“Hey. I loved the show,” he says, sitting back down and beckoning for me to come closer. Reluctantly, I do, closing the space between us again. He pulls me into his lap, hands on my hips. “And I loved this.” He motions to the wrecking room around us. “Could you—could you at least tell me why? We’ve been friends for so long, and I can’t remember you not feeling this way.”
His voice is so soft as it invites me to tell him my secrets.
“Maybe I just really hate romantic comedies.”
He scoffs at that, and I probably deserve it. “I’m sorry if I sound daft, but it seems so straightforward to me. We like spending time together. We’re obviously attracted to each other. I know I fucked up at the auction, and at the movie, and I’m sorry. But what am I missing, Quinn? What am I not seeing?”
In my mind, I reach farther back into the past. I am so close to letting him into this painful place. Letting him hold some of that pain with me, maybe even help me make sense of it.
“I just—” I break off, take a deep breath with my fingertips pressed hard against my temples. If it’ll make him understand, I have to let him in, even if it only makes it harder to eventually shut him out. So I push myself over the edge. “My parents separated.”
Separated. It doesn’t sound like what it really is—either a prelude to divorce or a last-ditch effort to save a marriage. It sounds… final.
He blinks a few times as this registers. “They… what? Isaac and Shayna?” he asks, as though maybe I’m talking about my other parents.
I nod. “When I was eight. They said work had been stressful, and my mom was going to stay with our aunt for a while. It was only for six months, and then she moved back in and they pretended everything was fine.”
“Only six months,” he says, giving it a strange emphasis.
“What?”
“You said it was only six months. That’s not an only to me. That’s six fucking months. Six fucking months when you were eight years old. That probably felt like a lifetime.”
“I—yeah. I guess it didn’t feel like an only to me back then either.” I move off his lap, my breaths still shaky. “We never talked about it. I tried to, but they clearly just wanted to move on and forget. Asher was in high school, and she was always so busy, and I didn’t want to bother her, either. And—and when I stayed with my mom, sometimes I overheard her crying, and it all felt like… like all these adults were making decisions about me, but no one cared to let me know what was happening or why.”
“I am so sorry, Quinn.” A couple emotions flit across his face and his fingers twitch, as though he wants to comfort me but knows it’s the opposite of what I’m asking for. So he keeps his hands in his lap.
“What you said last year at the marina, about couples not trying hard enough to stay together? I couldn’t imagine them having tried any harder than literally being in the business of love.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have said that.” But he might have still believed it.
“They went back to work like nothing was different. They’d just almost gotten divorced, but they were all smiles with their clients, and none of it ever seemed real. It felt like they were faking their whole marriage because it was good for business.” God, it feels weird to be telling this story with an ax at my feet.
“And you think they’re still faking it? Even now?” There’s no judgment in his questions. He’s not asking them to prove me wrong. He genuinely wants to know what I think.
I hold up my arms. “Yes? I don’t know. It took me by surprise when it happened, and there weren’t any signs at all. So I’m constantly waiting for something to go wrong, for any minor disagreement to be the last straw. And if I left B+B, well, I can’t help feeling like that last straw would come a lot sooner.”
What I don’t tell him: the closest Tarek and I ever got to a relationship, it hurt in a similar way, the kind of hurt that makes the ground unsteady beneath your feet, that makes colors duller. The kind of hurt that made me feel I had one less person in the world on my side. A deep, acute loneliness.
It confirmed everything I thought was true about relationships: that they don’t give a fuck about who they hurt when they go up in flames. We hadn’t even started one, and already I’d been burned.
“You have to know we wouldn’t be like that,” he says. “For about a hundred reasons. You really think all relationships are doomed? Your sister’s? Julia’s?”
I shrug. “Some of them, sure. It’s just statistics.”
“Right.” The word ricochets off the walls of the small gray room.
“You’re going back to school in September anyway,” I continue, because if I can’t convince him with emotion, then I’ll use logic. “Why does this have to be something serious? Why can’t it just be fun? You are having fun, right?”
He hesitates, but then his mouth quirks up. It’s such a relief to see, even if it isn’t a whole smile. “I have been having a ridiculous amount of fun, yes.”
“Me too. So why can’t we keep having fun? We can still be friends. We’ll just be friends who kiss. And… other things,” I say.
He’s quiet for a moment, processing this. I know this kind of casual relationship I’m asking for goes against every die-hard-romantic cell in his body.
“Okay,” he finally says. “Then I guess we’ll keep having fun.”
It must be the saddest way anyone’s ever talked about having fun, and it scrapes at my heart. But he’ll see, when he goes back to California and
