Completely (New York 3)

Chapter 23

Kal wanted to leave.

He’d never wanted to leave after sex. Maybe half an hour after, with women he didn’t know very well. But definitely he’d never come and then seconds later started to fantasize about getting up and putting on his clothes and walking out of the room.

It was a crazy impulse. He loved Rosemary. He’d been beyond excited to pick her up at the airport, to have another day with her and a chance at more. It felt bad, though, their bodies still tangled up together, her hair in his face.

He wanted to leave the hotel room worse than he’d wanted to get his ass off Everest after the avalanche. Something bad was coming.

Rosemary sniffled. She wiped at her eyes. Crying.

“What is it?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

It wasn’t, though, obviously. She kept crying, which made it increasingly awkward and wrong that they were naked, because when you were naked and one person was crying the other person was definitely supposed to do something about it. Something other than say “Okay.”

The TV was still on, the sound muted, the survivalist show wrapping up with credits and previews of the next episode’s shenanigans. He thought about restoring the volume. Getting under the covers. Watching TV while Rosemary cried.

He turned onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow. “Probably it’s not okay, though,” he said.

“I don’t know why I’m crying.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

Kal fished around in his laundry and offered her his T-shirt. “Here.”

“Thank you.”

She said it like she always did—looking right in his eyes—and it broke his heart right open.

He knew why she was crying. It was the same reason he felt panicked and angry: it wasn’t working. It wouldn’t work. The idea that they could one-decision-after-the-next themselves into some kind of happy ending was bullshit. The two of them were over before they’d properly even gotten started, because they didn’t have a future and nobody was going to come along and hand them one.

They made no sense. The Sherpa dude from Queens and the patrician blonde from the UK, the ice doctor and the mountain climber, the guy who’d meant to save the world and lost track of how and the woman who’d wanted to conquer the Seven Summits so she could find herself.

Rosemary put his T-shirt on. Kal located his jeans and suited himself up for battle.

“You want me to take a guess?” he asked.

“Not really.”

“I’m guessing you’re trying to figure out our future again.”

She finger-combed her hair, her eyes on her bare knee. “We’re only going to hurt each other if we’re not careful.”

That revved him up. “I was careful not to put too much pressure on you when I left you at the airport, careful not to say too much or the wrong things when I got you back in the car, careful to say yes to your boat idea because it was what you wanted to do, careful not to ask you too much or say the wrong thing at the wrong time. How much more careful can we be, Rosemary?”

“That’s my point, though, we can’t. We can’t keep being careful and trying not to break anything and expect to be able to—to love each other properly. And we can’t…not be careful.”

“Because?”

“Because I already know what you want, and it isn’t me.”

The speed and depth of his anger surprised him. “If you know everything all of a sudden, tell me what I want, Rosemary, because I sure as fuck don’t know, any more than I know what you want.”

“You made it clear on the boat—you want to help your family. You want to know what your role in the world is. Maybe you want to go back to Nepal, but you aren’t saying, ‘Help me figure it out. I want to be with you wherever you are. I want to take care of you, and for you to take care of me, and I want to tell you everything. I want us to work this out together.’ You aren’t—”

“Who says that stuff to someone they just met?”