He came over, helped her stand, and steered her out of the room. As he did, he held up his hand at me to say five minutes. I guessed he was going to walk her back to the hospital valet and send her home.
Once they were gone, I noticed my breathing was ragged, and my chest stung a little, as if the imaginary acid had burned some kind of sad, hollow hole. I spent several minutes trying to tell myself that it was good to feel something, at least, before deciding that was bullshit. Why was it that the only emotions that seemed able to penetrate my fog were the worst of the worst?
When Chip made it back, I noticed then that he looked—for the first time since the accident—just exactly like his old self. Here was the Chip I’d fallen in love with. Here was the Chip who had it all together, ready to confidently stand at the helm of anything and everything. He looked picture-perfect. He’d gotten a haircut. He was wearing a crisp polo and pressed khakis. He’d brushed his teeth—and even possibly flossed.
It was a powerful thing to see him again. It was like the real Chip had been gone all this time, but now he’d finally come back, and all that toughness and resistance I felt about the new Chip disintegrated as soon as I saw the old one again.
“Are we engaged?” I asked him then, my voice soft. “Did we ever settle that?”
He gave me his famous Chip Dunbar smile. “You know we are, on my end at least.” He was flirting with me! “Your position’s a little less clear. But you’re still wearing the ring.”
“Your mother thinks,” I said, making air quotes, “that you don’t ‘desire’ me anymore.”
He let out a honk of a laugh and then sat in the chair his mother had just vacated, grabbing my hand in a very similar way. “I do. Oh, my God, I still do—so much—”
I felt myself release a breath I didn’t even realize I’d been holding. I felt a pinch of hope that things might turn out okay for us, after all.
Until he went on. “The old you.”
What?
“I think about her all the time.” Chip pressed his forehead down against my hand, and his shoulders started to shake. “I miss her so much,” he said, all muffled.
“You miss her? She’s not gone,” I said, not even trying to disguise my astonishment. “She’s literally right here.”
Was Chip crying? Again? “I miss her hair,” he went on. “And how she walked in heels. And the way her jeans hugged her hips.”
That was just mean. “You realize you’re talking about me in the third person,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Your mother thinks you’re going ahead with the engagement out of guilt,” I said next. “She thinks you don’t want to marry me anymore, but now that you’ve, you know, paralyzed me, you feel like you have to.”
“No.” He shook his head as he lifted it. “I still want to marry you. I want that more than anything.”
“Her? The girl you miss? Or me?” As if we weren’t the same person. “The old me or the current me?”
“Any you I can get my hands on.”
That made me smile—a little. I wanted that sunshiny feeling back again. “So you do still want to marry me?”
“More than I can possibly say.”
It felt good to hear it. I won’t lie.
Chip sat up straight then and let go of my hand to wipe his face. He took a deep breath, as if he might be about to shout something, and then he held it a second. When the words came out at last, they just seeped out in a whisper. “I want to marry you, Margaret. But I think I can’t.”
I held still.
He lowered his eyes. “I think,” he went on, “in the end, you’re not going to let me.”
Then, like a premonition, I knew what he was about to say. I knew exactly what “actions” his mother had been talking about. Yet again, I found myself several mental steps ahead of Chip.
Now I had a decision to make.
I could end this conversation right now, and let him off the hook, and never hear for certain what he was about to say. If I did that, we could continue on. We could keep muddling through, trying to patch things up. I could chalk everything we’d said or done up to “the tragedy” and forgive it all and stay focused on my impossible odds.
I could so easily take that route. It was wildly tempting.
But I didn’t. “Chip. What happened?”
He kept his eyes on the bedspread and shook his head.
“Chip,” I said, more pressure in my voice. “Tell me.”
He held very still.
“Tell me!”
Then he did tell me. But he closed his eyes first. “I slept with someone.”
*
I HADN’T BEEN wrong. I knew that’s where he was headed. But the words, once they were spoken, meant the end. They severed us. That was it. He’d made a choice, but I’d made a choice, too. I’m sure I felt many things at that moment, but the only one I remember is loneliness.
“Who?” I said.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does fucking matter.”
Chip stood up then—too fast—and knocked his chair over. It clattered to the floor. He didn’t pick it up, just paced around the foot of the bed. “Tara,” he admitted at last.
“Your old girlfriend, Tara? The one you call the Whiner?”
He nodded.
“You don’t even like her!”
“I know.”
I didn’t even know where to start. “Chip.” It was more of a sigh than a word.
“She saw my post about you on Facebook, and she got in touch. She started coming by to check on me. She brought soup.”
“She brought soup?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t eating. She was concerned. And then one thing led to another.”
“Don’t tell me.” I felt it like a gasp: I didn’t want to know.
But now I’d gotten him going. “She came by one night and found me crying—”
“Am I supposed to pity you?”
“—and I just couldn’t pull it together. And so she just kind of put her arms around me—”
“Stop.”
“—and kind of cradled me—“
“Chip. Shut it down.”
“—and the next thing I knew, we were kissing—”
“Stop! I’m fucking serious! Stop!” I didn’t realize how loud I was shouting.
Right then, the door to my room pushed open, and Ian walked in.
He eyed Chip for a second before turning to me. “Everything all right?”
“Get the hell out, man,” Chip said. “We’re talking.”
Ian kept his eyes on me. “I wasn’t asking you, prick.”
I looked up at Ian. He was motionless with suppressed tension. I knew in an instant my dad had been right, that the acoustics between my room and the hallway went both ways. I could hear them out there perfectly—and they could hear me just as well in here.
Ian had just witnessed this whole, humiliating, life-crushing conversation. Enough of it, anyway.
“Can I do anything for you?” Ian asked me then, his voice as tender as I’d ever heard it. “Get you a glass of water? Beat the crap out of this wanker?”
I gave a microscopic smile, but Ian caught it.
I shook my head.
“Can we finish our conversation, please?” Chip asked, though I couldn’t tell if he was asking me or Ian.
“Maggie?” Ian said, never shifting his gaze from mine. “Is this a conversation you’d like to continue?”
I shook my head again. “I think we’re done.”
“That’s it, prick. Beat it.”
But Chip wasn’t ready to go. “Margaret—”
In a flash, Ian was right up next to him, looming a good six inches above. “You heard her. Get out.”
Chip put his hands up and backed away. “Okay.” He took several steps back, without turning, seeming to consider his options, and then, because he really didn’t have any, he turned to leave.
Just as he did, I called, “Chip! Wait!”
He turned back, and I pulled off his grandmother’s engagement ring and threw it at him with all the force I could muster.
He ducked, and I missed.
The ring bounced off the wall and then skittered under the empty bed next to mine—so Chip had to get down on his hands and knees to crawl after it. It was just enough humiliation to give me a twinge of satisfaction.
But only a twinge.
*
AS SOON AS he was gone, the fog closed back in.
It was like suffocating in plain air.