“Melissa,” I repeat, “what’s this really about?”
“I don’t know,” she says, “it’s everything. Have you ever been so sure that what you have planned for your life is going to work out, and then one day it’s just gone?”
“Yeah,” I tell her, “pretty recently, actually.”
“What happened to you?” she asks, and I give her the condensed version of what’s happening in my little slice of hell.
It’s surprisingly quick to sum it all up.
“You know what you did wrong?” she asks.
“What’s that?”
“You didn’t talk to her before you talked to Dr. Preston,” she says.
“How was I supposed to talk to her before him?” I ask. “I didn’t even know he was coming.”
“I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have talked to him at all, but you should have talked to Grace before you decided to nix Plan B,” Melissa says. “Have you ever bothered to consider that she may have only signed off on the trial because she thought you were protected? She would have lied to protect you. Hell, just to get into the trial, you know that she already did. All she wanted was the choice, but you took that away from her without asking.”
“I guess I never saw it that way.”
“Anyway,” she says, “I’d say the damage is done, so how about we get back to the topic at hand.”
“You don’t want to be with me,” I tell her. “You’re here because you’re used to being here. You’re used to coming to me when things aren’t going your way, but that part of our relationship is over. Even if it weren’t,” I continue, “that wouldn’t mean that you and I should get back together.”
“I know!” she shouts. She’s pacing the floor in the living room now. “I’m just sick of feeling alone. I felt alone with you because I pushed you away so I wouldn’t feel guilty about sneaking around with Ty. I felt alone with Ty because he always had to go home to his wife and that’s apparently where he wants to stay. I’m just sick of being alone,” she repeats.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I really am, but you can’t think that the two of us pretending like we’re something we’re not is going to make things better.”
She’s quiet.
“That’s not how it works,” I tell her. “If we did that, you’d feel just as lonely because you’d know that what we’d have wouldn’t be real.”
“I don’t care if it’s real. I’m just sick of always being in the background.”
“I’m not the one that put you there,” I tell her.
“Don’t you think I know that,” she says. “I’m not saying this is your fault, I’m saying that I’m sick of it being mine.”
The truth is, despite how uncomfortable the situation, a big part of me is happy to see her back in my apartment. You don’t just throw away years with someone without having some kind of residual feelings.
“Do you really think we could go back to the way things were before?” I ask. “I find that hard to imagine.”
“We really could,” she says. “The one thing that got in the way is out of the way. Maybe we just start off with a drink.”
I do feel like drinking.
“I don’t know if I have anything,” I tell her.
“I brought you a little something,” she says, opening her purse.
She pulls out a fifth of blueberry vodka. It’s my kryptonite.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “Nothing’s going to change, and I don’t want you to think I’m leading you on.”
“You’re pretty conceited, you know that?”
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Actually, I do.”