"Of course you didn't," I said.
"This is all my fault," she said, waving frantically. "Sam did nothing wrong. Seriously, Tiel, this was all me."
I couldn't believe this was happening. My entire body was shaking with a torrent of rage and hurt and confusion, and I was a breath away from losing it.
"Erroneous, Gigi," Riley said as he came up behind me. "It's always Sam's fault. He's the master of weaseling out of things." He paused, glancing between me, Sam, and that bitch. To her credit, she had backed away from Sam and was looking increasingly uncomfortable. "Uh, what is the crime in question?"
"Tiel, I am so, so, so sorry," she said. She stepped toward me, her hands spread in front of her, pleading. "Honestly, this is on me and I might actually die from humiliation now."
I pointed at Sam. "Can I speak to you outside?"
"We should let the grown-ups have a little chitchat, Gigi," Riley murmured. He brought his hands to her shoulders and steered her away.
I didn't wait for Sam's response, instead turning on my heel and storming through the restaurant. I burst through the door, sending it snapping back and clattering against the restaurant's front window.
"Goddamn it, Tiel, stop," he yelled. "Just stop."
He stepped in front of me, his hand on my elbow, and I promptly shook it off. "Don't," I said. "Tell me what's going on. Tell me everything, and please do not lie to me."
He sighed, shaking his head and gesturing frantically until the words sputtered out. "Tiel, I'm sorry, sweetheart. She's a friend and colleague, and I was congratulating her on a magazine feature, and she got the wrong idea. That's all." He dragged his hands through his hair, and he was all the way desperate. "Just a misunderstanding."
There was always a simple, pretty explanation.
"If it was such a misunderstanding, why didn't you stop her? Why didn't you say, 'Hey lady, get your tongue out of my mouth'?" I could buy that argument if I hadn't stood there, staring at them kissing while full seconds ticked by.
"I just…I don't know. I fucked up. I didn't realize she was into me, and I thought Riley was going to handle it. They started hanging out and going to football games together and it seemed like she was over it, but—"
"Wait," I interrupted, holding my hands up for silence. I couldn't keep up with this ridiculous story. "Wait. How long has this been going on with her?"
"We've been working on the Turlan project since October," he said. "But nothing is going on. Nothing happened."
All this time.
I couldn't believe I'd been so stupid, so fucking foolish. This was Sam after all, the man who made no illusions about what he wanted from a woman, the man who once told me that love and forever were nonexistent, bullshit notions.
That was probably the only true thing he'd ever said.
"Sam," I sighed, his name falling from my lips in a low sob.
I didn't know how else to explain that this was destroying me but there had to be something. I looked around, desperate to find the answer in the shop windows, the street, the curious eyes watching us from inside the restaurant, but my search turned up empty. There was nothing to stop the fracture growing between us, nowhere to hold on.
"But you didn't tell her about me. You didn't mention that you were seeing someone. I didn't matter enough—"
"No," he interrupted. "I fucked up and I'm so sorry, but please, let's go inside, you're freezing—"
"I'm not pregnant. Just so you know. That's why you're putting on this concerned act, I get that, and you can stop now."
His face fell, the hard lines of frustration dissolving, and he murmured a soft "Oh."
My period started last night, and I'd never had so many contradictory feelings about it before. The first reaction was disappointment, and that was rather infuriating. This wasn't the right time to get pregnant but over the past week, it became a happy eventuality. It was as if we'd conceded that I was pregnant and we were ensuring that confirmation by forgoing condoms altogether.
But then I was relieved. We weren't anywhere near ready, and this was an opportunity to spend more time enjoying each other before we complicated matters.
And now…now I knew it was a stay of execution.
"Listen to me. Nothing happened with Magnolia except for me being too in love with you to notice her flirting. I swear to you on my mother's grave that I never once entertained an unprofessional thought about her, and Riley will tell you the same thing. And you fucking matter. You're my everything and I'm taking you home," Sam said. "We'll talk about this there."
He was tender and sweet, and God help me, I wanted to believe him. I wanted to pretend this had never happened. I wanted to run into his arms and stay there until I felt my doubt and distrust slide away. I wanted to replace all my wounds with his love…but I knew better than that.
I crossed my arms over my chest and shook my head. "I'm not sure why I thought it would be different with you. I can't believe I didn't see it sooner."
"Tiel, there's nothing to see because I'm telling you the truth," he said, his hands fisted on his hips. "Can we take a moment to acknowledge this is really about your asshole ex-husband? That once again, none of this has anything to do with me or us?"
I knew I needed to stop and breathe, but I couldn't see beyond the icy betrayal in my gut. "Don't you dare put this on me," I said. "It isn't my fault that you kissed someone. I wasn't the one who hid this particular friend and I wasn't the one with my hands all over some slut."
"She's not a slut," he said, his voice low and quiet. "So you're saying you don't trust me at all?"
It was horribly cold, frigid wind was biting at my face, and my bag's strap was digging into my shoulder, but nothing outpaced the throbbing pain coursing through my body.
"I can't trust you because you tell me to, not when you've made it perfectly clear that you fuck everything with tits and a heartbeat."
"And I can't believe you just said that." He shook his head, his expression turning bitter. "You know that isn't true. You know that isn't how it is."
"I don't know how anything is anymore, Sam." I backed away, desperate for some breathing room. "Here's what I know. You have a lot of sex with a lot of women and none of it matters to you. This little experiment of ours? We've been sleeping together for less than three months and you're already kissing someone else. I would be an absolute idiot to assume you'd changed, and I never should have tried in the first place."
A bus stopped at the curb, and when the doors creaked open, a burst of passengers spilled onto the sidewalk. We stared at each other, ignoring the people moving around us, and the hurt and anger grew, multiplying until I barely recognized the eyes gazing back at me.
"Yeah," he said. I caught a flash of grief in his eyes, but the fight inside him died and his expression morphed into indifference. He hadn't moved but I sensed his resolve ebbing and him backing away from me, detaching. "You're probably right."
"I…I need some space. From all of this. I cannot even begin to process tonight. And these past few months. I need space," I repeated.
"Take all the time you need, sweetheart," he said, his voice nonchalant. He pulled on that shiny veneer, the superficially perfect smirk he showed the world when he was busy hiding his vulnerabilities, and it was the saddest, most hollow expression I'd ever seen. "Whatever. So it's over. Like you said, it's not like any of this matters to me."
He dragged his unimpressed gaze up and down my body, lifted a shoulder, and walked away.
I stumbled through the rest of the week in a foggy, confused state, aching to call Sam and forgive everything just to feel his arms around me again. I wanted him more than anything, but I still couldn't reconcile his words, his actions—his willingness to leave me standing on that sidewalk after I found him kissing another woman—with the man I thought I'd uncovered.
This was a mess. A gigantic, horrendous mess, and I wanted to assign blame to Sam…but I couldn't. There was more, something I couldn't understand.
We
were this close to having it all figured out, to moving in together, to—holy fuck—starting a family. And then it was gone, sliding out of our hands before we could grasp the threads and fragments.
We loved each other. Actual, real, hot, messy, complicated, marrow-deep love but I was beginning to think it didn't matter how much you loved someone.
Some things weren't meant to last.
When my last class ended on Friday afternoon, I was in the mood for some late eighties Billy Joel. Something dark, like "The Downeaster 'Alexa.'"
Maybe U2. The angsty shit from "Joshua Tree" and "Achtung Baby."
The more I thought about it, the darker the playlist became. I could focus on moving tracks around as I waited on the Red Line platform, and I didn't have to think about anything Sam said or did. None of our sidewalk argument echoed in my mind so long as I kept The Used, Sia, and AFI pounding through my earbuds.
When I reached my apartment, I stripped out of my clothes and went straight for the shelf in my closet earmarked for Sam. I pulled on his flannel pajama pants and gray tank and called up my new playlist. Without a proper title, it defaulted to the first song I selected: 'Criminal' by Fiona Apple. I hadn't cried yet, but when I curled up on the sofa, my entire body submitted to heaving, sloppy sobs. The hurt I'd been pushing down for two days was uncorked and overflowing, and once it was out, I felt stunningly empty.
The music played for hours before circling back to the first track, and I drifted into intermittent fits of watery, hiccupping sleep. I lay there, replaying those songs until they blurred, mutating into one long aching sob.
Ellie called, and though I wasn't sure I could speak, let alone explain, I answered.
"I fucked up," I sniffled, not bothering with an introduction. "With the prepster. And he did too, but…I said awful, evil things to him. He screwed up but I wouldn't even listen, and I should have. I tore into him. I don't know what to do right now, Ell."
"Okay," she said. "Am I going to you, or are you coming to me?"
She was on a flight to Boston that night, and when I woke up the next morning, she was across from me, dozing in the slouchy blue chair. Ellie was the best kind of people, and aside from music, her friendship was the only real constant in my life. There weren't many things I kept around, but Ellie was one of them. She was a better sister to me than Agapi could ever be, and between us, we had created more family than either of ours could offer. We didn't need blood to bond us.
Four iced cappuccinos sat on the table, and a large paper sack from my favorite bagel shop. I downed half the coffee in one noisy gulp, and her eyes blinked open. She sat beside me on the sofa, draping her arm over my shoulder and pulling the blanket around us. "Thank you for coming. I know you're missing shows and…I'm sorry."
"Don't thank me and don't apologize. This is making the back-up fiddler incredibly happy," she said. "Tell me everything."
"I fell in love with him," I said simply. "And then we almost got pregnant and some overly zealous bitch tried to kiss him. I flipped out and basically told him he was a whore and that he'd never change, and that's where I was wrong." I ran my hand through my hair and shrugged. "I think I really fucked it all up, and it's the kind of fucked-up you can't fix."
"Okay, why don't you rewind this story and slow it down for me," she said.
We drank all the coffee and ate most of the bagels while I talked. Ellie listened, forcing me to repeat certain parts and asking questions in others, and she sat back, tapping her finger to her lips when I finally finished.
"Whatever it is," I said. "Just spit it out."
"Here's what we can agree on: you're sensitive about infidelity, he doesn't have the cleanest relationship boundaries, and this Maggie or Minnesota or whatever her name is, she's definitely overzealous. I'm tempted to believe her when she says it was her fault, but that doesn't excuse the heightened zeal."
"Right," I said. "What's up for debate?"
She went back to tapping her lips and I attacked another bagel.
"Is it possible that Sam proved why it didn't work with Dillon?" I turned to her, my mouth full, and lifted an eyebrow. "Hear me out. Yeah, Dillon cheated on you, but he also had no idea who you were. You two had that weird instalove shit going on, and you were so busy being in love with being in love that nothing else mattered. You weren't friends. You didn't truly know each other."
"And how does that prove anything?" I asked. "Aside from the fact I was a shallow teenager with a low threshold for affection?"
"You were friends first, and it seems like you authentically cared about Sam," she said.
I nodded in confirmation.
"And…don't hate me when I say this, but it sounds like you were convinced Sam was just like Dillon, even from the start, and you made that fit the circumstances?"
The comments about his sex life. I was the one who instigated those conversations.
The questions about his whereabouts. I was the one who didn't accept his word.
The reactions to his relationships with Andy and Lauren. I was the one who couldn't handle it.
The refusal to hear him out even when what's-her-name admitted fault. I was the one who broke us up.
"Oh, fuck," I groaned, and buried my head in the sofa. If I stayed hidden there, I wouldn't have to acknowledge that I destroyed the most loving relationship of my life because I refused to believe someone was worth trusting.
"Let's say Dillon never cheated on you. It still wouldn't have worked out," she said. "You would have realized that you were wrong for each other eventually, and while I don't condone his methods, Dillon just figured it out sooner."
"Okay, but—" I stopped myself because I didn't have an argument to defend. Ellie was right.
"Again, don't hate me but… Your real issue is that you've never been loved the way you deserve, and I think Sam might have done that for you. And maybe you didn't know how to handle it. I don't think Dillon hurt you when he cheated. You didn't care enough to be hurt. He was just another in a long line of assholes who thought it was okay to fuck you over and abandon you." I peeked out from behind a pillow, glancing at her in question. "Yes, I'm talking about your family. They're assholes and you know it as well as I do."
I finished the other half of the bagel without responding because once again, Ellie was right.
"Will you tell me stories about the tour now?" I asked. Her accounts from the road were my preferred fairy tales, and though I never saw myself playing with a band and traveling from city to city, I loved the vicarious experience. It was a sweet little escape, and that was what I needed at this moment.
Later, I sat on the floor of the shower while water rushed over me. I felt hollow and fragile, like I'd snap if I moved the wrong way. The lighthearted joy that usually came so easily to me was buried deep below the surface, in a spot I couldn't access.
I wanted to find Sam, to explain everything, but I was all out of words…and there were too many old, tender wounds obscuring my thoughts. I needed the music to tell me what I was feeling, how to make sense of it all, how to go forward. This was the sort of thing I processed by myself, bleeding it out every time I brought my fingers back to the strings. I didn't know whether I was built that way or I made myself that way, but it was my operating system.
And I knew where I had to go.
27
Sam
"Are you coming?"
Riley was standing in the doorway to my office, his fly unzipped and a coffee stain resembling Argentina down his leg.
"RISD. Put your dick away."
I was in rough shape after giving Tiel six days of 'space' and let's be honest: she hadn't been asking for a couple days of space. She never wanted to see me again.
I wasn't sleeping. I couldn't convince myself to eat much. I was hitting the treadmill in the dead of night, running for hours and pretending there was something normal about that.
"My bad, my bad," he mumbled as he righted his trousers. "As I was saying, are you coming?"
Irritated, I scrolled through my calendar but couldn't find an appointment. "Coming where? I'm free all morning, and I was looking forward to feeling sorry for myself during that time."
That last comment earned me a lifted eyebrow from Riley. He was squarely in the camp of me calling Tiel and groveling my ass off. I was more interested in hating the world for the foreseeable future and not making a fool of myself again. "It's the walk-through at Wellesley. Shannon said you wanted to be there."
Fuuuuck.
"Shannon, Patrick, and Andy are meeting us there. Matt's driving. You can come with us, or I can catch a ride with him if you're out."
"No," I groaned, and shoved my things into my messenger bag. "I'm not in the mood to talk to Shannon, and she's going to come in here, guns blazing, if I bail. I don't have the patience for her dramatics today."
I slumped in the back seat of Matt's car—an exact replica of mine—and ignored the conversation he carried on with Riley about basketball. The traffic was heavy this morning, and after another endless night spent jogging on a road to nowhere, I fell asleep as soon as we hit Storrow Drive.
The crunch of gravel under tires woke me, and as I set eyes on the one-hundred-and-thirty-year-old Arts and Crafts mansion for the first time in years, I knew I should have stayed at the office. There were only so many hits a man could take.
Cold lead sank in my stomach but I followed Matt and Riley up the circular drive. They were pointing out the work in progress, but I couldn't hear them over the pounding in my head.
We joined the group in the kitchen, and Shannon wasted no time offering her commentary. "I didn't believe you'd actually show up. Let's commemorate this moment," she said, gesturing toward me. "I'd suggest a selfie but you look like shit."
"Play nice, Shan," Riley warned. They made eye contact, but I was too miserable to care about their exchange of grimaces and eyebrows and stares.
The Walsh Brothers Page 81
