“Yeah. I know. I’m sorry.”
When he saidsorryitmeantsomething. Unlike when Asher had said it.
He hadn’t even done anything wrong. He had done all the things right. As a friend, he was unparalleled. It was very obvious to her in that moment, though, exactly where her support system was. And where it wasn’t.
Because somehow her parents, their issues and all their unresolved baggage had just come home to roost. In spite of the fact that she hadn’t spoken to them for all this time.
So all she did was pack up her life. Her neatly ordered life. The one that had been perfect two days ago.
She realized she was still wearing that necklace.
She reached beneath the sweatshirt she had on and touched it. Was this what it felt like? Leaving everything behind and moving to a new home? Did it feel more like an end than a beginning? Back then when you hadn’t been able to look up pictures of the place you were going, hadn’t been able to get all kinds of information at your fingertips? Or had his ancestor been excited. Had she chosen it? Or was she just being dragged around by the whims of men? Because that was a whole lot of what Rue felt like.
When Justice reappeared she released her hold on the necklace and tried to look... together. Because she had been dissolved in his presence for a while now, andthat really wasn’t their dynamic. She was usually put together. But she just didn’t feel put together right now.
She didn’t feel like herself. It was the most disorienting, insane situation she had ever been in.
Feeling dazed, she walked outside.
“What do you think she’s like?”
Justice was just closing the bed of his truck. “Excuse me?”
“The woman. The one that Asher slept with. She was deployed with him. That means she was in the military. What do you suppose a woman like that is...? What is she offering him that I’m not? What...? If he loved me then why did sex make him forget that? Why did it seem so important?”
“I don’t understand the question, Rue.”
“Well, I don’t understand any of it. I don’t understand how he lost his sense of us.”
“Sex makes you crazy sometimes. And I’m not excusing him. Not at all. It’s just... you know.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I’m completely dumbfounded. I had sex with him for eight years. And only him. I mean, he’s the only man I’ve ever had sex with.”
Justice’s face went rigid. But she kept talking.
“Nothing about the sex we had was enough to make me lose my mind. Not ever. I was always firmly contained within myself. So what is that? How was he able to be so different with somebody else? Is that where I failed him? Because he said it wasn’t, but it sounds like it was different, it sounds like...”
“I don’t know,” he said. “As far as what the hell he was thinking, I don’t. But I do know that men are really good at making up stories that allow them to getlaid when they feel like it. So who knows, Rue, maybe she was a siren. Maybe she didn’t have a gag reflex.”
“What does that mean?”
Justice looked... pained. “Maybe she didn’t... Maybe she didn’t gag when she...”
“What?”
Justice’s face was now a mask of regret. “When she gave him a blowjob.”
Rue frowned. “I never gagged when I gave him one.”
Justice winced, opened his mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again. “I... have follow-up questions. But I’m not going to ask them. Listen, whatever the story, it doesn’t really matter. Because it isn’t about you. And I don’t even know that it’s about her. It’s about him. He made the decision. End of story. Because yeah. The desire to get off can be all-consuming. But it doesn’t make you forget the person that you love. At least I’m pretty sure. I’ve never been in love. I’ve never cheated on anybody. Because I’ve never set myself up to be in that kind of situation.”
“Neither have I. I loved him. I never even let myself consider getting close enough to somebody else to do that. I don’t understand how he could do it to me.”
The words were broken; she felt broken. She felt ignorant and small and naive. She had never even imagined that he might cheat on her, and she had grown up in the kind of environment where people acted like that. Where they lost their minds over sex. Where satisfaction and jealousy and all of those kinds of things made her parents act unhinged. And they were clearly still unhinged.
“Are you okay to drive?”
“Yeah,” she said.
