Unbreakable (City Lights, #2)(24)
The laughter faded out of Cory’s whispered words. “Yeah, well being ‘sweet’ has its downsides and Georgia knows them all. She texts me all the time, mostly stuff about Callie, of course. But now and then, she’ll get in this kick where she’s overly friendly. She’ll start adding ‘I love you’ to every text for no reason. Like, ‘You need to pick up C at one o’clock. Love you.’” He shook his head.
“And I fall for it every damn time. I think, okay she wants to get back together, and she knows that’s what I think. So I’ll go over to her place and we’ll all hang out—her, Callie, and me, and it’s great. It feels like we’re…whole. But as soon as Callie goes to bed, I realize what a mistake it all is. Georgia and I…we have nothing to talk about and we just end up having sex and it’s not good. At least not from my standpoint. No kissing. Just me scratching an itch for her, I guess. Because the next morning she starts talking about us not making the same mistakes over and over, and how I’m not willing to do the right thing—which is get a degree—and she’s not willing to ‘risk too much for something that probably won’t pan out’ and I get mad and ask her why the hell she wanted me over, and she asks why I came, and it just…falls apart. The same cycle of bullshit, over and over.”
“Do you still love her?” I asked slowly, marveling in the back of my mind that I was asking this highly personal question of the guy I’d been standing behind in a bank line not thirty hours ago.
“Yes and no,” Cory answered. “She’s Callie’s mom. I’ll always love her for that, in some way. And God knows I’d try to make it work for Callie’s sake, because if there’s love there, even a little bit, then there’s a chance, right? That’s what I keep telling myself anyway.”
“Sounds like Georgia—” …is a manipulative bitch, “—doesn’t quite know what she wants either.”
“I think she knows exactly what she wants, and the way I am is not it.” He sighed. “Sorry for dumping all that on you. It’s the first time I’ve talked about it, actually. Pretty messed up, I know.”
“You’re trying to do the right thing.”
“Yeah, well, that’s pretty much all I can do, right?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I murmured. “I feel like it’s been a long time since I’ve done the right thing.”
He craned his neck to look at me directly, and I could feel the intense warmth of his gaze. “Hey, I’m sorry I gave you shit about your money, and not having kids. I was way out of line. I just feel like…”
“Like what?” I asked in a small voice.
“Like I’ve known you a long time. Kind of weird, right? But that’s why I talked for about a hundred hours about my shit with Georgia just now. I don’t normally blast off like that. You’re very easy to talk to, Alexandra.”
He smiled that ridiculously charming smile of his again, though the emotion behind his eyes went much deeper than a silly grin. I felt it pull me in until all I could see was myself reflected in the brown velvety depths, and the me I saw there was very different than the me I contended with in the mirror every morning. I looked softer, warmer, but he didn’t know the truth. He couldn’t possibly know. I could hardly acknowledge it myself.
I sat up, reluctantly extricated myself from his embrace, from the false reflection. My hands twisted in my lap as the words welled up in me, bursting to get out.
“I’m having doubts.”
“Doubts about what?”
“Getting married.”
A pause. “Okay.”
“It’s probably just cold feet. Probably nothing. It just feels, sometimes, like Drew and I got engaged because it was the logical thing to do and not because we…”
I heaved a breath. The guilt was fast turning to relief, to get it all out.
“We’ve been together since college,” I said, calmer now. “UCLA. I had just broken off a serious relationship and Drew was there, not pushing anything, just being my friend.”
I shook my head. “I can see it so clearly now, even then…Even then he was slow and not…passionate. I thought he was giving me time to get over my break-up, and after we became a couple, I thought the infrequency of our intimacy was because we were busy. I didn’t really question it. Drew and I just made sense to everyone, including us. We had the same goals…we both went onto get our law degrees from UCLA too. Becoming engaged was inevitable. A decision or business transaction.
“And it’s not his fault. I’m just as culpable. The night we became engaged, we discussed our life goals, we made agreements—like about not having kids—and then he slipped this ring on my finger the way other people might take up a pen and sign a contract. And I smiled and said yes. We kissed—briefly—and then he said he had some work to finish up before bed. So I…” I stopped and looked at Cory who was listening intently. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”
The crooked smile returned, faintly. “I can’t either.”
“There’s not a lot to say, anyway. I went to bed to wait for him. And waited. And waited, and waited, until I fell asleep. I think he came up from the home office around two. The next morning, we got up, and went about our day as if nothing had changed. And I guess it didn’t, except now there’s an engagement party and a wedding to plan. Distractions from my work and not much else.”