his glass to indicate that I should open the line of questions.
“Why don’t you play hockey anymore?” I ask.
His smile falters, shadows shifting on his face. His distaste for this topic is not subtle. A passing waiter could read the sudden foul mood radiating off of him.
“Injury,” he says simply. He takes a big gulp of his drink after that. Yesterday, there was some ice in his tone, but today, it’s more neutral. I can’t figure out if he’s okay with the career change or if it still bothers him.
“How long ago was that?” I ask.
“Ah, ah. It’s my turn for a question.” His smile returns, but this time it’s that devilish grin. There’s a flutter in my stomach at that smile. An old reaction to a familiar look.
“Are you still teaching?” he asks.
“I am,” I say, trying to infuse some pride into the two words and adding a smile at the end, just to make it clear how I feel about teaching.
“What is that fake-ass smile?” he asks with a snort.
“What? I am not— It wasn’t fake.”
It might have been a little forced, but it wasn’t fake.
I do like teaching. I like my students and my coworkers, who really rallied around me after Todd left.
A couple of them came and helped me unpack and decorate my new apartment, and then they made a meal train for the first two weeks I lived by myself and sent me flowers on my birthday in March.
If I left my job, I’d be losing my community.
“It was something,” he says, an eyebrow raised in challenge.
“It— I had— This year was hard.”
His brows knit together, and he leans in, elbows on the table again. “Did something happen?”