“What?” he asks, still trying desperately not to look at her.
“The ring,” she says, holding it out to him, her fourth finger bare.
His eyes almost cross, looking down at it, her just a blur at the edge of his vision. “No . . . I . . .”
“Please,” she says, her voice cracking, and the vice tightens again, “it was your mother’s . . . you have to . . . I can’t . . .”
“Bianca,” he says softly, looking, “it’s yours. I’m never going to give it to anyone else. Do whatever you want with it, okay?”
“Xavier.”
She says his name again, soft, like he’s never heard it before, and it’s too much.
“Please,” he begs, not even recognizing his voice as it drops to an octave he’s never reached before, rough and desperate, even more desperate than he was minutes ago in her bed.
“Okay, okay. I’ll keep it.”
“Good . . . that’s good.”
“Goodbye, Xavier.”
“Goodbye, Bianca.”
And when the door closes behind him, he can finally breathe again, but fuck does it hurt even more than the vice.
Chapter 20
Three days. He’s only been gone for three days and she’s barely moved from the spot he left her in. With nowhere to be and nothing to do, she’s just wallowing. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a good wallow. It’s healthy, necessary even, to getting over something, to trulyfeelthe loss of it before moving on.
Not that she wants to move on.
That’s the part of the wallowing she’s in right now.
Denial.
Or is that the stages of grief?
Who cares, really?
Antipathy. Maybe that’s one of the stages of wallowing.
Groaning, Bianca snuggles further under her blanket, ignoring the texts and calls that have lit up her phone since she told them Xavier left. The images on the screen in front of her flicker bright in the darkened living room. It wasThe Mummylast night and thenThe Mummy Returnsthis morning and now, well into the afternoon, Disney’sRobin Hood, playing out in front of her. Amelia is curled up in front of her on the couch cushion, pressed into her stomach like a tiny, purring hot water bottle. Maybe they’ll do theIndiana Jonesmovies next; maybe by the time she gets toCrystal Skullshe’ll feel better andshe won’t have to torture herself with that particular cinematic disaster.
Robin’s just been captured by Prince John and tied up and held by gigantic rhinoceros guards and is being readied for execution, staring up at Maid Marian, about to say the thing, the thing that gets her every single time –Marian my darling, I love you more than life itself. But even as the cartoon fox starts to speak, she doesn’t hear his voice, just Xavier’s low murmurs of,“It’s yours. I’m never going to give it to anyone else.”
Was that his confession? Was that his way of telling her . . . no. No, he just . . . They were caught up in the moment, that’s all. Hehadto go, just like she has to stay, and eventually this feeling will pass and she’ll move on and they’ll be happy . . . without each other.
But right now, she doesn’t want to be happy.
Right now she just wants to melt into her couch and watch Robin escape with Marian and his merry band of animal friends. Lady Kluck has just become the greatest running back in the history of medieval England, racing across her screen and dodging guards and stiff-arming them into the ground, when Amelia leaps up and darts across the living room to the front door, sitting patiently in front of it before looking back at Bianca with a soft meow.
Her heart surges in her chest, beating out an absolute drumline at the idea that he came back. She’ll have to send him away though, obviously. He can’t give up his dreams, not for her, not for anything, but . . . the idea that he would, that’s . . . No, it’s not what she wants at all. That’s what makes this so hard. She wants him, but not at the expense of what they’ve both worked so hard to achieve.
It’s so unfair that they have to choose, but that’s life, that’s adulthood, making choices and having to live with them, somehow, no matter how much they hurt at first.
There’s a knock at her door and she slides off the couch, padding across the floor with her blanket still wrapped around her shoulders. She lifts Amelia up into her arms to prevent any potential adventures into the streets of LA and when she opens it up, all she can do is stare in stunned silence.
It’s everyone.
