Once More With Feeling

by Megan Crane

  And cry.

  I tried to hide my face in my hands, but I was still entirely too aware of him – entirely too aware that I had just tipped over the edge from maybe kind of amusingly crazy to full-on psycho. And there was nothing I could do to stop it. I sobbed and sobbed, crying out all those pieces of my broken heart, Tim and Carolyn, my parents, those lost years without Brooke and yes, Alec. Too many pieces to name or even appropriately categorize, such a mess of them there were, and I couldn’t do anything about it but ride it out.

  I sensed more than saw him move, and then those capable hands of his were on me, and before I could react, he lifted me up, turned around, then sat down and settled me on his lap. I should have leaped off of him as if I were electrocuted. I should have dived for safety. I should have immediately pulled myself together and removed myself from this kind of close contact with him, draped across his lap like some kind of small, broken thing that only he could fix.

  But instead, I leaned into him as if he really was as safe as he felt, let him hold me close like he still cared, and even though I knew I shouldn’t, I just … let go.

  When I finally stopped crying all over him, when I was wrung out entirely and my face felt like very old parchment or some kind of recently unearthed archaeological artifact, I finally gained the presence of mind to understand how awkward and foolish it was to be tucked up in my ex-boyfriend’s lap. I was no better than Tim. Who’d had, at one point, a very serious sensitivity to Brooke’s deliberate and consistent mentions of Saint Alec, the fucking healer. Tim’s phrase, not mine.

  I peeled myself off his chest and carted myself away to the downstairs bathroom with a haste that I might have called undignified, had my previous behaviour not already made a mockery of the very word. I was thankful he miraculously managed to keep himself from saying something cutting and/or mocking as I went. I stared in the tiny little mirror over the sink and quickly understood that no amount of cold water in the world, not even cold water in December in Vermont, was going to repair the damage this crying jag had done to my face. And there was no point cataloguing the mess inside, thank you. I was going to have to live with the swollen, watery eyes and the stuffed-up head, to say nothing of the great swathe of brokenness within, and I accepted that inevitability as one more hit in a long tragic line of them.

  Of course I had just treated Dr Alec Frasier like my personal wailing wall. Of course I had chosen to do this after all this time, after he’d kissed me, after I’d taken it upon myself to descend upon him like his very own Dickens-worthy Ghost of Christmas Past.

  Of course.

  I felt almost philosophical about it. I’d been doing so well, all things considered. There’d been the insomnia and the blue hoodie from hell, and certainly there’d been the unpleasant tension and fighting with Carolyn and my parents, but the truth was, I was long overdue for a good and ugly breakdown. It was a rite of passage for any soon-to-be-divorced woman, surely. I was actually kind of impressed with myself for making sure my version of a breakdown involved collateral damage – and not just any collateral damage. Oh no. I’d chosen to drive five hours out of my way to lose my shit in front of the only person on earth who I really, really wanted to go on thinking my life was a beautiful and perfect dream without him.

  Well done, Sarah, I thought, too disgusted with myself to even really take the appropriately scathing tone in my own head. But it was implied. The whole situation implied it.

  There wasn’t even any point hiding in the bathroom. There was no containing this disaster. It had already happened. The mushroom cloud hung directly over me and there was no disguising it.

  ‘I kind of want to kill myself,’ I announced as I walked back into the living room. I stood near the stairs that wound up to the second floor, as if too little distance too late would help somehow. Alec still sat in the chair where I’d left him, propping up his chin with one hand, his long legs stretched out in front of him, and no doubt very, very soggy.

  ‘Please don’t,’ he replied idly, his gaze flicking over me. ‘The ground outside is too frozen. I’d have to either cremate you in the fireplace or put you on ice in the barn and wait for spring. Neither of which feels particularly Christmassy to me.’ He considered. ‘And anyway, I’ll be in Africa by the time it thaws around here, so it could all get very smelly.’

  I would have said that I would never smile again, but I smiled then, however anaemically.

  ‘You’re still as creepy as you ever were,’ I pointed out. ‘I really appreciate the unsavoury little details, Alec. The smelly part, particularly.’

  He stood up then, and I found that unduly alarming. Like it meant he was about to do something. I didn’t even know what that might have been, but it hit that panic button in me anyway.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said, the smile toppling from my face. ‘Right now.’

  ‘You can’t,’ he replied, his tone perfectly mild. As mild was not a word I would ever choose to describe this man, I paused.

  ‘That was less of an invitation to debate, and more of a statement of intent,’ I said. But I didn’t move towards the door.

  ‘I get that.’ He shrugged, with far too much easy confidence. ‘But you can’t go now. Obviously.’

  ‘Why not?’ I sighed. ‘If you have some expectation of further dramatic displays from the crazy person in your house, I think that I’m all tapped out. It’s time to take the three-ring circus back home where it belongs.’

  ‘You appeared out of nowhere and cried all over me,’ Alec pointed out, that glint in his dark eyes that had never boded well for my self-control, and why should this be any exception? ‘I think that at the very least, you owe me dinner.’

  We looked at each other for a moment. Behind him, the fire crackled and popped. I felt a sense of lightness that made no sense, given the circumstances. Maybe I really was as crazy as I was acting.

  ‘You feel like you already put out, and you want a little payback?’ I asked. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Exactly.’ His mouth crooked slightly. ‘I’m a whore like that.’

  Which was how I ended up pushing a trolley around the adorable little grocery store in the pretty clapboard and Christmas-lighted downtown, Alec roaming along beside me, in a painful enactment of domesticity that, on some level, I thought was a greater betrayal of my marriage vows than that earlier kiss had been. Men liked to concentrate on physical betrayals, which I hadn’t really understood until now, with blue blouses and doggy-style porno on an endless loop in my head, but women knew how treacherous non-physical things could be. Like the intimacy inherent in arguing over brands of tomato paste, in gathering ingredients together for a meal we planned to make and share, or in choosing the perfect loaf of crusty French bread to complement it. I was too aware of Alec’s every movement, his every breath. I could anticipate exactly where he would be when he was next to me, how he would shift down an aisle or reach for something on a shelf. We walked through the store together, making the idlest of conversation, simply fitting, and I understood that I had been lying to myself about my marriage for a very long time.

  Like so many truly shattering things, this realization only swelled in me, making room for itself, and then stayed there, like a bell that couldn’t be un-rung. I didn’t want any part of it. I didn’t even want to think it, but there it was.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I asked to distract myself from what was happening inside me, nodding toward a bundled-up woman near the canned vegetables, who was waving. Not at me, clearly. Alec scowled in her direction, reminding me how difficult he was and always had been. As a matter of course.

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Because you were born here?’ I raised my eyebrows at him. ‘Because you lived here your entire life?’ A suspicion dawned. ‘Alec, is that one of your relatives?’

  He actually grinned then, however fleetingly.

  ‘I’m not an animal, Sarah,’ he said with a hint of offended dignity that the way he was looking down at me contradicted.

/>   ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘Because you’re a little bit feral. I say that as a friend.’

  ‘I greet my family members,’ he said. ‘That’s not a family member.’ But he eyed the woman again as he strode towards the cash register, and his mouth curved. ‘I think.’

  Later, I sat on a stool again as Alec moved around the kitchen, putting together the meal with that same masculine grace that made me feel so embarrassingly weak. Not that there was much further to go where embarrassment was concerned. I found that truth oddly liberating.

  ‘I thought I was supposed to cook,’ I said, as he poured a glass of red wine and handed it to me. ‘Doesn’t you doing the cooking defeat the whole purpose?’

  ‘Symbolically, maybe,’ he said. ‘But I’m a much better cook than you are.’

  I sniffed. ‘You don’t actually have enough information to make that assessment. You’ve missed years in which, for all you know, I could have become a stunning gourmet, capable of anything.’

  He took a swig of wine from his glass. He eyed me.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then drink your wine and shut up,’ he suggested.

  So that’s what I did.

  And then, when whatever ridiculously savoury stew he’d thrown together was bubbling away in the oven, making culinary magic that I could already smell, rosemary and garlic and all things mouthwatering, he pulled up the stool next to me and focused all that attention and intensity of his on me again. Dark eyes and that serious mouth, too close and too knowing. I repressed a shiver.

  ‘So,’ I said nervously. ‘Dating anyone?’

  ‘Cute diversionary tactic.’ That mouth of his didn’t so much as crook toward a smile this time. ‘Think it will work?’

  ‘Are we pretending that you’re some kind of monk?’ I asked, blustering along as if we could sidestep our entire history and relationship and act like beer buddies propping up some sports bar somewhere. Well, I could, certainly. I waved my hand at all of his glory. ‘Please. As if.’

  ‘I’m not a monk.’

  I didn’t love the way he said that, with all of that carnal knowledge lurking there in that low tone and that look in his eyes.

  ‘Of course you’re not.’

  Why had I started this conversation again? Maybe he could whip out his phone next and show me pictures of all his many conquests over the past seven-plus years. Naked, one could only hope. Maybe there was even an old Audrey series, featuring her in fetching poses with her towering intellect on display!

  Maybe I really should have killed myself when I’d had the chance.

  ‘It’s going to be a while until dinner’s ready,’ Alec said. He shifted on his stool, and I had the sense that he got bigger somehow. That he took up more space. I swallowed, too hard.

  ‘I thought maybe you could tell me why you were so determined not to go to Africa with me.’ He reached over and tapped my hand with his, as if to underscore his point. As if it needed underscoring. ‘I was in love with you,’ he said, the way I imagined he might inform a patient they had something infectious: matter-of-fact yet vaguely compassionate. ‘I thought you were in love with me. Was I wrong about that?’

  That was Alec. I should have remembered that there was no escaping the brutal truth with him. Not for long.

  ‘There’s a lot of water under the bridge,’ I began, because I had to try to avoid it, futile as that might have been. My heart wasn’t really in the attempt.

  ‘Which you drove right over when you pulled into my driveway,’ he said, as I supposed I knew he would. ‘This isn’t a fight, Sarah. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘It was a big fight then, though.’ I wrinkled up my nose at the memory. ‘A giant, no-holds-barred, scorched-earth fight, in fact.’

  ‘Because you left me.’ His dark eyes flashed, and I felt it. I felt it like a punch in the gut. Long time ago or not. ‘Which was not what I wanted, in case you’ve forgotten.’

  I looked away, back at my wine glass, and wondered why I’d thought I would ever want to do something like this. A years-later postmortem that felt far more like an exhumation. What was left of who we’d been but skeletal remains? We weren’t even those same people any more. We would never be those people again.

  Even if he could still kiss me like that. Like nothing else in the world, before or since, could ever matter.

  I shoved that aside and ordered myself to think.

  ‘Our entire relationship had an expiration date, from our very first date,’ I said slowly, trying to think back, trying to separate out all the things I’d decided were true about that searing year with him after it was over, and what I’d actually, honestly believed while it was happening. It was all a jumble inside me, though, with that realization from earlier hanging over all of it like a dark, brooding cloud. ‘I remember being so aware of that. I always knew you were going to leave. You never made any secret of it.’

  ‘Then it shouldn’t have been so traumatic when it was time for me to go.’ His voice was still so matter-of-fact. His gaze very nearly cold, as if discussing this didn’t bother him at all. I almost believed it. ‘It shouldn’t have been like a bomb going off.’

  ‘You could have stayed,’ I pointed out, so very evenly. So calmly. The way I imagined someone should talk about a very painful thing that had happened so long ago it had long since ceased to matter. It was purely academic, this discussion. Another deposition that didn’t – shouldn’t – involve my feelings. That hardly involved me. ‘But you never considered it.’

  ‘You could have come with me,’ he replied, his gaze intense. Or maybe I was the one who simply felt intense. ‘But you never considered it.’

  ‘And look at that.’ I shook my head slightly to ward off the strange feelings I kept telling myself I wasn’t feeling, the pull and push of memories and never-quite-forgotten agonies. ‘It’s like déjà vu.’ He looked down at the counter top and I could feel the same old argument in him, rolling out of him, thundering right beneath the surface. ‘What would I have done in Africa, Alec?’ I asked, rather than waiting for him to erupt. ‘Hold your scalpel? Carry your backpack as I trotted along beside you? That wasn’t what I wanted from my life. You know it.’

  ‘And what you have now,’ he asked softly, still not looking at me, and neither of those things disguised the way the words cut into me, ‘is that what you wanted? Was it worth it?’

  ‘Fuck you.’ I didn’t say it particularly strongly or loudly, but it hurt anyway. I might as well have screamed it. I jumped off of the stool and put the kitchen island between us, but it wasn’t enough. Almost eight years hadn’t been enough, I thought then, wildly; what hope was there for some granite and a few cabinets? ‘You don’t know anything about my life.’

  ‘That wasn’t a judgement.’ He crossed his arms over his chest and watched me, dark eyes glittering, so dangerous and male and focused. ‘It was a question.’

  ‘You wanted me to move across the world with you,’ I said, very distinctly, as if there were a bullet-pointed list inside me that had been there in some hidden compartment all this time, and here it was, ready to go on cue, ‘but you refused to make any kind of commitment. I would have had to have been an idiot to do something like that, and I considered it anyway. I really did. But come on.’

  ‘I was in love with you,’ he said, incredulously. With that bite beneath. ‘What more of a commitment did you want than that?’

  ‘Really?’ I couldn’t help the sarcastic tone. I didn’t even try to help it.

  ‘I don’t believe in marriage.’ That was even more like déjà vu. That same old sentence. It echoed in me like a very familiar, profoundly shitty gong, and made me feel just as horrible as I could remember feeling back then. Again, that temper crackled in his dark gaze. ‘You know that. You even know why.’

  ‘Well, now you know why I didn’t go to Africa,’ I said, perhaps too flippantly. I didn’t want to think about his parents’ disastrous yet continuing marriage, the one that ha
d messed him up about the institution forever. I didn’t want to feel sympathetic. I didn’t want to care. I shrugged. ‘I’m sorry if that’s as unintelligible to you as your marriage aversion is to me. I didn’t tell you not to feel that way, you know. I just didn’t want to spend my life banging my head against that particular wall, battling malaria and political unrest for the rest of your career, exactly as you wanted it. And who cares what I might have wanted?’

  He looked at me for a long moment, and if possible, his gaze got even darker, even harder. I pretended it didn’t bother me. I pretended I couldn’t feel it, tying my stomach into knots.

  I pretended I just wanted to keep talking, that I wasn’t a little bit afraid of what he might say next.

  ‘You don’t make promises,’ I said, gentling my voice. Finding that reasonable tone inside of me and grabbing onto it. Trying to pull it around me like a cloak. ‘I needed them. In the end, I think it was just that simple.’

  ‘I don’t make promises I can’t keep,’ he corrected me, his voice rougher then. Deeper. Hinting at a world of pain, of emotion, that I didn’t want to acknowledge. Temper was almost easier. ‘I never have. And you knew that.’

  Whatever moved in me then was spiked and remarkably painful, and it made it hard to breathe. God, the things I didn’t want to know. Or feel. But right behind it came a great rush of my own temper, galloping through me, sweeping everything else away. And for a moment, it felt a lot like clean.

  ‘Have you been sitting around mourning me all this time, Alec?’ I laughed as I said it. I wanted to fight, I didn’t want to feel. I didn’t even know why. ‘Rending a garment or two? Weeping all over your patients? I find that hard to believe. When I met you there was a sea of women around you, and it wasn’t like they went away when we started dating, either. Do you really want to act like you’ve spent all this time racked with agony over something that ended—’