Maureen coughed delicately and squared her shoulders, drawing my coat tightly across her torso to fight the frigid night. “Will, these feelings we’re having…I…I don’t want them. When you touched me, it was like I turned into a puddle of goo. Like all the promises I’d made myself, all the resolve just vanished.” She touched all the fingers of her right hand together before stretching them out quickly. “Poof.”
Her troubled eyes sparkled as a bloom of pink invaded her cheeks. My eyes lasered on her lower lip as she chewed it. Even rejecting me, she was magnetic. I longed to pull her into my arms, to show her she didn’t need to be afraid. Instead, I blew air into my cupped palms and struggled for the right words. “Maureen, I know I hurt you. You’ll never know how sorry I am.” I dragged a hand across my neck, resting it in the mouth of my sweater. Unashamedly, I pleaded, “But does that have to mean we ignore this amazing connection between us forever? Why should we take it for granted when it’s so…rare?”
Spending a night with Maureen five years ago had been like striking a match. Afterward, I’d begun to want other things too. Art. Choices. Challenges. Conflict. Everything I’d lost since the accident. Standing in front of her magnified the impulse tenfold.
Feeling that deeply for someone. How was this a bad thing?
But she shook her head.
My eyes landed on the house next door. The lawn hummed with the noise of motors maintaining four different blow-up Santas. Twinkle lights dancing in the snow seemed to taunt me.
Maureen softened, not immune to my frustration. “I’m not sure I can make you understand, Will. But I’ll try. The bottom line is, I don’t want to be that woman again, the one who loses herself in a man. I don’t like feeling that way, not being in control.”
“Okay. But that happens to all of us, right? There are times you just have to let go and take a chance. Some things are worth it.”
Her eyes flared. “And sometimes, not being in control means being completely and utterly out of control. Inviting disaster.” She released a humorless laugh. “And what happened between us… That was a disaster ofepicproportions.”
I recoiled.
“I don’t believe that.” My hushed voice resounded in the stillness. “I can’t. Maybe I felt it more strongly than you did, but that night we had was fucking great. I know everything went to shit, but it was amazing—”
“Until it was fucking horrible!” she snapped, one hand still clenching my coat together as the other waved animatedly up and down. “My whole life I never missed a beat—handling my shit, being there for my family, trying to carve out a future. I was a boss bitch. And then I met you, and all that went out the window. All because you made mefeel things.”
“And I’ll never stop being sorry for hurting you.”
“No! Not hurt. You humiliated me. Hu-mil-i-a-ted. What happened that day in the lobby turned me into the worst version of myself.”
I felt the weight of her words wash over me. Clearly, more was going on than just what happened between us. I wasn’t sure if I should say “sorry” again. It might piss her off more. I shoved a hand through my hair and tugged on the ends, grateful for the sting.
At my non-reply, she huffed. “I know what you’re thinking.”
The cold started seeping under my skin. I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “What am I thinking?”
“That you’ve apologized repeatedly, and where has it gotten us?”
She’d read my mind. “If I thought it would help move us past it, I’d apologize a million more times. If you want me to, just say the word.”
Maureen stepped closer to me, a surprise. In a low voice, she stated, “I almost died, Will.”
My brows drew together. “What?”
“After that day in the lobby, I almost died.”
“What?… Died? What do you mean?”
“Do you really want to know? Because I’m still not interested in your excuses for why you lied back then, so it seems only fair to offer you an out from hearing about that day from my perspective.”
“Tell me.”
She squeezed her eyes shut for a second and pulled my jacket tight around her torso again before speaking.
“To your point, we connected that night. In a way I hadn’t with anyone else. Ever. When you didn’t text, I was upset with myself for letting you in. I’d been careful never to get so involved with anyone that they could get to me like that. It stung that you dismantled all those defenses in one night. I’d seen it happen to other women, and it was almost a shock to recognize it in myself. It pissed me off. You need to understand that all I could think at the time—when you didn’t text me other than the world’s lamest ‘I’m sorry’—was that you had totally played me, that you had somehow tricked me into believing you’d felt something for me. I felt disgusted with myself because I’d allowed that to happen. So, I was already in a pretty dark place. Then I got blindsided by you andyour fiancéein that hotel lobby. A sick, out-of-body experience, a hammer to the gut. The immediate self-loathing was…unmanageable.”
Her words upended a picture I’d had in my mind for five years. That day. Maureen had coolly shaken Rosalyn’s offered hand, added, “Nice to see you again,” in my direction, and walked away. To my eyes, she’d appeared perfectly collected.
Maureen paused before releasing a slow, deliberate breath. Near enough I felt it on my chin. She continued, “I went home.Couldn’t drag myself back to the office, didn’t even call my boss. My best friend—my roommate—wasn’t there. I’d never told her the truth about you, which was weird since we talk about everything, but being hung up over a guy was unfamiliar territory, and I hadn’t known what to do with it.
“She found me in the morning. I’d spent the night drinking anything I could get my hands on and passed out in a puddle of my own vomit. Got a nasty cut on my leg, too. Later, the doctor said I’d gotten lucky passing out on my side. I could have choked if I’d been on my back. But the truly crazy part is, when I woke up, I still didn’t tell my best friend why I’d gone on such a bender. I made up something about work stress and not realizing how much I’d had…blah…blah…blah.” Maureen made a derisive sound. “I didn’t even tell my mom or sisters about going to the hospital.
