Tell Me To Stay

“Can we talk about something else?” I ask, not hiding the irritation in my voice.

“So your lunch date with your mom went poorly?”

I grin at him as I reply, “I hate you.”

“You love me so much. I could feel the waves of adoration from all the way down the hall to my office.”

“You should have stayed there and finished the numbers for the meeting tomorrow.”

“Already done,” he tells me and I’m quick to retort, “For the meeting Friday then.”

He only snorts a laugh and there’s a moment of awkward silence. The kind that comes when someone’s begging to ask you a question, but they don’t know how you’ll react.

I tell him, “Just say it. Whatever it is.”

“What did your mom want?” he asks me with nervous hesitation. My mother is never a topic of pleasant conversation.

“To tell me she’s getting another divorce.”

“I thought she just married …Steve?”

“She divorced Stewart last year, this one’s name is Jerry.” Although the conversation is almost casual in tone, it’s anything but.

“Ah.” Ryan nods and raises his brow as high as he can before sucking in air through his teeth. “Well, maybe the next one will be a winner.”

“Doubtful,” I mutter under my breath and stand abruptly, ending the conversation. My mother wouldn’t know love if it sent her the biggest paycheck she’d ever seen.

Chapter 10

Sophie

Six years ago

“Hey.” Madox’s voice is gentle as he approaches. “You fell asleep out here,” he tells me as if I didn’t intend to sleep out on the sofa. He wouldn’t talk to me. Wasn’t he mad at me?

“Oh,” I say like I’m surprised, pretending like it was an accident. “Are you done working?” I’m hesitant to ask. Lately he’s been working extra hours a lot and half the time I think he’s doing it just to avoid me, the other half of the time I feel like I should be working harder. As hard as he is. It’s constant. I’ll go to college this fall though and then maybe I’ll be just as busy as he is.

“Come to bed,” he tells me and I do. His thumb rubs soothing circles on my knuckles as we walk hand in hand. I keep looking up at him, not knowing if it’s all in my head or not.

Before climbing into bed, I ask him, “I thought you might be mad at me. I thought maybe I should go home.”

“If you want to leave, I’m not going to stop you,” he tells me and he says it easily, like the words shouldn’t cut so deeply into me. When my parents fought it was with sharp tongues. All it took for Madox to bring me to the point of leaving, was the truth, casually spoken.

He tells me he doesn’t know why I’m crying. I swear we speak different languages.

Today

Madox was always good at wining and dining me. At spoiling me with pretty things. That’s how he apologized. It’s how he said thank you. He spoke with gifts.

Trish told me it’s one of the ways to express love. She got it from some book about there being five different love languages. Even if gifts are one way to demonstrate love, it never felt right. Not to me.

He could have bought my entire world a million times over. And all I did was run to him, spread my legs and stay in his bed instead of going home. It felt like… it felt like he was buying me. I didn’t want his gifts.

I told him that once. It didn’t end well. One of our many breakups.

When we got back together, he told me the Tiffany necklace he put around my neck was from a dollar store. So it didn’t count as ”buying my affection.”

I can’t explain how powerless I felt in that moment, but also how cherished. I still have that necklace. I love that necklace.

I’m trying not to feel the same way now as I take my seat in the private room in the back of The Cherie. It’s a fresh start and new beginnings. I’m not the same girl I was back then, and this isn’t “buying” me. It’s just dinner.

Maybe it’s a way for him to show me he loves me, as Trish would say. I asked her what my love language was and she said words of affirmation. That I like to be told things, told that I’m pretty, that I’m doing well, told that I’m loved. I laughed when she said it and told her, “No wonder it didn’t work between us. I couldn’t afford to tell him I loved him and he couldn’t speak it.”

Inside the restaurant is exactly as fancy as I pictured in my head. White linens and polished marble walls. It’s the kind of restaurant where not a single expense is spared, and the waiters wear cuff links and spit-shined black shoes.