Scandalized(49)

The film of hurt lingers, and it takes me a few cloudy seconds to register that I’m not in my bed, that Alec is curled behind me, his arm slung heavily over my side, his front pressed all along my back.

He seems to be in nothing but briefs, but I’m still wearing my lounge pants and tank top and have no recollection of being carried here. Alec breathes slow and deep, fast asleep, and when I glance at the clock, I’m amazed to see that it’s only midnight. I can’t have been asleep all that long. I fell hard, fast, and in my dream, I was being blatantly gaslighted by my ex—and my sleeping brain had prepared to weather it stoically—but it wasn’t real.

I’m safe in the tight circle of Alec’s arms.

Something tears sharply right down my midsection, as though I’m paper being ripped in two. The middle of the night is always a tender zone for me, but this is something else entirely. It’s one thing to have a night of room service and movies but this, between us, is about sex. At least, it’s the lie I have to tell myself if I’m going to keep my head on my shoulders and my emotions sealed tightly in my veins.

But if we do this, live together and move around the space like two people who enjoy each other’s company for things beyond the physical, then what? Why am I inviting pain back in?

Carefully, I slide out from under his arm and shuffle quietly into the bathroom.

I brush my teeth, splash water on my face, and then crouch on the floor, head in my hands and mind spinning as I try to still the wild thumping of my heart inside my body. It’s already a broken organ; what am I doing bringing it out like this? I swear I’ve barely stitched it back together. I rarely think about that final day anymore, the day I tore it into pieces, when I decided to let Spence know I was there, at the park, and stepped out from behind a tree in the middle of the workday. I’d texted him, asking about his day, and had watched him reply right there, on the bench, with a made-up story about an interminable meeting and irritating coworker. I stood in front of him for ten full seconds before he registered my presence, before I saw understanding land in his expression.

We had so much to dig out after that. Extricating our lives felt like carrying an ocean’s worth of water uphill in leaky buckets. Bills together and all our belongings intermingled. Packing up the apartment in alternating blocks of time, leaving notes about what needed to be taken care of. I didn’t hear his voice again after that day in the park. Still haven’t. I could barely stand to be near him after that. Touching all his things when I had to move them aside to reach mine—I hated it. Every point of contact with a plate, a pillow, a pair of his jeans felt like a stab, someone shouting in my ear, How did you not know?

I don’t know how I missed it. Spencer didn’t only lie once; he lied every single time he spoke to me. I’m fine was a lie, and Good night was a lie, and I love you was the biggest lie of all. I said to Eden in the pit of my heartache—and maintain it to this day—that it would have been easier if he’d gone home with another woman one night. Even if he’d done it once and never returned afterward, deciding immediately that I was the lesser of two options, that would have hurt less than the ability he had to lie directly to my face day in and day out.

But we don’t get to choose our heartbreaks, and we never truly know the paths that could have been even more terrible. All we can ever say for sure is that we’ll never know what’s coming around the bend. So what am I doing here? Pulling my heart outside of my body and laying it cleanly on the chopping block? Alec won’t devastate me with lies—I know in my bones that he isn’t going to hurt me with that kind of betrayal—but that’s the problem. This heartache is an unknown and already the magnitude of it is terrifying. Yes, this is new, but pain is pain.

I am so stupid.

It’s only a split second after I register a shadow passing over the light before a warm body crouches behind me. His legs come up alongside mine and he bends over my back, wrapping his arms around me, sweetly caging me in. “Hey.”

I swallow back a thick sob. “Hey.”

“Are you okay?”

It’s dark in here; the middle of the night swims blurry and thick all around us. Daytime is for deflection and denial. I don’t have it in me right now. “Just quietly freaking out.”

He presses his mouth to my neck, asking against my skin: “About what?”

“You know what.”

Alec is quiet for a long stretch. “I do know.” He takes a long, deep breath. “I actually thought you left.”

“I’m not sure I can do this,” I admit.

“Why?”

“Because it was supposed to be just sex.”

“Gigi…” he says quietly. “I mean—I don’t think it was ever just sex.”

I feel the dual blast of relief and embarrassment at this obvious truth. “I don’t think it hit me until tonight that we aren’t even pretending.”

“I understand.”

“It’s only been,” I say, thinking, “four days since Seattle. Feelings don’t happen like that.”

He’s quiet in response.

“Four days is nothing,” I say. “It doesn’t even make sense. This is… I mean, it feels too good to be true.”

Behind me, he stands, cupping my shoulders. “Come back to bed.”