Chapter 32
We get home midmorning the next day.
I feel better. About everything. Things have felt more natural with Wes than they have since our honeymoon.
Maybe everything still isn’t resolved, but it’s better than it was.
And despite his reticence, I know now he wants me as much as I want him.
It’s probably because I’m finally sure after so much confusion that what happens next happens.
It’s the intense relief of certainty, plus the utter exhaustion. The kind where it feels like you can barely lift your head.
Maybe a different person could handle the tumultuous emotions, coupled with that kind of bone-deep fatigue, but I’m just me, and I can’t.
If there’s a mess to be made of a situation, I’ll make it for sure.
It starts in the car as Wes pulls through the front gates of Blossom Park.
It’s a bleak kind of déjà vu. Like a fuzzy memory of the same moment repeating.
Only it’s not because it actually did happen before. More than once. Exactly like this.
Wes uses the drive to gather all his thoughts together, and he makes himself get them said before we get out of the car at the end of the trip.
That’s what’s happened today.
I can see it on his face. Sense it in the way he shifts his body even before he puts the SUV into park.
By the time he unhooks his seat belt, my belly has become a churning weight in my gut, and all the peace and hope I’ve talked myself into has blown away like a stray plastic bag in the wind.
Just as flimsy. Just as out of place.
That’s the problem with anxiety. No matter how successfully you try to force it back in its corner, it will rise again like a whirlwind to overwhelm you as soon as it senses the smallest crack.
“Ella,” Wes says after taking an audible breath.
“Yes.” My attempt to sound light and breezy fails utterly.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“I can see that. What is it?”
“I’m… I can’t settle. With this. With us.”
My mouth is too dry now to swallow easily. “I… I guess maybe I kind of feel the same.”
“I figured you must. You’ve been back and forth in your… mood. So have I. And I still think it’s because we have this… this block. This false relationship dropped right on top of our real one. And it’s messed everything up. It’s made it impossible for us to be… be real.”
“Y-yeah.”
I know what’s coming now.
I know.
I know.
I know.
It’s the low rumble in the distance. The dark line on the horizon. The one that signals the approach of the apocalypse.
He’s been looking in my direction, but I can’t meet his eyes. I’m staring down at my phone in my lap.
Now he turns away too—focused out the windshield. “And I can’t do it anymore.”
So now it’s here.
The outcome all my brewing anxiety has been pointed toward.
The end of everything.
“Ooookay,” I manage to get out.
He shoots me a sharp look. “I’m sorry, Ella. I know you wanted this. But I… I can’t anymore.”
I wanted it more than anything, but of course he can’t.
We were doomed from the very beginning.
“Okay.” This time I get the word out without a break. “I understand.”
“I’m not sure you do. I’m not saying I don’t want…
I mean, you know how I… It’s just that I can’t go through with this pretending anymore.
It’s too much.” He’s been stumbling over words, but now he’s hit his stride.
The words are pouring out. “I thought I could detach enough to go through the motions, but I’m not made for that kind of thing.
I feel what I feel. I am who I am. I’m not the cool, popular guy I pretended to be those years in high school.
And kept pretending to be all these years after.
I’m the skinny nerd in Grace’s sweater-vest who’s incapable of playing the game, and I always will be. ”
“Okay.” I’m almost in tears now. They’re pushing and shuddering against my eyes, my throat, my cheekbones. Because I know the truth now.
I don’t want the cool, sardonic, detached man he’s been showing to the world. I want the sweet, earnest nerd he’s always been.
I want him for real. I want him for always.
But I can’t have him.
My need for escape is so overwhelming that I push through the block in my throat. “I understand. I do. Thanks for telling me.” I fumble for the handle of the door.
“Ella, wait.” He’s tense and surprised, and he reaches over to touch my arm. “I need to say this. I really want to finally get it all said.”
“I know,” I gurgle. “You’re being mature and reasonable, but I can’t. I can’t hear it, Wes.” A sob breaks out despite my best effort. “I’m so sorry, but I can’t hear it right now.”
He makes a strange, soft sound in his throat.
In a different situation, I would have assumed it was pain, but that doesn’t make sense in this moment, and I don’t have any spare bandwidth to figure it out. My eyes are streaming with tears as I open the passenger door.
“I’m so, so sorry, Wes,” I choke out, stumbling out of the SUV.
“Okay. I understand. It’s… it’s okay.”
It’s not okay. Nothing is.
But I’m out of the car at last, so I make a dash for the cottage where I can finally stop pretending I’m all right.