Space (Laws of Physics #2)(41)

Swallowing around another knot, I tore my eyes from his and turned to my friend. Allyn was now waving from her spot at the other head of the table, literally the farthest spot from Abram she could’ve selected.

I took my place next to her with a thank you, and then turned to reintroduce myself to the person I didn’t remember meeting at my right and the people across from me.

Once introductions had been made and what I considered appropriate polite chit-chat commenced, I forced myself to take a bite of food. I hadn’t been able to eat much since we’d arrived, and I knew lack of sustenance was one of the reasons I didn’t feel quite myself now.

“Did you have fun today?” Allyn asked, sounding optimistic.

I gave her a smile that I hoped communicated my gratitude and my remorse. “I’m sorry I haven’t been an attentive host.”

She covered my hand, not seeming to notice when I flinched. “Oh no, don’t apologize. Don’t worry about me.” Her greenish-blue eyes widened, and she shook her head. “I just want to make sure you’re okay. After what you told me—about you and the Captain—if I were you, I would be camped out in my room until the week was over.”

We’d decided on the Captain for Abram’s code name, mostly because of me mistakenly calling him Ahab while he and I had shared the house in Chicago.

“I’m okay,” I said automatically.

Try being honest for once.

I frowned, then rubbed my forehead with stiff fingers, Abram’s words from earlier still chanting between my ears. “Actually, it’s not okay. I’m not okay. I don’t understand myself. I can’t figure out why I still feel so strongly about a person I knew years ago, and only for one week, and with whom a future is impossible.”

“It sounded like an intense week.”

“It was intense, kinda. And it wasn’t. I mean, we didn’t even kiss. Part of me wonders, if I hadn’t lied to him, if I didn’t feel so guilty, would I still be holding on? Thinking about him all the time? Maybe it’s just guilt I’m feeling, and not—”

“Infatuation?”

I was actually thinking more along the lines of love given the fact that this madness has persisted for over two years, but—

“Sure, we’ll call it infatuation. Maybe I’m infatuated with him because I feel like I owe him? Because I lied?”

“I don’t know about that, Mona. If you were going to be infatuated with someone, the Captain is an excellent candidate. I’ve listened to Redburn’s songs on repeat for months now. They’re the current soundtrack to my life. And Abr—I mean, the Captain wrote all those songs. His words—” Allyn sighed, her gaze flickered to the far end of the table, and then back to me. “I’m a little in love with him, and we didn’t spend a week together.”

Ugh. She likely hadn’t meant her statements to be a reminder of how impossible my feelings for Abram were, but that’s what she’d done. No doubt, thousands of women—and men for that matter—had sentiments echoing Allyn’s. I’d seen it with my parents, admiration to the point of worship based on their music. He was and always would be adored by many.

Musicians aren’t monogamous. And I wanted a picket fence, with a lawn, and a rose garden, and children. We would bake pies in the shape of pi. Rock stars don’t have rose gardens, and I definitely didn’t want an open relationship. I’d seen my sister make this mistake.

And, even if Abram was monogamous, he doesn’t want you.

“Maybe it’s a combination of things.” Allyn bumped my knee with hers beneath the table. “You feel guilty, yes. But maybe you feel so guilty because you truly do like him. And the guilt plus the like creates these super intense feelings that are hard to move past.”

Stewing in discontent, I pushed my food around with my fork.

“You never told me,” she started, and I felt her gaze on my profile. “What happened on Saturday? When the two of you talked? I want to give you space, and I don’t wish to push you about it. But, do you want to discuss it?”

Although I’d told Allyn about my past with Abram—everything in Chicago, how I’d internet-stalked him for a year after, how he’d given me the cold shoulder in the funicular structure after she went inside with Leo, my plan to tell him the truth about impersonating Lisa, etcetera—I hadn’t yet filled her in on the outcome of my conversation with Abram the morning after we’d arrived.

“I . . .” I struggled to recall the incident while also forming coherent words. I couldn’t.

My first instinct—when Abram and I were in the study on Saturday, and he’d told his side of our twisted story— had been to say sorry. To bleed my apologies all over the place. To rend them from my lips and my hands and my guts and my heart. But as we’d looked at each other, seeing each other for the very first time, I knew with absolute certainty that he didn’t want a gushing apology or excuses.

Gushing, pleading apologies and attempts at justification would’ve made him angrier, more distant, more certain in his disdain and resolute in his dislike. I was desperate to give him what he wanted, whatever that was. But I didn’t know what he wanted, and I wondered if he even knew what he wanted.

I suspected not.

Therefore, I’d stood there and listened, doing my best to not explain. I hoped that if I gave him space, then he might give me time later.