Tanner wouldn’t want anything to do with me now, and while it was for the best, it still hurt. I’d never really thought anything serious would happen between us, but now every last vestige of hidden hope or held-back belief had evaporated. They were gone. Poof. Just like that.
It was all gone. Done. Over.
It was what I’d wanted and desperately hadn’t wanted all at the same time. I’d only wanted it because I’d told myself it needed to be that way, but now that it had happened, I knew I had never really wanted it at all.
What I wanted was him. What I wanted was for him to feel the same way I did. What I wanted was that future of the two of us together I’d kept getting fleeting glimpses of in my mind whenever I was in that house.
Since I couldn’t have all of that, or even any of that, all I wanted was my wine, my bubble bath, and the oblivion of slightly drunken sleep later on. As I shed my clothes and stepped into the warm water, new tears started streaming down my cheeks.
Of all the jobs I could’ve fucked up on so badly, why did it have to be this one? And what was it about the house that he hated so much?
That was the part I couldn’t figure out. I knew there were parts he loved aside from the kitchen and dining areas. The bedrooms downstairs and the ones I’d done up with his friends in mind, for instance. I’d seen him smiling about those. I’d seen his excitement over the bedroom he’d said his mother would like, and as surprised as I’d been to learn that he planned on having her stay out there at all, I knew it was exactly what he’d had in mind for her.
So why does he hate the rest of it?I spent the rest of the night mentally going over every inch of the house to try to figure it out, but I just didn’t get it.
Everything in there was him. Every part of the décor was like I’d taken it from his apartment and even some from his teenage bedroom and included it in his new house. So why did he hate it?
Is it because the rest of it is so me? Is it because I made it that the décor could be changed so easily that it feels like I’m expecting him to change eventually? What the hell is it?
I didn’t know. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out. The only solace, even though it was also a cause of my heartbreak, was that I never had to face him again. Starting tomorrow, I could just pretend that this part of my life had never happened.
It wouldn’t be easy, but it was necessary. If he contacted me to tell me he wanted something changed, I’d pass him on as a client to a designer I worked with sometimes. I wasn’t going back to that house, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to see him again.
I couldn’t. From now on, Tanner Harris was nothing but a memory to me, and as much as it sucked, I had to let him go. Him and all the vague fantasies about our future that I never should’ve allowed into my head to begin with. They were never going to come true, and somehow, I had to find a way to be okay with it.