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Hesitantly, I stood from the couch. My legs ached. I hadn’t moved from it much throughout the day, hadn’t had the mental energy to do anything other than watch whatever was playing on the shitty reality TV channel that was on because I couldn’t find the remote.
Lifting my eye to the peephole, I could see nothing but darkness and a silhouetted figure on the other side of the door. Our front porch light had broken years ago. I made a mental note to get it fixed.
Another knock, and I jumped from the unexpected urgency of it.
“Who’s there?” I called, one hand on the latch and the other flush against the brittle wood. It would snap like a twig if they wanted it to.
“Please open the door, Ray.”
My breath caught in my chest. I knew that voice, as muffled as it was through the wooden door. I knew the deep timbre of it, knew the familiar way it spoke my name.
I twisted the lock and pulled the door open.
The one thing I’d been wanting for weeks stood in front of me. Dark blue hoodie, shorts, a plain white shirt. Slippers. He hadn’t even taken the time to get dressed.
“Can we talk?” Wade asked, his voice like gravel.
I was suddenly aware of the lack of makeup on my face, the messy bun I’d tied my hair up in, my mismatched pajamas. It shouldn’t matter but it did, and I couldn’t change that.
I swallowed every bit of saliva that hadn’t dried up.
“Yeah,” I replied.
He stepped across the threshold onto the plush carpet. The house wasn’t clean, the dishes weren’t done, the trash hadn’t been taken out. All I could think about was the judgment he might make, how small he might think the house was in comparison to his lavish home up in the mountains.
I turned away from him as he shut the door. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting company?—”
“I love you.”
My feet froze in place mid-stride. My pulse skyrocketed. My stomach dropped.
“Ray.”
I turned on one heel and met his gaze. In the soft light of the living room, I could see the bags under his eyes, his unkempt hair. I could hear every breath he took, could feel it in my bones. “Get out,” I rasped.
“I’m not letting you shut me out again,” he barked, causing me to jump at the sudden change in his demeanor. He took a deep breath in and let it out through his nose, his hands flexing at his sides. “Let me talk. Please. Let me say my goddamn peace.”
“How am I supposed to do that when you just said you love me?” I snapped. Mom had been wrong after all. Fight, flight, freeze. I was a fight person.
“I don’t know. But you better start figuring it out because I’m not fucking going anywhere. I’m not letting you push me away again.”
He grabbed the back of one of the wooden dining table chairs and spun it around. He sat, the fabric of his shorts pulling taut around his thighs, staring at me with enough venom to bite right through. I wasn’t sure if fear was my main response or if it was something deeper, something I’d been trying to bury for weeks now.
“I have been driving myself insane for almost a month trying to figure out what the hell happened between us,” he started. “I’ve poured over every conversation. Replayed every second of our time together. Broke my own goddamn heart in the process because reliving that?—”
He cut himself off and rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes glazing over. The breath I let out as I waited was shaky, the air vibrating in my throat.
“Reliving that has been the best and the hardest thing I’ve had to do. Do you know why?”
I shook my head.
“Because I wouldn’t change a second of it. I wouldn’t have done a single thing differently, Ray, because it led to you. Every shitty remark I made, every condescending little tease, every word I said led us to where we were almost four weeks ago. I thought I’d broken through,” he gulped. “I’d torn down your walls time and time again and I thought that was the last time I had to. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel and I was basking in it.”
“But it wasn’t real,” I cut in.
“Bullshit,” he snapped. He pushed himself to his feet and walked toward me, irritation and something deeper reflecting in his eyes. Instinctually, I dropped back half a step, putting at least a few inches between us. “It was the most real thing you’ve ever fucking known. I know it and so do you.”
My hands shook as I crossed them over my chest.
