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My phone buzzed from the front section of my backpack, and Aidan’s name as well as the worst picture of the Irishman available flashed onto the screen. “Hold on,” I said to Luke from ahead. “Aidan’s calling.” He nodded, and I answered the phone. “Welcome to Chili’s.”
“Hi,” was his only remark, and his voice was tight. “We finished early today, and I was hoping that we could do something. Only, you’re God knows where.”
“Sorry, I meant to text you,” I said. “I’m out canoeing with Luke. We’re just heading back to shore.”
“Oh,” he breathed, and there was a relief there that was just a bit too…much.
“Yeah, but we’re about to go get dinner, so don’t feel compelled to wait up for me,” I said.
“Oh?”
“Sorry, we would have invited you, but I thought you’d be exhausted and it’s pretty much just gonna be boring writer shop talk all evening,” I explained. There wasn’t an answer, and I shut my eyes and took a breath. “You’re not offended are you?”
“No, no,” he said slowly. “But Luke’s married isn’t he?”
I snorted.
Good Lord.
“Yes, I’m aware,” I laughed.
“And it’s just gonna be the two of you?”
I laughed, and I hoped that he would admit that he was just joking, but there was only a stark waiting silence. “You can’t be serious, can you?” Again – silence. “Whatever, I’m hanging up. Like I said, don’t wait up for me.”
I hung up the phone, and as angry as possible, I slipped it into my backpack and finished rowing. “Trouble in paradise?” Luke asked.
“Ha. Ha.”
True enough, when I arrived back at the Cornwall flat, there was a stillness that could only mean that Aidan had gone to bed. A few hours in between and the quick fire of rage I felt for his accusation had been extinguished with water under the bridge. I brushed my teeth, pulled on a pair of pajama pants, and I was so exhausted from the ride that I crashed nearly as soon as my head hit the pillow.
I was scribbling away in a notebook for the afternoon. Brainstorming with Luke was like creative nourishment that I didn’t know I was missing. It was in that chair, with pen in hand, that I received a text from him:
Maybe a warning next time you send your attack dog after me?
What? Attack dog?
Aidan. He was under the impression that something happened last night.
Oh, my god. Are you okay? I swear I didn’t say anything to suggest…
No, I didn’t think you did, but I’m okay. My wife was rather vexed, but we’re okay.
Thank God. I’m so sorry for any hurt that I caused. Is there anything I can do?
No, I think I cleared most everything up.
You’re a saint, and please don’t worry about Aidan. I swear, he won’t bother you anymore. I cannot say the same for the makeup department. Bruises are rather troublesome…
I firmly believed in that exact moment that there was no way I could have been angrier at one single individual in my life. To prevent myself from doing something that I swore I would regret later, I made myself drink a cold glass of water. The whole thing, and if it were possible to drink water with rage, I was sure that it was done as I sat at the kitchen table.
Then the door opened, and I could feel my eyes glow with fury.
No, I said to myself. Be levelheaded.
So, I ran into my bedroom, ignoring Aidan as he traipsed into the kitchen. I grabbed my bag and stomped into the bathroom, throwing my things in there with no care – only a deep feeling of betrayal and anger.
How dare that wretched asshole intervene?! How dare he assume so gross and demeaning!?
“What are you doing?” Aidan asked behind me.
Before I could stop myself from doing anything, I froze. And then I tensed every muscle in my body. Inhale. Exhale. “I’m leaving,” I said between clenched teeth.
“What?”
Inhale.
Exhale.
“I’m leaving,” I said more clearly, with no less anger. “What is it about that claim that you find confusing?”
“The why of it?”
Against my better judgement, I let out a startled and humorless laugh. “Are you really that mistaken by the why of it?” I asked, and this is the point at which my voice rise and I turned to face him. Good Lord – he even had the nerve to be hurt by my departure. As if he wouldn’t know the error of his mistake. As if he thought that I was his.
“What did I do?”
“Do you think I’m stupid?” My vision grew narrowed. “Do you think I didn’t know where you were? How dense do you actually think I am?” At this, finally, he went blank as it dawned on him. “Ah – there it is. It’s a relief that I’m leaving with the knowledge of how you really think of me.”
“I – I’m…”
“I swear to god that if you say you’re sorry, I’ll rip your head off,” I snarled and pushed past him into the living room.
“What am I supposed to do then if I can’t apologize?”
The question had the same effect if he had knocked me down. All the breath from gone from my lungs. Slowly as I could, like a panther before it’s strike, I turned to face Aidan with a sure fire in my eyes. “You’re not supposed to assume that I’m a homewrecker! Jesus Christ – I thought you were smarter than that, but I guess assuming so makes me the stupid one.”
Aidan’s eyes narrowed, and the beginnings of a scowl pursed his lips. “Really?” he sneered. “Name calling?”
“You’re lucky that’s all that is, you asshole!” I shoved my notebook into my bag and went into the kitchen to see if I had left anything there. I heard the undeniable footsteps behind me.
“If I’m an asshole then you’re a selfish bitch!”
This time, I didn’t give him the satisfaction of him seeing how much the statement wounded me. No, all he got was a humorless laugh. “You think I’m selfish? Wow – you really don’t know a thing about me, do you?”
I turned on my heel, but before I could make it back to the bedroom, he grabbed my elbow. “I don’t know anything about you?” he asked, and the hand that didn’t have me in his grasp was balled into a fist. “I know about your ex-husband! I was smart enough to deduce that!”
Inhale.
Exhale.
“Let me go,” I hissed between clenched teeth. His hand dropped, but he held his hateful posture. “And don’t presume to think that you know anything about him.” I was followed into the bedroom.
“I know one thing.”
“What is that?” The words were clipped, and I was a bomb ready to blow in his rental flat.
“We have something in common – me and your ex-husband.” My glare pushed him onward, “God help us, we’re both in love with you.”
I stopped.
Everything stopped.
I crumbled under his gaze – a gaze I’d seen from another before – but when I tried to move my feet, I found that rather I had frozen solid.
Eternity passed.
Seconds passed.
“Dear God.” Aidan gasped. “Say something.”
There was both a million things and nothing that I wanted to say, but my brain and my mouth met in disconnect when I whispered, “I’m leaving.”
I grabbed the bags I’d brought with me to Cornwall, and Aidan didn’t stop me when I walked out, but I did hear one strangled question. “Where will you go?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
Against my better judgement, I found myself back at the Cornwall flat at first morning light. I shut my eyes tight before I lifted my hand to knock. There was only a moment’s delay before the sight of the door was replaced with a bedraggled Irishman. He looked awful. Granted – I was the last person to pass judgment. My eyes were ringed with red, and I was a shade away from a deathly pale.
“You haven’t left Cornwall?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I thought that I should apologize before I went home,” I said. My eyes flicked up from my knotted hands to his tired, hazel eyes.
“What have you to apologize for?” He asked. “I’m the one who needs to apologize. I didn’t trust you, and I made wild accusations that nearly cost you a friendship.”
“You did,” I answered, “but I’ve lead you on.”
“You have.”
The easy confirmation in his words caused me to shut my eyes as tears built up in their corners. “Come inside,” Aidan said with a voice as soft as silk, and the hand on my shoulder was just as so. I did as he beckoned.
In moments, we were both sitting on opposite sides of the table. There were words between us that were as thick as the tension that lay there too. Earlier, he had offered me coffee, but I couldn’t drink anything. I felt at any moment, I would throw up. Despite this nervous nausea, I said the first words, “You were right yesterday. I am selfish, but I am also a coward. For years, I’ve been okay with that, and it hasn’t bothered me – being those things – but that changed when you…said the things that you did yesterday.”
“No,” he said. “No, I was wrong. I was angry and I was…wrong.”
His eyes burned into me, and I felt like I wouldn’t have the strength to finish, but I owed him an explanation in the least.
Inhale.
Exhale.
I closed my eyes, and in those moments of breath, I built a strength.
“Let me say my piece while I can.” He nodded, I continued. “I met my husband when I was 14 –”
“Hey,” he said, reaching across the table to envelope one of my hands in his own. My strength faltered, and I forced it to regain balance. “You don’t have to talk about him. It’s okay. I forgive you.”
“No. No, I do. I owe you an explanation. That, at the very least.”
Another nod.
“I met my husband when I was 14 at my dad’s company,” I started again. “And I learned that it’s true what they about souls. Each is jagged and imperfect, but there is a match in another’s soul. One that fills each jagged edge and deep groove. People thought it was stupid – we were only 18 when we got married. Maybe we were stupid, but it was the kind of stupid that Paris of Troy specialized in.
“Four years later, when I was seven months pregnant, we were going to a wedding, of all places, by train. The train didn’t make it, and neither did my husband or the baby.” His breath hitched, and I knew that if I met his eyes, even for a second, I would lose precious control. “I’m not grieving anymore, because it’s been five years, and time does heal.”
“But time doesn’t break promises, and I made one when I was 18 that I cannot, in good conscience, break,” I revealed. “And I know that I’ve broken it once before with you…” My mind flashed to a brief, scalding heat that cracked my ice wall, and though I could not read minds, I know his did the same. “I can’t break it again, or I will break too.”
I looked down to my clasped hands, and the tense silence returned. The ball rested in his court.
And he served, “You have to move on.” The words startled me, and before I could stop myself, I looked up.
There was another inaudible crack in my ice wall.
“It’s not that I haven’t moved on,” I said. That wasn’t quite true. There were parts of me that still loved and held and wished. But still, the words were extra pressure that the wall could not bear.
“Then what is it?” He held my gaze, and almost as if written in hazel were the words, why are you here with me?
I started to stand from the table. “I’ve already met my one,” I said. I moved toward the front door again, but he only mirrored my actions. I wished he’d make this easier. “We only get one, and I got mine. But you haven’t found yours, and to take you away from that is selfish and cowardly. To do what I did to you back when we first met was –”
“Amazing.”
“Aidan –”
“No,” he stated as he grabbed my wrist. “You don’t get to make calls for me.
You don’t get to say whether or not I will want you, because the truth of it is when I touch you, I burst into flames and cool all at once. When I look at you, I want to commit you to memory.
“That doesn’t just happen, and I know that this is not one-sided. For you to say it is, is insulting.”
Inhale.
Exhale.
“Aidan –,”
“Don’t,” he begged. His voice was gravel. “Please don’t say no.”
“Then what can I say?”
I swam in hazel as he said, “You could just say yes.”
I breathed, “And what is a yes?”
“A yes is a try. A yes is saying screw you to fate and your soulmate principle.”
There was both an eternity and seconds until I whispered my undoing.
“Yes.”