Chapter XVII
XVII
An hour later, I’m wrapped in Reid’s T-shirt, the scent of him mingling with the neroli-and-pepper fragrance of the hotel body wash emanating off my skin.
Reid is sitting up in bed next to me, and his hand is absentmindedly stroking my thigh over the sheets as he checks his email on his phone.
He was supposed to read over some notes from the director tonight.
“Before you came here and ruined my plans,” he said with a smirk.
I haven’t felt like this in years. It’s not just the sex (though, god, the sex) but this easy intimacy afterward. Reid lifts an arm, and I curl into him. It’s almost a reflex, simple and unfussy, as though I’d learned it over thousands of nights just like this.
It was never like this with James. Even in our prime, we retreated to opposite sides of the bed after sex.
Is it possible to let this thing with Reid grow into something? The thought blooms in my chest, tentative and hopeful. Maybe we can find a path forward. Maybe I can be brave enough to try.
But then my eyes drift to his suitcase, already half packed. The hotel key card on the dresser. Everything that points to how fleeting this moment is, that we’re borrowing time we don’t really have.
And now I feel it—that dangerous jolt into something beyond simple affection. It threatens to rearrange my priorities, to upend the careful architecture I’ve built since my divorce. What happens if that tremor becomes an earthquake, toppling the life I’ve constructed?
But if I stop this now, maybe we can both walk away intact.
“I’m panicking,” I say suddenly, “and I don’t know why.”
Reid looks up from his phone, then sets it aside, and I watch his expression shift into concern. “Let’s talk about it, then.”
His kindness makes it harder, somehow. James would have sighed, told me I was being dramatic, and gone back to his phone. But Reid turns his attention to me, waiting.
I take a deep breath to shore myself up for what I need to say.
But then I shake my head, like I’m trying to rattle something loose.
I want to stop trying to craft a perfectly nuanced and diplomatic response.
I want to tell him exactly how I feel, despite how hard it is to translate those feelings into words.
“I care about you so much,” I blurt out, “and I don’t want to not see you again.”
Reid gives me a smile. “Sex was that good, huh?” I nudge him gently, and he catches my hand. “Hey. I feel the same way, Lili. Seriously.”
“So you would want to keep in touch?”
He laughs softly. “I would want to do more than keep in touch.”
“OK.” I take a deep breath and try to let it out slowly. I’m still lodged too far inside my panic to appreciate what we just admitted to each other. “And it’s not freaking you out at all? How suddenly this all happened?”
“Is it sudden? I would argue we’re three decades late.”
“Right.” I hold his hand tighter, as if to steady myself. “But how would we make this work? We live three thousand miles apart.”
“That’s what planes are for.”
“So we fly back and forth across the country until . . . what?”
“Until we find a place to land.”
“What about the girls?” The more granular this discussion becomes, the more my heart races. “We can’t uproot their lives. And what about our parents, and our work?”
“We can figure out the logistics,” Reid says. “Lili, these are all solvable problems if we want to solve them.”
The way he says it, so matter-of-fact—it terrifies me, because I understand he’s right. I know these aren’t real obstacles; they’re excuses. And the fact that he can see right through them so easily, that he won’t let me hide behind them, makes me feel more exposed than I have in ages.
For years, I could disappear behind the smoke screen of my arguments, free to talk myself into my anxieties without any pushback. But Reid sees everything. He sees that I’m afraid of making the wrong decision again, of dragging my daughter into yet another heartbreak.
But that doesn’t make my feelings any less present.
“Long distance doesn’t work,” I say. “It didn’t work for us the first time.” And there it is: The thing we’ve never discussed.
“We didn’t even try long distance the first time, Lili. We were just kids. We had no idea how to handle each other then.”
“And now we’re adults, and our lives are so much more complicated. I honestly don’t know if I’m strong enough to withstand another heartbreak. I need to be functional, and I will not be functional if you break my heart. There’s too much at stake.”
Reid is searching for me, trying to make eye contact. I know he wants me to face him head-on, but I can’t do it. A door has shut inside of me.
“I want to be with you now,” Reid is saying. “Believe me, I understand how scary it feels to embark on something like this at this stage in life, with everything we’ve lost. But have some faith in my feelings for you, OK?”
“Why would I have faith in that?” The words tumble out before I can stop them. “We loved each other then, when we were young and free and had nothing other than distance getting in the way. And you still left. I still left. What makes you think we can make this work now?”
Reid runs a hand through his hair. I know he’s trying to stay patient, but his voice rises in pitch, frustration cracking his facade.
“Yes, and you think I haven’t considered that?
That I haven’t spent the last thirty years thinking about you, looking for you in other people?
Wishing that I’d tried harder to hold on to you when I had the chance?
So I think”—his hands drop to his lap—“I think we make this work because we have to, Lili. We have to try.”
Hearing him say this makes me panic more. His confidence, maybe. That he seems so buoyed when I feel like I’m drowning. So I start swimming harder against the current, because I don’t know what else to do.
“I don’t know why you would trust me,” I say. “I chose James, and that was a disaster. I knew it was a disaster, and it still took me years to get out of it. What if I’m the problem? What if I’m just not equipped to be in a relationship?”
Reid takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose.
He looks tired, wrung out. “I’m sorry for what you went through with James, and I have to assume you contributed to the problems in that relationship.
Because that’s how relationships work. But I’m not him.
You’re not only ever going to be who you were in that marriage. ”
“I have a proven track record of mishandling relationships, and I don’t want you to become collateral damage. Or Gracie. Or Emme, yet again.”
“Didn’t you just tell me you didn’t want fear to rule your decisions anymore?”
“There’s a fine line between fear and intuition.
” I dig my heels in, unwilling, unable to stop myself.
“Maybe we do try this, and six months from now, you decide that it’s too complicated, or I’m too complicated, and we realize that this was just a fantasy that was never meant to be real.
Maybe the smarter choice is to stop now, before we hurt each other again. ”
I’m being cruel now, and I know it. Reid’s face changes, and I can see him trying to process how we got here so fast.
“Hold on.” He shifts in the bed like he can’t get comfortable. “How did we go from talking about plane tickets to you deciding this is doomed?”
“I’m being realistic,” I say.
“You’re spiraling.”
I let out an exasperated laugh. “We can’t even have a conversation about logistics without falling apart.”
“Because we’re not talking about logistics!
” Reid snaps back. He stands abruptly and moves across the room, leaning in front of the window, like he needs to physically distance himself from this situation.
From me. When he speaks again, his voice is lower, more intense.
“You’re scared, and instead of being honest about it, you’re talking yourself out of this before we’ve even started. ”
His words hit me like a slap. I know he’s right. Someone is finally seeing me clearly, and despite that—because of that—he’s deemed me worth the risk. I am scared of how much I want this, and how easily I’m able to sabotage it.
And doesn’t that prove my point exactly? “I’m trying to consider what’s best for everyone involved,” I say, and I can hear how righteous I sound. “Not just follow my feelings off a cliff.”
Reid stares at me for a long moment. “Nothing I’ve said has gotten through to you. Right now, it doesn’t seem like anything will.”
His resignation stops me cold. He’s giving me an out, exactly like I asked for. But now that I have it, the victory feels like a fistful of fool’s gold. I’d thought it was worth something to me, but now I can see its cheap sparkle, feel its flimsy weight.
“Reid, I—”
“Lili, just . . . stop.” There’s something dejected in his voice that I haven’t heard before. “You win. You’re right. This might just be too complicated to navigate, and I’m not going to beg you to try.”
I look at him now, the way defeat sits in the hollows of his cheekbones and the heavy set of his shoulders, like they’re bearing a persistent weight.
Clarity pierces me: I got my way, I found my escape hatch, and now it’s like I’m in a free fall.
Now I would beg him to forget the words I said that made him look like this.
But I see on his face that I’ve pushed too hard, made too big a mess of this.
I can’t take it all back now. Can’t make him believe me.
Ultimately, my fear and exhaustion overtake my regret. I get out of bed and dress in the bathroom, my hands shaking as I put on my clothes. I catch my reflection in the mirror—my swollen mouth, my smudged mascara—then quickly look away.
I sit on the edge of the bath, holding on to Reid’s T-shirt. The fabric is soft from years of wear and washing. It smells like the essence of him. I press it into my face, then draw it away. What right do I have to seek solace in him, even this small part?
None. Not after what I just did.
I should go back out there, I think. I should try to make this right.
But then: Shouldn’t I trust the instinct that warned me to pump the brakes? The thought surfaces like a life raft. We were moving too quickly. Getting too wrapped up in the idea of what we might be without thinking clearly about the reality.
I fold the T-shirt and leave it on the low stool next to the bathtub. When I come back into the bedroom, I try to avoid looking toward where he sits at the edge of the mattress with the heels of his hands pressing into his forehead.
I pick up my bag but fiddle with my phone before I turn toward the door, contemplating my next move. I can’t leave without an acknowledgment.
“I’m sorry.” It’s the only thing I can come up with to say. “I really did think I could do better for you, but I . . .”
Reid looks up, and again I wish I could crawl back into the sheets and start this conversation over. But the distance between us has yawned open like a chasm.
“I’m sorry too,” he says. “I thought we would both be willing to fight for this. At least I have my answer now.”
The finality in his words breaks something in me.
I shut the door softly behind me and lean against it, trying to make sense of how quickly I just destroyed everything I might have had.
I walk back down the beautiful, hushed hallway that, only hours ago, held so much promise.
I press the button for the elevator. It dings hollowly in the empty space.