Chapter 19
C HAPTER 19
I’d fallen asleep in his arms. I’d woken up at least three times during the night and peered through the darkness at his profile.
I couldn’t stop marveling at the fact that I was sharing a bed with Ryan. The sex was one thing – holy cow was it ever – but actually sleeping with him was . . . so warm and wonderful and I wanted to hang onto him all night like a desperate sugar glider, but I also didn’t want to freak him out.
I didn’t want to freak myself out.
One day ago, I’d run away from him so that I didn’t have to say goodbye.
And the goodbye was still looming. I couldn’t afford to forget that.
When I woke up the next morning, Ryan was gone. He had texted me saying that he was going out to take pictures of the sunrise. I also got a text from Quinn.
Husband is off doing physical pursuits that I’m uninterested in. Do you have time to talk?
I hadn’t even told her that I was stuck in New Zealand. She probably thought she was texting me midday in Oregon.
Yes.
My phone rang. I picked it up. And I realized that I was about to have the conversation.
The one where I told her about me and Ryan, and everything.
“Hi,” I said immediately to my glowing friend on FaceTime, looking like a bedraggled rat who had just woken up, after a long night of being ravaged. Because that’s what I was.
“Hi,” said Quinn. “Where are . . .?”
“I’m in New Zealand,” I said. “I got stuck trying to leave.”
“Oh no. You can’t get a flight?”
“No. Ryan and I are stuck, actually.”
“Oh?” Quinn asked. Her expression became wary. “Are you . . . together?”
“Yes,” I said. “We got one of the last few vacation rentals remaining. Well, he did. He rescued me. If it wasn’t for Ryan, I would be sleeping in the airport.”
“No way.”
“It’s the weather. All the flights were canceled.”
“Oh no! I’m so sorry.”
I laughed. “I’m stuck in Queenstown, Quinn. It’s not a struggle.”
“With Ryan,” she said.
I let out a slow breath. “Quinn. I . . . I’m sleeping with Ryan.”
Suddenly, the image on the phone blurred as Quinn screamed. The phone stilled and I realized I was looking at the ceiling in Quinn’s hotel room.
I watched the screen, as Quinn appeared over the phone. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had to throw the phone across the room. Thankfully it landed on my bed. You are not .”
“I am.”
“No. Are you . . . are you going to marry him and have babies? Please say that you are, because I would love that more than anything.”
“No,” I said, sadness twisting my stomach. “It’s not . . . it’s not like that. But there have been a lot of things. The last few years. And then at the fifth wedding . . .”
“The what ?”
It took me a moment to realize she didn’t have a running number in her mind of all the weddings Ryan and I had been at together.
That was a me thing.
“The wedding in Leavenworth. Right after Josh and I broke up. The Christmas wedding that I did. We . . . something happened. He and I kissed. But it ended really badly. Because of me. It was my fault.”
“You always said that you hated him.”
“Well, I thought that I did. I thought that was why things were weird between us, because we hated each other. But it turned out that actually we were attracted to each other. Surprise.”
“I really hate to tell you this,” said Quinn. “But I knew that you were.”
“ What? ”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to say it like that. Like there are all these things about you that you don’t know that I do. That isn’t what I’m trying to get across here. But you’re very certain, Poppy. About how you feel. About everything. Everything you think, everything you do. And nobody can tell you anything.”
I had always thought of myself as a people pleaser. Not somebody who was stubborn.
“I don’t think that I’m like that.”
“Just about really specific things. Because you have a way that you want your life to go. You don’t want to be afraid. You latched onto Josh after college and I didn’t think that you were a great couple, but I saw that he made you feel safe. And I knew that for you that was the most important thing. But I could see that when it came to you and Ryan, you both protested a little bit too much. And I always thought that you guys would be a way better couple.”
“We aren’t a couple,” I said. “He’s never had a girlfriend before.”
“Did it occur to you that it’s because he has feelings for you?”
“What?”
“I think he has feelings for you.”
“He’s attracted to me,” I said. “He has been. That’s not the same as having feelings.”
“I think he does.”
For some reason that made me feel panicked. Like standing at the bottom of a mountain I knew I couldn’t climb without dying.
“How is your honeymoon going?” I really wanted to change the subject. “How is life as a married woman?”
“Amazing. Fantastic. Fiji is great. And I love my husband.”
“You want to tell me about the sex?”
“We didn’t wait till our wedding night, Poppy. You’ve already heard about the sex. In fact, I seem to recall I gave you the world’s most graphic monologue when I screwed him in Tahoe two hours after meeting him.”
She had. It was true. I knew things about Noah I couldn’t unknow. Things that made it hard to make eye contact with him sometimes.
“The sex we haven’t discussed is the sex that you and Ryan are having,” Quinn said.
I pressed my hand into my right eyeball. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I’m feeling. I’ve never done anything like this before. This sleeping with a guy when I don’t have a commitment thing. I don’t know why I’m doing it now. It’s just that it didn’t work anymore. To resist him. To not want him. But I decided that I didn’t want to do the love thing, and he really doesn’t want to do it. And we hated each other until a few days ago, so there’s no way that it’s something more than sex. Right?”
Quinn looked at me regretfully. “I really can’t answer that. Because I have never thought that you didn’t want love. I have never believed that you didn’t want to get married. I sure as hell never believed that a guy as lame as Josh had the power to take that desire away from you, and at the very least I didn’t think he had the right.”
I felt panicky. “I want to be safe, Quinn. And this thing with him doesn’t feel especially safe.”
“I have bad news for you, but caring about somebody doesn’t feel safe. Ever.”
“That’s really unfair. And easy for you to say. Because you have these great parents, and you have a good example for ways that life can work out and neither Ryan nor I can feel that level of certainty.”
“It’s not easy for me to say. I understand that your mom made it really hard for you to trust people.”
I was angry, because Quinn knew me. I was angry because she actually was one of the few people who could comment on my issues. But I didn’t want to think about what I could potentially have with Ryan. Because I didn’t want to care about him. Because if I did I knew that he would actually be able to hurt me. He had been there. Always there. This angry, completely unknowable presence in my life. He had been a constant.
What if I did something or said something, or asked for too much, and then there was nothing. The tenuous thread that had held us together all these years suddenly cut.
I felt like I was freefalling. Like I was on the edge of a revelation that I didn’t want to have.
“I’m never going to be able to hold onto him,” I said. “All this is ever going to be is the two of us dealing with this attraction that we have. This thing that we feel for each other. It’s not love. It’s not anything that domesticated.”
“You’re the one that managed to convince herself that love had to be domestic.”
“You and Noah haven’t done anything to convince me otherwise.”
“You haven’t seen us fight.”
“You told me that you were always certain of him.”
“I am. I’m still certain of him even when we fight. Even when things are hard. I was certain of him even while I told myself I was falling in love too fast. I tried to rationalize my feelings away, and that was foolish. It was bigger than we were. And something like that isn’t ever going to be comfortable the whole time.”
I didn’t like that. I didn’t like her challenging me. Because I had gone and put her and Noah into an unknowable, unquestionable box, and I preferred that.
Preferred the idea that they were experiencing something that mere mortals never could. Something I certainly didn’t have to worry about.
“I’m not certain of anything. Except for my house back in Pineville. And my career, I guess. When I go home, things are already going to be different. And Ryan is going to Europe. And I don’t have time for this.”
“You can’t plan everything.”
“Yes, I can. It worked for a really long time. I planned all the things. I planned my feelings. I planned my future. And it all fell apart, and nothing has been as easy since.”
“But have you ever wanted him back?”
No.
Never.
I’d been fine. Making cakes and living in the house by myself. And seeing Ryan across the street, and our eyes clashing and making sparks go off inside of me.
Hovering around the edges of memory, of kissing him.
I had been happier.
These past few days, finally being with him, talking to him. Getting to know him. To understand this man that had always been there, this unfathomable mystery, yes, I had been happier. But it wouldn’t last. And there was no way that I could force it to.
And I hated that.
But I couldn’t see a way around the fundamental problem here. I enjoyed being with him. He was . . . he was always going to be traveling. My life was back in Pineville. My grandmother’s house. My grandmother’s bakery.
And, even if we could ever integrate our lives, he was right. You couldn’t take the good only and leave the bad.
We were both carrying an awful lot of bad.
“Why do you look desolate?” Quinn asked.
“Change,” I said. Because it was true.
Suddenly I wanted to weep. Beneath the weight of everything that was different.
Quinn leaving, and Ryan and I sleeping together, and me knowing that I didn’t want to say goodbye, all the while knowing that I would. That I had to.
“Life always changes,” Quinn said.
“I don’t like it,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “But someday . . . someday you’ll be the one that wants to make a change, Poppy. And when you do, I think it’s only going to be for the best.”
“I hope so.”
I didn’t know why I said that. Because she was wrong. I didn’t want things to change. I wanted everything to go back to the way it was. I wanted my grandma. I wanted to sit at her kitchen counter and watch her make cookies. I wanted to be a little girl again. In Tahoe. Sitting between my mother, and my grandmother. Not understanding or knowing that everything was about to change. I wanted to go back to that one moment in my life when I felt like I had the two people I loved most in my life right there. When it felt like everything was going to be okay.
When I hadn’t been hurt yet.
But my grandmother was dead, and my mother might as well have been.
I needed to get back home. But I wasn’t in control of that.
There were just so many things happening that I didn’t like. I didn’t have control.
And the feelings in my chest were so much bigger than any I wanted to carry.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I said.
Because if I said no she would leave her honeymoon and come back to New Zealand to check on me. She was right. There were things in your life that you were supposed to want more than safety and staying the same. She had that. I wanted her to have it. But I didn’t want it. I desperately didn’t want to.
I also didn’t want to put a wrinkle in her happiness.
“Well, keep me posted on your travel situation. And the Ryan situation.”
I heard the front door open and close. “I better go,” I said. “The situation is here.”
Quinn pulled an over exaggerated excited face. “Go. Make the most of it.”
“Bye,” I said.
I stood up, and my phone vibrated, flashing an email notification. I paused and opened it, as I walked out into the front room of the house.
Ryan was standing there looking at his phone.
“I have a flight out,” he said.
I read my message. “So do I.”