Page 9 of Intersect

A week ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated to be alone with him. But I don’t know the person who stands in front of me, looking like he wants to put his fist through the wall. I don’t know the guy who called so many times he filled up my voicemail twice. And I haven’t mentioned it to Nick, but this is also the guy whose messages have grown increasingly furious. He’s said things on my voicemail I never dreamed I’d hear him say. I know people can behave badly when they’re wounded, but listening to those messages makes me feel like I never really knew him at all. “We’re good here.”

His jaw drops. “You were ready to marry me four days ago and now I’m some kind of deviant you can’t be alone with?”

In the last voicemail he left, he called me a lying bitch. I’m not feeling any guilt about refusing to be alone with him. “I never said that. But given how you’ve been acting, I’d prefer to discuss this in a place where I have the option to walk away.”

He blows out a breath and folds his arms across his chest. “How I’ve been acting?” he demands. “Are you fucking serious right now? You dumped me at the airport after more than six years together and won’t even pick up the phone.”

“Think about what you’ve said on my voicemail. Can you blame me?”

“I just want an answer. I just want to know how you go from being perfectly happy with someone you’re about to marry to miserable overnight?”

I raise my eyes to his, and though I’m stunned by how badly he’s reacted to our break-up, I still wince at what I’m about to say next. “That’s just it, though. We weren’t perfectly happy.”

He narrows his eyes. “Don’t you dare say we because you don’t get to speak for me. I was fine.”

I sigh. Jeff always was a bit oblivious about things, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s oblivious here too. “You learned I had a fatal illness, and you continued on with your job like nothing had changed.” It’s strange to me now that I didn’t see how wrong it all was, but that was before I knew what it was like to be with the right person. The one you can’t live without. It’s so clear to me now how different Jeff should have been, because I see how Nick would have been in his shoes. “I’m not faulting you for it. But the point is this: when the person you are supposed to love above all others tells you news like that, you stop worrying about whether the suppliers in Ithaca are going to meet their shipping deadlines.”

“So that’s what this is? You’re punishing me for leaving? For trying to support us both?”

I feel the tiniest spark of irritation at trying to support us both, as if I didn’t work too, but I force myself to let it go. “I’m saying that if you felt the right way about me, you would not have been willing to leave. Knowing I’m dying…it’s just put a lot of things in perspective. And we’re one of those things.”

“Your father begged me to take care of you,” Jeff says. “You know that? When he was dying he begged me to make sure you were safe. And I know he spoke to you too. It was his final wish. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Will the guilt over that ever go away? Until it does I just have to pretend it isn’t there. “The two of us together is nothing he’d have wished for before he got sick. So no, I’m not going to let that be the thing I base my future on.”

His whole body softens as he changes tack. He reaches out to grasp my arms and it’s a struggle not to shrug him off. “Can we go to dinner tonight, hon? Just to talk. We can go to Zatinya. You always wanted to try it.”

The suggestion makes me long to roll my eyes. I begged him to go there for six years, but suddenly he’s someone who cares about what I want? “No,” I reply. “I don’t want to go to dinner. You aren’t going to change my mind. Please just let this go.”

“Never,” he says. “I made your father a promise. And I intend to see it through.”

My stomach drops. Now that it’s over, I just want to be done with him, and the look on his face tells me I won’t be for a good long time.

* * *

That afternoon, Caroline and Trevor walk in carrying garment bags. “We’re here to play fairy godmother,” says Caroline.

“Unless you think he’s gay,” says Trevor. “In which case, you can play fairy godmother to me. Literal fairy godmother.”

Caroline slings the hanger of her bag over the closet door. “Shut up, Trevor,” she says. “You know he’s not gay.”

He hands her his garment bag and pulls a blind down to keep the bright afternoon sun out of his face. “Maybe it wasn’t lust like we thought. She’s beautiful. Maybe he’s just fascinated by her the way I am with that Renoir at the National Gallery of Art. I could stare at it for hours but I don’t want to put my dick in it.”

“You’re making me feel worse,” I tell him.

He sits beside me and pats my leg. “You know I’m just kidding. I promise he wants to put his dick in you.”

I laugh and rest my head on his shoulder. “That’s sweet. Thank you.”

He gets out his phone and I hear the ping of a text arrive on my phone and Caroline’s a moment later. “I’m sending you both the deets on my date tonight, by the way. He looks like a criminal.”

“Which is your type,” I add.

“Yes. But it also means he’s slightly more likely to kill me after sex than Nick is likely to kill you after sex,” he replies. “Perhaps because you’re less likely to have sex in the first place. Anyway, if I don’t turn up at work tomorrow, avenge my death.”

I lean back on the other end of the couch. “You do realize we’re the most ill-equipped people ever to avenge you if something goes wrong?” I ask. “I’ve never hit anyone in my life. And Caroline talks a good game but she’d mostly be worried about protecting her designer shoes if there were an altercation.” Caroline ignores this, unzipping the garment bags with a reverence normally reserved for the Mona Lisa and religious artifacts.

“You’re right about Caroline,” he agrees. “But you’ve got hidden scrappiness. Like Jennifer Garner in Peppermint. One day you’re just plain old Quinn and then some senator will kill me to cover up our affair and it brings out your inner badass. Next thing you know you’re walking down the street with a loaded shotgun.”