Page 67 of When We Had Forever
When he searches my face, I know I haven’t fooled him. For a moment, I have the strangest urge to go get him his pencil, because he’s studying me the same way he studies his drafting board, as if he can design his way to the desired outcome.Just adjust this angle over here, shift that wall to the left, and voilà. Everything in its place.
His smoky voice turns rasping. “What’s this really about, Mina?”
I tell myself to let it go. Then, for some reason, I don’t. “To be honest, the dog thing has mostly been a way to distract myself.”
“From?”
“Asking for what I really want.”
“Which is?”
I clamp my teeth over my lip. Not today, of all days. I already know how this will end. “Never mind.”
His mouth thins. “You want to go on vacation.”
I push my asparagus around on my plate. “You said it, not me.”
Michael sighs. “Is this ever going to stop coming up? You know what work is like for me.”
“You asked for a few years, Michael,” I blurt. “It’s beensix and a half.”
“Business is crazy right now.”
“Business is always crazy right now. And what about the fact that Benny and Sarah spent Christmas in Tahiti last year? If he can leave, why can’t you?”
“I’ve given you everything else. Everything you could possibly ask for.”
I flinch, because he sounds hard-bitten and weary, as if he’s done his utmost to make me happy and can’t understand why it’s not working.
I look around. I am happy, really. Ishouldbe. I couldn’t ask for more than what’s spread out before me—a beautiful house, if in the last place I thought I’d settle down, a beautiful husband, a beautifuleverything. And yet...
I clear my throat. Crap. I can’t seem to help myself. “Do you remember when we drove out to that observatory, back when we first met? The one outside Seattle?”
He blinks, long and slow.
The blankness in his eyes stabs at me. He can’t have forgotten, can he? “Where you first told me you loved me?”
“Right.” He sets his fork down. “What about it?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about that. A lot.” Endlessly, in fact, but I don’t need to rub it in his face. I twist my napkin, then give up and toss it onto the table. “It keeps coming back to me. How you looked up at the stars and said what you did. My whole world shifted in that moment. It felt like we were the only two people in the world right then, and I keep thinking it’s because we were out there being free together. Away from expectations. Just us and the sky and the world. And I miss that. I miss us, together, being like that.”
His gaze slides away. As if he’s uncomfortably aware that he’s no longer the same man who stood on that mountaintop and read poetry in the stars. “That was a different life, Mina. A different me.”
My heartbeat snags in my throat. “It doesn’t have to be. If we just went somewhere, if we could get some distance from Washington, we could reconnect. The way we used to.”
He huffs a humorless laugh. Something about it sounds hollow. Like I could reach across the table and my fingers would pass right through him.
“Things change.” He keeps his tone measured, but underneath, emotion thrums, some caged reaction he refuses to grant me access to. “People change. This is me, now. This is our life. I don’t know what more I can give you.”
I ease back in my chair, at a loss. Of course he’s changed. Ten years have changed me, too. But I can’t help feeling like he’s forgotten his own advice, like he’s fallenasleep. That we both have.
How I long to wake up. To lure the Michael I fell in love with from the hibernation Grayson drove him into. I’m certain he’s still in there, buried beneath the hurt. Somewhere under the work deadlines and haircuts and grocery runs.
“Are you ever going to let this go?” he says softly.
A shuddering breath steals out of me. “I don’t think I can.”
The moment it’s out, I realize it’s true. Underneath the shine and glamour of our life together, I’ve never forgotten that I gave up Greece for him. For this. And while I don’t regret the sacrifice I made to build a life together, I always thought Michael would live outsomeversion of my dream with me. Except he refuses. For years, it’s been eating at me, and now there’s no place left for my frustration to go except spilling across the table.
