Mostly the whatnot—heavy emphasis on not—but I wasn’t going to tell Mr. Rhodes Scholar Pilot Pilates Professor that. In fact, I loved it just the teeniest bit that he’d busted in on me coming home from a date.
“But I ask you. Did you feel the connection with them that you felt with me?”
“That, I can honestly answer no.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“Trace, I—”
“I should have come with you,” he said, interrupting me. He straightened, clasped his hands behind his back, and began pacing, giving his speech to the floor, just as I’d seen him do a million times. “I was hurt, Hollis. Hurt that you chose your career over me. But eventually I realized that you just didn’t have as many opportunities available to you as I did, career-wise.”
“I had opportunities,” I said. “This was my opportunity. And it was a great opportunity.”
“I know,” he said. “The industry is shrinking and you had to leave. I get it now. And I have so many regrets about how I handled that. And the point is—no matter how many women I’ve dated or how secure my career is in Chicago, I can’t get past it. Our breakup.” He swept back to me, full of eagerness. “I want you back. I want to try again. I think we can make it.”
I backed up. I had literally dreamed of this moment so many times. In my dreams, it all felt right and stomach-swoopy and there was orchestral music in the background. In my dreams, I said yes, yes, always yes. But that was not at all how I was feeling now. “I…I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” He reached for my hand, but I dodged his advance. He acted like he didn’t notice. “We’ll just pick up where we left off. You can come home. Leave this…” He glanced around my porch, my house, my street. “Speck on the map.”
“I like my speck,” I said indignantly. For some reason, my hand drifted right to a little flower pot I’d bought at the dollar store, my thumb stroking the petunias I’d planted in it. I’d watered those flowers every day over the summer. And I’d bought that rocking chair from the thrift store and painted it myself, and, darn it, I liked that, too.
“Of course you do.” He gave me the kind of smile you give a child who adorably mispronounces a word. “As you should. It’s your home. You’re amazing for making the best out of a bad situa—”
“Stop,” I said.
He gazed at me, perplexed. “Stop what?”
“Stop doing that,” I said. “Stop patronizing me. And stop acting like you were pining over me this whole time. Stop pretending that you want to somehow work this out, when we both know that working it out means me coming back to Chicago. You’re not ready to change your life for me—you just want me to change mine for you. What’s changed? I know what’s changed. You suddenly want me back because all those other women dumped you.”
He blinked in shock; I blinked in shock. I’d been so heartbroken by Trace, I hadn’t realized how angry I’d been. It felt good to get it off my chest at last.
He quickly recovered, pasting the benign grin on his face again. Which told me I was right. Trace loved to argue. He wouldn’t just choose a hill to die on—he would choose a hill to stuff ten tons of dynamite into and blow with him standing on top bellowing how right he was. If he didn’t argue, it was because he knew he didn’t have a leg to stand on. He considered what I’d said for a long moment, then nodded contemplatively. “Those relationships did not work out, you’re correct. And that is exactly why I’m here. We worked, Hollis. You can’t deny it.”
No, I couldn’t deny it. We had worked. And I would be lying if I said the idea of going back to our old life wasn’t a little bit enticing. Dinners at Everest followed by front row seats at the Symphony Center. Tomato sandwiches and kale chips on Promontory Point, reading side-by-side—me a novel and Trace an historical biography—and listening to the sounds of the lake. It was a life. It was my life.
It was a great life.
A life I missed every single day.
Or at least I thought I was still missing it every day.
Wasn’t I?
“Trace,” I said, scooting away from him to give myself thinking space. “I have a job here. Remember, I left for a reason. There’s nothing there for me. You said it yourself. The industry is shrinking. I can’t come back to that. There would be no point. I would just have to find another job somewhere else and we’d be right back to square one.”
“Oh! That reminds me.” He was all excited smiles. “I talked to Tiana Gregory about you.”
The name sounded familiar. “Editor of the political commentary page?”
“The one and only,” he said. “She agreed to give you an interview.”
“What?”
He beamed. “You’re back in. As you know, I have a few strings in political. I pulled one and got you a second chance. She’ll love you. The job is essentially yours.”
“What?” I asked again, barely able to absorb what I was hearing. I could leave Mary Jean’s ridiculously boring stories and get back to the way news was meant to be. I could honor what I was taught. I could be legitimate again.
Except…I had kind of come to see myself as legitimate here. Just a different kind of legitimate.
“So you can come home and go back to what you love doing.” He snapped his fingers three times. Tink lumbered to life and wobbled over to me. He nuzzled against my leg. I reached down and stroked his head absently, still numb. “It’s all going to work out,” Trace said.
“I don’t know if it would, Trace.”
A look of concern flitted across his face, a look of
