Every fucking thing, the good and the bad.
“Me and you, we’re pretending,” she whispers. There are tears in her eyes and one slips down her cheek. I want to stop it with my thumb, I want to kiss the tear away, but I don’t. I can’t, not after what she’s said. “This isn’t real. You’re getting caught up in nothing.”
“That’s not true,” I start but she shuts me up, pressing her fingers against my mouth for the briefest moment before she drops her hand.
“It is. You don’t want me, not really. I’m not who you think I am. And you’re definitely not who I think you are. There are so many secrets and problems between us, I think our life would be one fucked up mess after another if we were to really try and be together. And that’s never going to happen, you know this.”
I can’t say anything. I know she’s right, no matter how badly I don’t want her to be. I’m wishing on nothing right now. And my heart is breaking for it.
“Two more days, Drew.” She pauses, chewing on her lower lip. “Unless you want me to leave tonight like Adele said. She has something planned, about the anniversary of your sister’s death. And clearly I’m not invited.”
“I don’t want you to leave,” I say automatically. “Two more days, I need that from you.”
“Fine.” She nods once, her lips thin, her eyes imploring.
She wants to say something more, I can tell, but Adele throws open the front door, announcing, “Dinner’s ready!” all cheery-like and it’s such bullshit I throw her a hard stare over my shoulder, earning a slammed door for my efforts.
“We should go in,” Fable says, wrapping her arms around herself as she starts for the front door.
I follow her, only realizing later I never found out if there really was another guy or not.
* Chapter Eleven *
Day 6 (Black Friday), 8:00 a.m.
What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Drew
Yesterday’s Thanksgiving dinner was a disaster, not that I expected it to be anything less. Dad invited a few business associates, and while they talked Wall Street and the state of the economy at one end of the table, we were pretty much silent at the other end. Fable sat across from me, stubbornly quiet as she picked at her plate full of catered food.
Adele doesn’t cook and she sure as hell wasn’t going to prepare a Thanksgiving meal. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a home cooked turkey since the last time we spent the holidays with my grandparents in New York, and that was years ago.
The hostility in the house had been off the charts. Adele tried her damnedest to talk to me and I refused. The taxi had shown up to cart Fable away just as promised later that evening and I sent the guy away, shoving two twenties in his hand as payment for his trouble.
Not once did Fable speak to me. The moment she could make her escape, she was gone, heading back to the guesthouse without a goodbye to anyone and locking herself away in her room. She didn’t come out for the rest of the night.
So I did the same, pissed at myself that I let her get under my skin. I didn’t sleep much, hadn’t really slept much the night before either, and now I’m lurking outside Fable’s closed door, tempted to bust in there and make her talk to me.
This is definitely not like me. I’m not confrontational. I hate facing my feelings. But damn it, that fight between us yesterday left me raw and hurting. I feel like a * for even thinking this, but I thought what we had was turning into something special.
Guess I was wrong.
But see, this is where my stubbornness kicks in for once in my personal life. I don’t want to be wrong. I don’t think I am wrong. For whatever reason, she’s running scared. I can’t blame her. I do the same damn thing, day in and day out. The only time I feel completely in control of my life is out on the football field. Being trapped here for the last few days, I’m jonesing to get back to it. Get my head out of the bullshit and back into the game.
Go back into unfeeling robot mode and forget everything else.
Irritated with myself, I knock on her door and turn the knob, surprised to find it unlocked. I don’t bother giving her even a second, I stride into her dark room, stopping at the foot of the bed to find her a sleeping, dead to the world lump in the center of the mattress.