24. Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Four
Thea
I wake to the smell of bacon filling my living room and a sore neck from sleeping on the couch. I haven’t opened my eyes yet, allowing my ears to assess whatever is happening before I do. All the events from last night come crashing back to me full force. I’m not as angry though, I mostly feel numb now. I wonder how much he remembers since he’s apparently cooking himself a goddamn meal in my kitchen.
I let my eyes slowly blink open, squinting as the bright morning light shines in on my face through the windows. He hasn’t noticed I’m awake yet which is perfectly fine with me, it gives me an extra moment to decide how to handle things. Last night would have been the more opportune time to come up with the morning-after plan, but it was late, and I was done thinking about it for the night. Pressing firmly into the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger, I decide maybe it’s for the best that we talk before I kick him out.
I take another second before bringing attention to myself. My eyes drag down his body, annoyed that he’s dressed in his pants from last night but seems to have forgotten his shirt in my bedroom.
I sit up, allowing the blanket to fall from my chest and swing my legs onto the floor. The instant I do, he turns to face me. There are dark circles under his eyes like he didn’t sleep well.
Serves him right.
I yawn and stretch when he says, “Hey… I, uhh, I made you breakfast.”
I’ve turned my gaze to my phone on the end table, checking for notifications before responding to him. Brooks and Ripley have texted, checking in on me. I leave them unanswered for now. “I can see that. Shirtless too, how bold of you.” My voice is cold and sounds bored despite my heart still actively breaking in my chest.
“I just—”
“We should talk,” I cut him off, not wanting to hear whatever excuse he’s about to use to try and douse the fire he created. I can tell by the look on his face that he remembers enough about last night to know exactly what I’m talking about. “About more than just last night,” I add, making his brows crease.
“Okay… yeah, that’s fair, we probably should.” He turns off the stove, then he’s walking toward me, the breakfast he was making forgotten. He sits down on the other end of the couch, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his thighs. Neither of us speaks, we just sit in silence, letting it coat the room in more tension than I knew was possible.
“You cheated on your fiancée, Cary…” I keep my gaze aimed at my hands in my lap, twisting the lemon ring he gave me when we were kids. The one I just put back on my finger a few days ago after years of avoiding it like the plague.
Internally, I’m attempting to find the good in our relationship again, the memories of the Cary I knew when I was a kid, the Cary who would never betray me—or anyone else—like this. This stupid lemon ring is the only thing keeping me from screaming at him. I know who he is. Or, at least, who he used to be. That’s the man I love, not the one in front of me who cheats on women and breaks hearts like there are no consequences.
“And you cheated on Ripley, how is that any different, Thea?” he shoots back, venom filling his voice with his accusation.
Thea. Not Lemon. Why does that hurt so much?
I shake my head, still twisting the ring around and around. “It’s not the same. You know it’s not the same.”
He’s getting heated now, standing up from the couch, and throwing his arms in the air as he says incredulously, “Not the same? Not the fucking same?”
I don’t answer him, I don’t look at him, I just sit there. The ring spinning, spinning, spinning.
“Thea, look at me,” he demands, his eyes boring a hole into my skin like he can see all the way into my soul. I look up to him wordlessly, refusing to give him more. My silence only makes him madder. Anger sparks in his beautiful cerulean eyes. “How the fuck is it not the same?” he asks again.
“It’s just… not,” I say simply with a shrug of my shoulders, averting my eyes away from him again to a random spot on the wall.
His voice is louder now, booming through the living room as he throws another insult my way. “So you’re really going to pretend that you fucking me while dating Ripley isn’t just as bad as what I did? You’re going to sit there and fucking pretend you didn’t cheat too? Really?” I’ve never heard him speak so harshly toward me. Even during our worst fights, he’s never been this mean.
The tears come quickly as his words settle in the air around us. I can’t keep them from falling, and I wouldn’t even if I could. He can witness the hurt he brought on. He can watch the tears falling from my eyes, and I hope it brings him as much pain as he’s causing me. I let my own anger bubble back up; I let it take over so the sadness doesn’t drag me down.
“I wasn’t dating anyone while fucking you, so you can take your callous fucking words and shove them up your ass, Carrington,” I spit back at him, staring right into his eyes as I spill the truth.
His body jumps back like he’s been shot right in the chest as he stutters out, “Wh—what? No. I know what I saw and what I heard.”
I scoff and shake my head in disbelief. “You saw and heard what you wanted. I never once called him my boyfriend, and he never called me his girlfriend. He has never been anything but my friend.”
Cary is shaking his head in denial now, still not believing what I’m telling him. “No, there’s no fucking way he’d be stupid enough to only be casual or whatever with you. There’s no way. I don’t believe it.”
I jump up from the couch so I’m standing right in front of him now. Not entirely sure how someone so smart can be so dense. “Oh my God, Cary, he’s gay! Okay?” Immediately my hand flies to my mouth, and my eyes go wide. “Fuck. Fuck, Fuck, Fuck! I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”
I can’t believe I just outed Ripley.
Cary’s face falls as he watches me start to panic. I can see he’s trying to make sense of what I’ve told him, and the silence lingers between us.
“Hey, hey, it’s fine. Okay? I won’t tell anyone. His secret is safe with me, I promise,” he assures me as he places his hands on each of my shoulders, looking down and forcing my eyes to find his own. His tone much calmer than a few moments ago.
He pulls me into a hug as I nod my head to him. I’m still in shock that I let it slip, he’d just made me so mad, and he wasn’t understanding. His hand is rubbing circles on my back as I snap out of it and realize I can’t allow him to comfort me anymore. I pull myself out of his arms and sit back down on the couch with my head in my hands.
He’s standing in the middle of the living room now, staring at me like he isn’t sure where to go from here. Finally, he says, “What about your date nights? And him calling you babe? Why do all of that in the first place?”
Taking a deep breath, I try to calm myself down before answering him. “The babe thing is just a joke. It all started as us hanging out so we didn’t die of boredom here. After seeing us out a couple of times, people started talking, wondering if we were dating. Everyone at Louie’s would be like ‘this must be date night,’ so we just… went along with it. Of course, it spread like wildfire, and suddenly, the whole town knew about us. And it kind of worked out great because Shelley stopped trying to set me up with her cousin’s best friend, and Mrs. Davis left me alone about all her great-nephews she wanted to introduce me to.” My eyes finally move back to him like a magnet. The couch dips a little as he sits back down at the other end.
“And Ripley…” he starts, keeping his eyes on the floor.
“Ripley stopped getting badgered about why he never dated. He isn’t ready to come out, at least… not here…” I don’t tell him exactly what I mean by that and, thankfully, he doesn’t ask.
“So you… never cheated on him.”
“I never cheated on anyone… just… became the other woman in your relationship.” I sigh, still not sure how I managed to get myself mixed up in this kind of drama. “Do you understand the position you put me in? How it feels to be this person? To know I helped you hurt another woman?”
“You could never be ‘the other woman’ for me, Thea.” The words come out sounding so certain, like there’s no doubt in his mind. He must know it makes him seem like a terrible person even if the words he’s saying are sweet. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about it all to be honest. How can I love someone who slept with me while engaged to another woman? A man who didn’t even tell me he was with someone. The whole thing is making my head spin.
I decide to push him on his statement because, regardless of our relationship, he asked another woman to marry him. He took that leap with someone else. “But I am, Cary. You moved on, you asked someone else to marry you. How does that not make me the other woman in your life?”
He runs his hand down his face like he’s preparing himself for what he’s about to say. “Do you seriously think it’s possible for me to move on from you? I know it may look like I did. I didn’t realize until I came back and saw you that I’ve been waiting for you for eight fucking years, Thea. There’s no moving on from you. From the moment I met you, I was fucking doomed to love you for the rest of my life. You left me , remember?”
Those last words have my heart in a chokehold, squeezing the remaining life out of it. “Why—why didn’t you come for me then? You let me go so fucking easily… I thought—I thought you didn’t want me anymore…”
The noise that leaves his mouth sounds like someone knocked the breath out of him. “Didn’t—what? You thought I didn’t want you? Thea, I was planning to propose to you the night you left. All of our friends were waiting inside of that restaurant. Instead, I had to tell them you’d left, and I didn’t know when or if you were coming back.” He pauses, but I can’t make words come out in response, all I can do is stare down at my hands again as I try to sort through what he’s saying. As I try to not break from his words right here on this couch. I had no idea he’d planned on proposing, no inkling that dinner was anything more than just the first night in his new position like I was told.
“You were miserable when we lived here. Then when we moved to Seattle, you eventually became miserable there too. I don’t know what I was supposed to think when I was the only common denominator between the two. And with the way you left… you made it look so easy, Thea. So I assumed you were the one who didn’t want this relationship anymore. And it wasn’t like I ever got the chance to ask you. You ended us with one fucking phone call. Going after you felt selfish at that point, when it was so clear you didn’t want this anymore.”
My eyes shoot up to find his face. I never knew he felt that way. I’ve never heard him discuss his feelings like this. I never knew he understood how unhappy I was. It was never about him though. He was the only thing holding me together. “You… knew…?”
A sarcastic laugh escapes him. “Yeah, I fucking knew. I was constantly walking on eggshells around you. I didn’t feel like I could do or say anything right. Everything I said and did just seemed to make it worse. And I didn’t know what was wrong or how to even tr—”
“Your dreams came true, Cary! You got everything you wanted,” I’m screaming now, letting my voice rise with the emotions thrumming through me. “And it all just fell into your lap. You made connections with your instructors, who then gave you these amazing opportunities. I was drowning. Constantly floundering through life there. Nothing was working out. It felt like I was fighting a never-ending uphill battle.” I pause, taking one full second to inhale a deep breath before I continue with the truth I’m finally ready to say. “All I fucking wanted was to succeed, but being in Seattle, constantly being told I wasn’t a good enough option for people… it’s the worst I’ve ever felt about myself.” My voice sounds breathless as my past insecurities creep into my present.
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before? I was there, Thea. I was right fucking there waiting for you to talk to me instead of crying in the bathroom. The first time, I expected you to come out and talk to me about it, to let me in. You never did. Every fucking time, you came out and acted like nothing happened. Like you didn’t just spend ten solid minutes bawling on the bathroom floor. What was I supposed to do with that? I didn’t even know how to talk about my own emotions without someone else bringing them up, so I wasn’t capable of pushing you to talk about yours.”
A tear falls down my cheek at his words. I never realized that me hurting was hurting him, but I see it now. I feel it in my soul. I’d never meant to cause him any pain. I’d tried to keep it close enough to my chest that it didn’t burden him too. I’d just kept hoping it would go away. “I don’t know, but I never meant to hurt you…”
Once again, he scoffs. “You leaving is what hurt me, Thea. It fucking gutted me.”
Another tear falls. “Cary, I—I didn’t want to leave you . The last thing I wanted was to leave you. But I also didn’t want to hold you back. I knew you’d choose me over your dream if I asked you to come with me, and I couldn’t let you do that.”
He jumps up from the couch again, pacing the room in front of me a couple of times before he finally stops. “No, you don’t get to do that. My dream meant nothing—fucking nothing—without you, Thea. I was a husk of a man after you left. Nothing felt right, nothing made me feel alive anymore. Fuck. The most alive I’ve felt in the last eight years has been the moments I was in your kitchen. At your restaurant. With your staff and you there. Don’t you get it? You took my choice away. You made all the choices for the both of us, and I got no fucking say in it. Do you realize how fucked up that is?”
I just stare at him, breathing in and out, as I let my anger come back up to the surface. I’m aware of how much work he must have done to be able to be so emotionally open with me, but I can’t see past my anger right now.
I know I’ve made mistakes. I didn’t handle things as well as I could have, but I was young. I was a fish out of water in Seattle. Then my mom got sick, and I didn’t know how to deal with it all. I made decisions in the heat of the moment, thinking it was what was best for us both. And yes, I’d hurt us both in the process. What I didn’t do was replace him with someone new. I didn’t cheat on my fucking partner with him. He doesn’t get to act like our mistakes are equal because they aren’t.
“Not as fucked up as cheating on the person you planned to marry,” I grit out before standing up from the couch and making my way to my bedroom. I grab his shirt from my floor and stomp out to the living room. Tossing the shirt at Cary, I turn back to my bedroom, shooting over my shoulder, “Get out of my fucking house.”
I slam the door behind me then slide down it with my hands over my face to cover the noise of my impending breakdown. Just a few seconds later, I hear the front door slam shut in retaliation, and the sound allows the dam inside my heart to break free. The storm that had been brewing in my chest is released and ready to tear me apart until there is nothing left.