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Fifty-five
Cari
When I wake up, Patrick is sitting on the side of the bed, fitting his watch around his wrist. He’s taken a shower and put on one of the clean dress shirts I found in one of the guest room closets.
Sitting up, I watch his shoulders stiffen under his shirt when he realizes I’m awake. It can’t be more than 8 AM. “You’re leaving?” I say, watching him stand. He’s wearing his suit again. The pants and jacket look like they’ve been ironed, making me wonder how long he’s been awake.
“Yeah,” he says, fitting one of his cufflinks through the loops in his cuff. “I have a ten o’clock meeting with some potential investors, and then I have back-to-back walk-throughs with building inspectors on two different projects.” He adjusts his cuff before focusing on the other. “Declan was supposed to handle it, but he texted me this morning and told me he’s taking the day.” Both cufflinks on, he finally looks at me, his gaze hitting my cheekbone. “Coffee’s made. Breakfast is in the warming drawer—”
“You didn’t have to make me breakfast.” I sound ungrateful. Sullen.
“It’s not a big deal,” he says, automatically throwing up his defenses.
“Nothing is a big deal to you these days,” I tell him, thinking about all the ways he’s changed since I’ve been gone. The apartment and the car. The suits and famous friends.
He lets out a sigh. “It’s just eggs, Cari,” he says, pulling his suit jacket on and fastening the button. “I don’t want to fight.” He leans over the bed to drop a quick, haphazard kiss that lands somewhere between my mouth and my cheek. “I’ll try to call later.”
“Will I see you tonight?” I don’t sound sullen anymore. I sound clingy. Spineless. I hate it.
If he notices the change in my tone, he ignores it. “Probably not,” he says, giving his watch a quick look, like he’s running late. “I have a dinner thing at seven and then I’ll probably go home and crash—I’ve been running on empty for weeks now.”
A dinner thing.
I want to ask what that means. Offer to go with him, but after the way I behaved at his friend’s restaurant last night, I doubt he’d want me to. “Okay,” I whisper, nodding my head.
“Okay,” he says, flashing me a quick, flat smile before turning. He’s halfway to the door before he stops. “Listen...” He turns and looks at me. Again, his gaze lands on my face. “I’ve done some thinking, and you’re right. The paintings don’t belong to me. They belong to you—you should have them back.”
My skin goes cold. “You don’t want them anymore?”
“That’s not what I said,” he says, jaw clenching for a second before relaxing. “I said they don’t belong to me.”
“But you...” I say, my voice thin and brittle. “I thought you wanted to keep them.” I don’t know what I’m saying. Why I’m fighting him when only a few hours ago I was demanding that he give them back to me. All I know is that we’re not talking about the paintings.
Not really.
He finally looks me in the eye. What I see in them tightens my chest, makes it hard to breathe. “Just because I want something, doesn’t make it mine.”
And then he’s gone.
After Patrick leaves, I lay in bed for nearly an hour before I forced myself to get up. Opening the top drawer of my dresser, I find a pair of boy shorts on top of one of his old T-shirts, splattered with paint. Both are neatly folded. Put away nicely.
It reminds me of that rainy day we stood at the pool table downstairs and folded laundry together. The way he purposely picked my clothes from the pile so he could fold them for me.
Pulling them on, I head for the kitchen. As promised, breakfast is in the warming drawer. Just eggs turned out to be a veggie omelet, bacon and sourdough toast. Extra butter. No mushrooms.
Fighting back tears, I scrape it into the trash.
After that I shower, needing to do something normal to ground myself. Push away everything that happened last night. Things were good. Not great, but better than they had been before I left and in the space of a few hours it all spiraled out of control. That’s all it took for the two of us to realize just how much we’ve changed over the past year. Maybe too much.
When I get out of the shower, I have a text from Tess.
Tess:Lunch?
It’s not even 10 AM, but that hardly matters to Tess.
Me:Sure. 30 minutes?
Tess:Cool