Page 59 of The Write Place

Chapter 25

Jenny meets me at my place, where I immediately change out of the nice clothes I wore for the presentation and pull on my huge hoodie and leggings. She opens a bottle of wine, but I’m not interested in drinking.

“I should have trusted my instincts.” I sniffle. “He’s a liar. He lied to me when we met, and he lied to me the whole time we were together.”

“What kind of commiserating do you want me to do?” She makes her way into the living room, placing my glass of wine on the coffee table and sitting next to me on the couch. “I’m happy to tell you every tiny thing I find offensive about the man, or I can try to convince you it wasn’t his fault. Tell me which Jenny you need, and I’ll be her.”

“Do you really think this wasn’t his fault?” I grab a tissue to wipe my face.

She considers for a minute, taking a sip of her wine. “Yes and no. He should have told you, but if he really thought they were donezo and he was stuck with her as his editor through the end of this book, he could probably see the light at the end of the tunnel and figured it didn’t matter.”

“He said he had let it get too far with his ex, but he never said he was engaged,” I insist.

“Does that matter?” Jenny asks.

“Yes!” I sit up straighter. “Ending a long-term relationship with someone is different from ending an engagement, especially with someone with whom you are still working.”

“I mean, I agree completely. You just fell really hard for him, and if there’s even a little piece of you that wants to forgive him for this, then I want to support that. He was different from the other guys you’ve dated, Mac.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” she trails off as if she’s not sure she wants to say what she’s going to say next. “I mean, you let him in here on the anniversary of Ellie’s death. You hardly even tell other guys about her, let alone let them get that close to you. You spent an entire week attached to the hip with him during the hardest time of the school year when you usually cut guys loose. I don’t know why you did it, but you did, so I’m left to assume he had to be different.”

She’s not wrong, but I don’t have room in my heart for her rationality at the moment. Before I can tell her that, there is a knock at my front door.

“You want me to send him away?” Jenny asks, because there is only one person who would be knocking at my door right now.

I shake my head. His flight is tomorrow, and we both deserve some closure. I go to pull the door open, and sure enough, Daniel is standing there wearing the same clothes he had on for the reading, even though I know the program ended an hour ago.

“I didn’t think you’d answer,” he says by way of greeting. I lean my cheek on the edge of the open door and shrug, hugging myself against the cold air.

“Well, I did.” I’m glad Jenny can hear everything from where she’s sitting. It’ll save me the trouble of explaining it all to her later.

“Can I come in?” Hope is positively dripping from his tone, but I shake my head.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Mac, I’m sorry. I had no idea she’d be here and…”

“You think I’m upset that she’s here?” I ask incredulously. “Are you that oblivious?”

He pauses, his shoulders slumping. “No. I stupidly didn’t tell you who she was and what she had been to me. I just wanted to get through this godforsaken novel and wipe her from my life. It was selfish. I figured it wouldn’t matter because I never thought you’d meet her.”

“You didn’t think it would matter that you had been engaged?” My voice is an octave higher than it usually is.

He raises his hands from his sides in supplication and drops them helplessly. “I would have told you eventually. This all happened so fast, and I didn’t want to scare you off.”

“That’s not the first time you’ve told me you were going to tell me something eventually,” I spit out. He cringes.

“I know, and I’m sorry. You and I were just so good together. I wanted it too badly. I told you, Mac, I haven’t been invested in my relationship with her for a long time.”

“That giant diamond would suggest otherwise,” I insist.

He blows a hard breath out of his nose and rubs a hand back and forth through his hair as if this whole thing is wildly ridiculous and unfair. He closes his eyes. “She picked that out and insisted I buy it for her, and then she just started wearing it. There was barely a conversation about it before it was on her finger. She is a shark when she sees something she wants, and I… I don’t know. I didn’t think I deserved better until I met you.”

I have to admit that I feel really bad for him, because I can see exactly how she could have crushed him so completely that he felt he didn’t have a choice in the trajectory of his life, but just like the first day he walked into my classroom, I’m not about to be placated by my own empathy.

“You should have told me,” I say quietly, and when he opens his eyes, his expression is so pained, I think this is the moment he realizes I’m not going to let this go.