Do I Know You?(78)

“Would you like to come in?” I force out. I hate the sound of the invitation—that an invitation has to be made at all.

He steps inside, then stops, lingering in the hallway of my room like he doesn’t want to move farther without saying what’s on his mind. “I’m sorry for leaving you with my parents. I shouldn’t have stormed out like that,” he says dutifully, facing me at an unnatural angle.

“Graham, it’s fine. They were surprisingly chill about it.” I gesture into my room. “Do you . . . want to sit?”

He shakes his head. The immediacy of his response wraps me in nervous wire, and I fight the fear working its way into my stomach.

“I can’t pretend anymore,” Graham declares with neutral intensity. “I’m not saying this week hasn’t helped. It has. I used to think I knew you just because I once did know you, but I understand now that knowing a person is never finished. Even if the answers stay the same, the questions you ask on a first date are still worth asking seven years later. I think it’s helped me know me better. But—”

His gaze locks with mine, decisive now. I find I’m holding my breath.

“We can’t do this forever,” he continues. “I can’t do this forever. I can’t keep pretending every day I’m this other Graham, the fun Graham. The Graham you want.”

I’m doused in horror. Quickly, I close the distance separating us in my cramped hallway, reaching for his hand. Something flickers in his stony expression, his fingers grudgingly entwining with mine. “You are the Graham I want,” I say emphatically.

Graham’s eyes linger on mine. The sun coming in my room’s windows illuminates him fully, leaving no trace of his expression—no detail of the features I’ve loved since I was twenty-three—in shadow. I know this is hard for him. He doesn’t give up his side of an argument easily. It’s part of what makes him a good lawyer.

Right now, however, I can see him working not to interrogate every angle of what I’ve said. He’s letting himself listen.

“I’m trying to believe that,” he replies finally. “But when you won’t let me in all the way, it’s hard not to feel like you only want the vacation version of me.”

I hold his hand tighter, willing him to feel my certainty. “There is no vacation version of you,” I tell him. “Don’t you think I saw who really swept me onto the dance floor on our anniversary trip? Who somehow learned to box in one night? Even with every spontaneous surprise, don’t you think I felt who I was spending every day with?”

When he looks at me, there’s tentative hope in his expression. The sun flints on his green irises, making them shimmer with uncanny poetic timing. I watch him closely, searching for whatever he’s starting to hold on to.

Then something new clouds over in his eyes. I have to fight down my discouragement.

“Maybe, but I can’t be that me every minute of every day, either,” he says firmly.

“I don’t need you to! Maybe—maybe the game we played this week overdid it, with the staying in character. But I think we needed to overdo it in order to get out of doing nothing at all,” I say. “Being spontaneous, being flirtatious, being surprising from time to time is not the same as being a different person. You’re the man I see. You’re the one I want.” I pause, honestly not knowing if what I’m going to say next is a step into a conversational chasm. “You’re the one who thinks you aren’t worth as much as the Graham you’ve been pretending to be.”

I’m expecting him to react defensively, to push or to evade. Instead, he pauses, the weariness of self-recognition crossing his features.

“I’m working on that,” he says quietly. “But I need to feel like you want to let me in regardless of which me I’m playing.”

My shoulders slump in exasperation. I remember the hike to the beach, the morning we did yoga. Desperately, I sift the sands of those memories for ways I’ve fallen short. “I have let you in,” I insist. “What has this whole week been but letting you in?”

“You haven’t, though. You’ve only said you wanted to be on vacation. You didn’t want to share what’s going on with your sister because we’re on vacation. But, Eliza, you treat these conversations the same way when we’re home.” Graham’s gaze pries on closed doors in my heart. “Will you ever want to talk about them? Will you ever want to talk about anything? I know you felt our relationship was suffering before we got here. I know I could’ve done more, been better, to prevent that from happening. But you said nothing. Instead of trying to work through what was going on between us truthfully, you invented this whole elaborate game for us.”

“It worked, didn’t it?” I reply. My heart is pounding—not with the nerves of a fighter in the ring, but those of someone far out to sea.

Graham softens momentarily. “It worked wonderfully,” he says. “But, when we’re home, when we’re not playing these parts, will you ever want to share when you’re upset? Or concerned? Or dissatisfied? I can ask all the questions I want, but I just can’t keep guessing what the right questions are.”

I’m struggling under the gravity of what he’s saying. My cheeks feel horribly hot, like I have a fever. Graham isn’t accusing, he isn’t angry. I might find it easier if he was. If I could pin a litigator’s fierce vindictiveness on him. Instead, he’s just explaining. He’s giving me no room to retort, no room to resent.