A Special Place for Women, Laura Hankin [brene brown rising strong .txt] 📗

you’re like my family and my closest friend rolled into one, and that’s why we can’t screw things up by trying to date each other and then having it go wrong.”

He looked down at our clasped hands and traced his thumb over my fingers. I didn’t want him to stop touching me. “What if it doesn’t go wrong, though?” he asked.

I stood up and began to pace. “On the off chance that it doesn’t, it’s not like we could be together after the article comes out anyway. You’d have to break up with me, pretend you were outraged at what I’d done, because if it came out that you were my accomplice they’d ruin you, ruin the restaurant, and I’m not going to let that happen.”

“I think we could figure it out,” he said, standing up too.

“No. No, this is . . . we’re being ridiculous. Sure, maybe it’s been nice at times, being together in that way. Maybe we’ve developed little crushes on each other. Maybe last night was extremely satisfying.” A tingling shudder ran through my body at the remembrance of his hands grasping my hips, the feel of him against me. “But if we cut it off here and now, and just go back to the way things were—”

“Jillian,” he said with a firmness that stopped me short. “I don’t want to argue you into loving me. I don’t think I’d be very good at that anyway. But I do need to say—” He walked right up to me, took my face in his hands, and began to speak with more clarity and conviction than I’d ever heard him use before. “I think it would be worth it for us to try. Because there is a world where it works with us, a world where it works so well, and we have a house with a big kitchen for me and a big writing desk for you and a couple of kids who eat dirt.” Here, he smiled, and I couldn’t help smiling back even as a lump grew in my throat, because I could see them too, these long-limbed, dark-haired children, laughing at family dinners, and the possibility of so much joy. “So if you’re pulling away just because you’re scared, I . . .” He trailed off. The long-limbed, dark-haired children winked at me, then turned and vanished, and I needed to end the conversation however I could, give whatever excuse I had to help us go back to normal.

“It’s not just that,” I said. “There’s also . . . I still have feelings for someone else.”

“Ah.” He took a long, slow breath in. Then he exhaled, his shoulders dropping. “So it’s a no, then?” I nodded. “Okay,” he said, automatically reaching for the top of his head like he was going to fiddle with his baseball cap, before realizing that he wasn’t wearing one. “Then I’m going to need some time to not be around you.”

My eyes began to smart. Part of me wanted to take it all back and tell him to get into bed and hold me again, to rewind to the moment where I’d woken up in his arms. “That’s . . .” I said. “Sure. Yeah, that’s understandable. We can take a couple weeks and talk after that—”

“It might need to be more than a couple weeks, Jilly,” he said, his voice sad and wise, and for the first time I felt like he was older than me, that I really knew nothing of the world.

“No, don’t say that. Don’t do this.” He was swallowing hard as if he were trying not to cry, and then he looked away from me. “I can’t not have you in my life, that’s the whole point of—” I said, before my words got tangled up because I was so angry at him for needing this time, and at myself for crawling into his bed in the first place.

“Jillian,” he said, but I turned and went into the bedroom to find my stinking, bloody clothes from the night before, throwing them on as quickly as I could. This was for the best, for the long term. We had to break it now, break into two even, slightly chipped pieces, so that we didn’t shatter entirely. With time and care and the right kind of glue, you can put two chipped pieces back together again.

I came back to the kitchen and hugged him tightly. And then I walked out his door.

THIRTY-FIVE

I avoided Nevertheless for the next couple of days. I avoided everyone and everything I could, pushing off Miles’s apologetic texts asking to meet up, swimming for hours each morning, working double shifts at the bar until my feet began to ache from standing so long, trying not to miss the sight of Raf arranging his long limbs on a stool so he could keep me company. I got a tetanus shot.

But on the third day, Margot sent me a text. Tonight, it read, simply, and then a fire emoji. So, when I got off my shift around nine p.m., I headed back to the clubhouse.

When the elevator doors opened, I had a disorienting sensation, that of returning to a familiar place but as a different person, like going back to visit your high school after your first semester in college. You know so much more than you did the last time you walked through those halls. You look at the seniors and marvel that you were ever that ignorant.

Libby caught my eye and jumped up from her seat by the window, waving. She’d been sitting alone, reading a book with a pink cover. “Hey, lady! You’re here late tonight.”

“Yeah, life’s been nuts, but I wanted to swing by.”

“Sit, sit,” she said. I was going to make some excuse, but she just kept talking, indicating the coffee cup on her table, a whirlwind of friendliness. “I got this decaf pumpkin spice latte on a whim tonight, and it is so good. Want a sip?”

“Nah,