Chapter 30 Now #3
I roll to face him, then throw my leg over his hip. He pulls me closer, until my face is buried in his neck. I’m wearing his T-shirt. He’s wearing … not much at all.
I have no idea what time it is. We’ve been wrapped up in each other for hours, our dinner reservation long forgotten.
More buzzing. I smile against his throat and say, “I think that’s for you.”
He grumbles again but stretches one long arm across me and grabs the phone.
“Everything okay?” I ask, thinking of Bubba.
He scans the screen. Smiles. “Very okay. Nothing that can’t wait.” He returns the phone to the nightstand, then crouches over me, grinning wolfishly. “Now what?”
I grin back and prop myself up on my elbows, so I’m right next to his ear. “Now?” I lower my voice to my best sexy whisper. “I’m thinking pizza. And a biiiig glass of water.”
A laugh shudders through him. “Fair enough. You work on the first, I’ll work on the second?”
I nod. He drops a kiss on my forehead and then heads for the kitchen.
I’m scanning the room for my own phone to call the pizza place when Sebastian’s buzzes again.
Reflexively I look over. It’s still unlocked from when he checked it, and I let my eyes linger a little longer than they should.
The first notification is a calendar reminder for something called a Q4 planning meeting happening tomorrow morning.
I recognize the name of the supply chain company Sebastian worked for in the subject line.
The rest are all texts from someone named Gina.
There’s a contact photo in the little bubble: A pretty redhead.
The preview text says Attachment: 5 photos.
Another buzz. Gina says: Can’t wait to show you more tomorrow. ; )
My stomach twists.
“Drink up.”
I whirl around to face Sebastian, accepting the water glass with a forced smile. “Thanks.”
I take a sip as he collapses on the bed. I want to climb on top of him. Ignore the sinking feeling in my gut and pick up where we left off before we fell asleep.
Instead I sit on the edge of the bed, my back toward him, and brace myself to ask the question I should have asked hours ago, before I let myself get swept up in the past. The question I know could change everything.
“Does your boss in Santa Barbara still think you’re coming back?” I say to the wall. “Is that the plan, if all this doesn’t work out?”
For a moment the only sound is the rustle of sheets as he moves to sit next to me. He runs a hand through his hair.
“I’m still figuring all that out,” he admits, and my heart feels like it’s wrenching in my chest. “That job … it’s been so good to me during a really shitty time. I can’t afford to let go of it until I figure out what I’m going to do next.”
I nod, clarity lapping over me like the tide on the shore. He’s talking about his job, but couldn’t he just as easily be talking about me? The time we’ve spent together has been good, the way any convenient distraction is. It also isn’t his real life.
“I don’t think we should keep doing this,” I say, hating the words as they tumble out.
Sebastian’s eyes dart to mine, his expression pained.
“Lina, please. This has nothing to do with how I feel about you.” He reaches for my hand, but I pull it away.
I can’t afford for my judgment to be influenced by the feeling of his skin on mine.
“I don’t even know if I’ll go back to California, but if I do we can still be together. Split time between the two.”
I shake my head, thinking of what he said about Claire suggesting they try long distance, when they couldn’t get on the same page about where to live.
How all it would have done was delay the inevitable.
Then I think of the messages from Gina on his phone.
Maybe they’re totally innocuous and maybe they’re not, but they sent me spiraling.
How would I stay sane if he moved to the opposite coast, surrounded by Claires and Ginas?
“You could come with me, then,” he says, and the hopefulness in his voice breaks my heart even more. “We can figure this out. Together.”
It’s scary how easy it is to picture myself saying yes. To imagine changing my whole life to accommodate him. But then I think about how little that could leave me with in the end, if he decided I wasn’t enough again.
I don’t want to risk finding out.
“You don’t know what you want, Sebastian. And that’s okay. You already have so much going on. You should focus on yourself right now. And your mom. I can’t just be another thing you’re trying to ‘figure out.’”
He drags a hand down his face, and when he looks back at me I can tell something has shifted. “You’re afraid, Lina. You’re afraid because there are some unknowns right now, so you’re pushing me away. But what’s going on with my family has nothing to do with us.”
“Can you blame me? You don’t exactly have a track record of balancing the two.” I regret the words as soon as they’ve left my mouth.
He winces. “Wow. That was a really shitty thing to say.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “It was. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”
“You’re afraid,” he repeats. “It’s the same fear keeping you at that job, writing stories you don’t even believe in anymore instead of taking a risk and going somewhere that actually values you. Instead of betting on yourself.”
I bristle. First at the harshness of his words, and then at the truth in them.
So many people had warned me it would be next to impossible to make it as a writer in New York City, which only made me want it more.
I’d thought I’d proven them wrong when I got the job at Ever After, only to have it all ripped away from me after just one year.
I think about how scared and humiliated I’d felt when I was first laid off.
The long, anxiety-riddled days spent applying for jobs, alone at my parents’ house while they worked.
The steady stream of rejection emails that followed.
Wanting that life as badly as I had made losing it all the more crushing.
Maybe Sebastian is right: Maybe I thought I could protect myself from all that potential heartache if I just stopped wanting in the first place.
It’s the same defensive mechanism I can feel myself reverting to right now, and yet I can’t seem to override it. With Sebastian, I’ll want far too much.
“Believe it or not, I’m perfectly happy with my life, Sebastian,” I say.
“When I first took the job at Shore Life I thought I’d stay a little while, save some money, then start applying to jobs in the city again.
But then the months turned into years, and you know what?
I started to realize that maybe moving on from this place like everyone else just isn’t in the cards for me.
Maybe this is where I’m supposed to be, and maybe that isn’t as bad as everyone seems to think it is. ”
“Of course you don’t have to go back to the city if you don’t want to!” He throws up his hands, exasperated. “Who are these people saying Brantley Beach is so bad? I don’t understand where that’s coming from.”
I laugh, incredulous. “Um, you?”
Sebastian looks at me like I’ve just told him two plus two equals five, but then realization hits him.
“Lina, that was fifteen years ago. I was a kid—a kid who grew up with a mom whose life was consumed by keeping a small business alive and a dad who resented her for it. I associated a lot of our family problems with being tied to this town, and I latched on to the idea that leaving it would fix them—or at least prevent me from ending up with the same ones. It’s not because I thought I was better than you, or anyone else who comes back.
Hell, everyone I care about is still here! ”
Does that include me? I feel the doubt settle in. He could easily just be talking about Bubba and Andre and Theo and Hana. Yet again I find myself wondering where exactly I fit in. If I fit at all.
“Whatever the original reasons were, you were adamant about not wanting to end up here until a couple of months ago, and you’re still not sure you want to stay now.
And that’s fine, Sebastian, it really is.
But I hope you understand that I need to just remove myself from the equation. For my own sake.”
Sebastian furrows his brow, the disappointment apparent in his eyes. “Is that really what you want, Lina?”
I suck in a few deep breaths, until I feel my heart rate resume a normal pace.
I know that I’m lashing out because I’m angry and hurt, and that he’s probably doing the same.
But now that I’ve let those raw emotions bubble to the surface, what I’m left with underneath is a feeling of overwhelming sadness.
Because Sebastian wasn’t a bad guy back then, and he isn’t now.
We just can never seem to get the timing right.
“It’s what I want,” I say.
He places a palm on either side of my cheek. Then he leans forward, presses his lips to my forehead and says, “Then I’ll go.”
We sit like that for a few minutes, our foreheads touching, not saying a thing, until he gets up, dresses quietly and leaves.