Chapter 33
Ten months earlier
Liam’s keys jangle in the door, followed by footsteps on the hardwood. A moment later he appears in the kitchen, his hair damp from the rain, plastic bags of Chinese takeout in hand. The room fills with the scent of fried noodles and egg rolls.
“Hi, baby. I got takeaway for dinner,” he says, his voice a little breathless as he leans in to peck me on the cheek. He smells of disinfectant and latex gloves—the way he always does when he gets home from the hospital.
“How was work?” I ask, taking the bags and setting the Styrofoam boxes on the counter.
He rubs his eyes—red and bleary with fatigue. “Fine. Long. We’re finally starting to make some progress on our model.”
I don’t really know much about his research—most of it is way over my head—but I know the model has something to do with new radiation technology and that, if all goes well, it could save lots of lives.
“That’s great,” I tell him.
He tries to smile, but it’s strained, weary. The way he looks most nights.
“I’m glad you’re home tonight. I feel like I’ve hardly seen you,” I say, reaching for a bottle of white wine I picked up. “I was thinking we could pop this open and pick a movie while we eat?”
“Actually…” Liam rubs the back of his neck. “Kevin’s having some people over and I thought it would be fun to go.”
I pause, my hands freezing over the stack of napkins. “Tonight?”
Liam nods and my throat tightens.
“I thought we were going to hang out just us?” I ask.
“What if we pop by for just one drink?”
“I don’t know,” I say, putting out the napkins. “I was looking forward to staying in.”
“But it’s been ages since we’ve seen any friends or gone out, and I thought it might be good for us to get out of the house.” His eyes fill with a kind of heat I haven’t seen in a while. “Remember the last party?”
Blood rises in my cheeks. Last year at Kevin’s birthday, Liam and I spontaneously had sex in the bathroom with most of our clothes still on.
But that version of myself feels nearly unrecognizable.
I don’t feel sexy or spontaneous or fun.
And this just feels like a reminder of all the ways I’m no longer myself.
“My mom just died,” I say tightly. “I don’t really feel like going to a party tonight.”
“Maybe if we just went out for a bit—”
Disappointment bleeds into frustration.
“You’re not listening,” I interrupt. “I said I want to stay in tonight. Okay?”
He swallows. “I know, but—”
“No, you don’t know,” I snap, my anger feeling like an over-boiled pot. “You don’t know because you haven’t been around, Liam.”
His shoulders drop with his mouth. “I’ve been busy with work; you know that.”
I try to force down my feelings. He’s right. He’s been busy saving lives, and it feels silly and petulant to demand his attention. To need him. But I can’t help the rising swell of disappointment, the feeling of watching him drift further and further away while I’m powerless to stop it.
“But you’re working more than normal and you’re never home,” I say after a pause. “Sometimes it feels like…” A choke steals my breath, and a sudden, unexpected rush of hot, stinging tears pricks the backs of my eyes.
It’s been like this since the accident. All my emotions feel so fragile, one strong gust tipping the scales from okay into very much not okay real fast. Every disappointment, every inconvenience, every broken promise feels like an unbearable pain I’ll never recover from.
But this feels like more than just an inconvenience. This feels like we’re speeding toward an inevitable tipping point. One we’ve been moving closer to for weeks.
Liam and I have gone through rough patches before.
The first two years of Liam’s residency.
The months leading up to board exams when he would study ten hours a day.
Times when we hardly saw each other and tensions ran high.
But living in the aftermath of my mom’s death is different.
It’s not a test or a training program. There’s no deadline or an end date.
It’s just endless days of hurt so potent, it feels like my stomach is corroding, and I’ve started to worry that this distance between Liam and me, like the grief, isn’t just temporary.
“Like what?” he asks, his eyes flashing to mine.
I look down at the kitchen floor, away from him. “Like you’re avoiding me,” I say at last.
Liam’s frame stiffens. “I’m not,” he says, sounding almost hurt. “Which is why I thought going to a party would be good for us. We could have some fun, blow off some steam, like we used to,” he adds hopefully.
Used to. It’s those two words that hit me the hardest. The admission that he misses the way things used to be. Before grief chewed me up and spit me out. And now he doesn’t like this new version of me. The broken version.
It’s a fear that’s long lived in the back of my mind.
That I was never enough for someone like Liam, someone so shiny.
It just took grief and the total collapse of my life for him to see it, to see that I’m not the fun, sexy girl he took home from the bar nine years ago, that there’s a part of me that’s messy and broken and utterly disappointing. That’s simply not enough.
“Sorry, I’m not much fun right now. Like I used to be,” I add, an edge to my voice.
Liam rakes a hand through his hair, eyes slanting away. “Come on, Ros. I’m not saying that. I just thought that maybe—” But he doesn’t finish. Instead, he rubs his temples and says, “Okay. We can stay in tonight.”
But he doesn’t say it like he wants to. He says it like he’s trying to avoid a fight by appeasing the angry troll under the bridge. Which makes the whole thing worse.
“You should just go without me,” I say coolly. “I’m sure you’ll have much more fun with your friends.”
The line of Liam’s mouth hardens. “That’s not…” But his words trail off, swallowed by a tight-lipped grimace. “Fine. If that’s what you want.”
It’s not what I want. What I want is to tell him to stay. That I need him. That I want him to cuddle with me on the couch and tell me he’s there. He’s got me. That he’s not going anywhere. But I can’t bring myself to beg for his attention right now. Not when he seems so unwilling to give it.
“Fine,” I say. “Have a good time.”
Liam gives me one last look before reaching for his keys and disappearing out the door, letting it shut with a tight thud, which echoes in my chest long after he’s gone.