Chapter Nine #2
“Nothing about your life is unfortunate,” he says seriously.
“I mean it, Olive. You have an amazing mom. And you do really well in school. And you’re setting yourself up for the future you want—those are all very admirable things.
” It’s hard to miss the melancholy in his voice when he says it, though.
“Yeah,” I whisper, almost to myself. I’m not even sure he can hear me over the dull roaring of the plane’s engine.
Am I really setting myself up for the future I want? I wonder, keeping that one to myself. Because the future I wanted never included an unfaithful partner—or an inattentive one, either. And it seems like at the moment, that’s the situation I’m presented with.
It also didn’t include Tyler Ferris showing back up in my life, but that’s another thing that’s out of my control, even if I’m still flipping out internally about it, because how did that happen?
I give myself a hard mental shake. It’s better to focus on Jack—whatever’s going on there—than digging too deep into my existential crisis right now.
“Something just doesn’t feel right,” I say while fiddling with the cool metal of the seat’s buckle. “I keep trying to tell myself I’m crazy, or I’m paranoid, or maybe he’s busy with classes—”
“Bullshit.” The warmth in Tyler’s voice is gone, now hard as flint.
“Anyone who knows even a single thing about you would know you’re too great of a person to ignore.
He’s an idiot if he can’t see that. When we were dating—” He stops there, jaw set in a hard line, but the rest of his sentence floats in my mind, as if he’d spoken it aloud, my heart filling in the blanks.
When we were dating, there was never a day where I wouldn’t talk to you.
Just because he’s right doesn’t mean that I can let us walk back into the past. Not when I know that road isn’t leading to any sort of good future. “When we were dating was different, Tyler. We…we didn’t work out.”
He shakes his head vigorously, upset. “That’s not true. You thought we wouldn’t work out in the long-term. You never gave me the chance to even prove to you that I could change. That I could be better. That I could come up with a solid life plan that satisfied you—”
If my knees weren’t crammed against the seat in front of me, this would be the perfect moment to stand up in frustration.
“That’s part of the problem!” My whisper-hissing must be loud, because the disgruntled father of two rowdy toddlers in front of me whips his head around and gives me a pleading look.
They just fell asleep, he mouths, motioning to the seats on either side of him, presumably containing the sleeping toddlers in question.
Not wanting to be one of Those People? on the plane, I slump back against my seat and sigh.
“That’s part of the problem, Tyler. I didn’t want you to come up with a random career or a random life plan to keep me and to make me happy.
I wanted you to want it. I wanted you to be more responsible.
Because it’s not a big deal now, but we’re going to get older, and it’s going to become a much bigger deal.
I can’t be with someone who isn’t ready to face the future in the same way I am.
And I didn’t want to stay in a relationship where I saw the dead end coming from a mile away. ”
He looks like I’ve slapped him, leaning so far back over the armrest of his seat that he’s practically in the aisle. “Is that what you saw us as, Olive? A dead end?” The hurt is written clear as day across his face, sharp and brutal.
And it makes me feel like a monster. My chest constricts so tight that I wish the oxygen masks would drop down from above our seats so I could push some cool, clean air into my lungs and revive myself after realizing that I said an awful, awful thing that I never should have.
“Bad choice of words,” Cranky Lady mutters under her breath next to me, refreshed from her nap and now toying with her e-reader. And yeah, maybe they weren’t the best words I could’ve used, but it doesn’t make them any less true.
But, based on the way Tyler’s looking at me with such a wounded expression, it doesn’t make me any less monstrous, either.
A flight attendant comes by again with the drink cart, glancing at us as she scoots by, sensing we aren’t in the mood for refreshments.
My voice is quiet. “We were just too different. Too different where it matters. The kind of different that can’t be fixed.”
Tyler won’t have it. “Or you’re afraid of ending up in a situation like your mom.
A situation I swore I’d never put you in, and even up until our last day together, I never had any intentions of doing that.
I had my own way of doing things, and you didn’t like it.
” He’s fidgeting around in his seat now, knuckles turning white as he grips the armrests, eyes darting to the air-conditioning vents, the screens, the other passengers—anything but my face.
I feel naked and cold, sliced clean through with his accusation about my mother. “That’s not it, Tyler. We weren’t a good match. Sometimes good things just run their course. It was never anything more sinister.”
Tyler sighs, muttering something under his breath that I can’t catch, only grasping the tail end: “…agree with that.” Then he shakes his head, standing up abruptly and stepping into the aisle.
A mix of anger and hurt is radiating across his face.
“I’m sorry, Olive. I need a breather.” He leaves me blinking in surprise, watching him take off down the crowded aisle.