Say the Word(84)

“Wine?” I offered. He shook his head.

I walked over to my couch, skirting him with several feet of safe distance between us. Settling into the cushions, I turned to look at him. He hadn’t moved much past the doorway and his gaze now seemed to be locked on my bed, examining the rumpled comforter and widely strewn throw pillows with more than cursory interest.

“You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend.” He spoke the words with indifference, still refusing to look at me.

I rolled my eyes. What was this — jealousy?

“You didn’t ask,” I snapped back, my inhibitions far lower than usual due to the wine sloshing around in my system. Sebastian turned to me, surprise clear in his expression. I’m not sure what answer he’d expected, but it hadn’t been that one.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I admitted, this time using a quieter tone. With a sigh, I turned away from him and burrowed deeper into my couch cushions. “So are you going to tell me why you’re here, or should I start guessing?” I didn’t look at him as I asked my question — two could play that game — nor was there any real insistence in my voice. I was too worn out to fight with him any more today.

There was a moment of silence before I heard the sound of footsteps on hardwood. Seconds later, Sebastian settled onto the other side of my couch, leaving an empty cushion in the space between us.

“I’d apologize, but the last time I tried it didn’t go very well,” he said quietly.

My lips turned up in a small smile. “True,” I acknowledged.

“I meant what I said earlier, before…everything exploded.” He looked over at me, his expression earnest. “I’d like to try civility. Hearing about Jamie, it just — it floored me. But I shouldn’t have said those things to you.”

“Well, I shouldn’t have kept his death from you,” I countered.

We fell silent, neither of us knowing how to move past this stage of anger and animosity to a reality in which we were kind to each other. We’d ignored, tormented, and nearly broken one another in the past. We’d approached every interaction like two hostile combatants, locked and loaded with enough ammunition to blow each other to pieces. And sure, maybe those barbed, explosive interactions were dangerous and practically guaranteed to destroy us both — but somehow, the thought of laying down our arms and negotiating peace seemed a far more daunting task right now. The accusations and antagonistic words that had colored our previous conversations were, for all their brutality, simpler to face. Holding a gun on someone as you stood in your suit of body armor was much easier than trusting that as soon as you lowered your weapon, they wouldn’t blow you away with their own.

That was really what it all came down to: trust.

I’d broken Sebastian’s a long time ago. And trust was a funny thing; once it was gone, I wasn’t entirely convinced it could ever be reconstructed or made whole again. There would always be small chinks in the foundation, compromising the structural integrity of everything you managed to rebuild on top of it.

But what was the alternative?

If you didn’t try to reconstruct — if you chose to live in the ruins and attempted to convince yourself that you were happy there — you’d never even have a chance at seeing the beautiful view from the sky. You’d spend your life looking up at what you could’ve had, lying in the rubble of a broken relationship.

It was time to lay my weapons aside. To strip away my armor. To try to rebuild. And to hope, above all things, that Sebastian might do the same.

“I can’t,” he said abruptly, shattering the silence and drawing my gaze to his face.

“What?” I whispered, wondering if he could somehow read my thoughts.

“You asked me to let you go — like it’s this simple, easy thing. But I can’t let you go.” Hunched forward with his wrists resting on his knees, Sebastian shook his head and a deep frown troubled his expression. “I’ve had seven years of unanswered questions. Seven years of doubts. Seven years of calling myself an idiot, and cursing your name, and hating you for what happened. And I’ve tried to drink you out of my head with booze, and screw you out of my memories with other women.”

I cringed, but forced myself to listen to the rest of his words.

“I’ve traveled across the world, trying to outrun my memories of you. But damned if I didn’t get to every f*cking continent and still see your face on the other side of my camera lens — in a crowded Tibetan market, on the cliffside of a snowy Himalayan peak, in the reflection of a muddy river in Thailand. You were always there, haunting me, around every corner.”

I curled my hands into fists in my lap. He looked over at me and our eyes caught immediately. I knew my every emotion was playing out on my face for him to read — a running script of remorse for the things I’d done, regret for what we’d both endured in our time apart, and longing for the love we might’ve had.

I’d honestly thought that he’d been fine without me all these years. That he’d moved on and forgotten the carefree months we’d spent beneath the sun when we were young and innocent, wrapped up in love. Because, though he’d been the brightest star of my life, I’d always assumed I had just been a minor, forgotten constellation somewhere in his massive stratosphere. A tiny asteroid, shooting across his distant horizon.