“Just tell me.”
He sighed. “Okay, I don’t love that you just showed up without calling or texting first.”
“Oh. All right. I’ll text next time.”
“Well, no, that’s not precisely the issue. It’s just that… This is not the relationship we have.”
She sat back in her chair. “Oh.”
“We had fun the other night, but nothing has really changed for me. I don’t want to get married again, not that we’re anywhere near that, but still, I wouldn’t want to mislead you. Nothing has changed.”
Lauren swallowed and nodded slowly. “I’m not… I’m not asking you to marry me. I don’t even need some big commitment. But I like you. I just want a chance to see where this goes, and I feel like you’ve basically made a fort out of your baggage and you will not be budged.”
Caleb put a hand over his mouth so as not to laugh at the image, which was apt. “I do have some baggage. My divorce was… Well, if not traumatic, it was awful, all the way through. Not just the fact that Kara cheated on me and left me, but the fact that this thing I had put so much faith and work into turned out to be flimsy instead of solid. And it’s not that I don’t trustyou, but I don’t trust…life.”
And that was basically true. He wasn’t sure what he’d done to piss off the universe, but this whole year had been shitty. And the worst of it had been, when he’d been fighting with Kara over every last penny in their clinic, he’d felt like the biggest idiot. Why hadn’t he seen how doomed their relationship was? Why hadn’t he seen Kara was unhappy? Had he really been so committed to his life plan that he hadn’t seen the ways it could be turned upside down?
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Lauren. He did. But he didn’t trust himself. He didn’t trust his own judgment.
“That’s kind of fucked up,” Lauren said softly. “How do you even function if you don’t trust life?”
Caleb looked away because his chest hurt with…weakness? Embarrassment? He wasn’t really sure, but he didn’t like it. He didn’t want to feel this way in front of Lauren. He wanted to live in the magical bubble where he was just ill-tempered and they had good sex and talked about TV over takeout food and took long walks where she pointed out interesting things about the city. He didn’t want her to know how deeply fucked up he was, how he felt.
“It’s a challenge,” he said.
“Right. So this is your nice way of saying, ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’”
“I don’t…this isn’t a breakup. I don’t want to stop seeing you.”
Lauren frowned. “But you also don’t want anything to change.”
“I’m sorry. I like you, too, but this…” He gestured between them. “Some of this, anyway, makes me uncomfortable. I don’t have my sea legs yet where dating is concerned. So this cutesy, spontaneous thing makes me nervous.”
“No, I get it. You got burned, you don’t want to try again, that’s natural. I don’t think any human can get to their thirties without accumulating some baggage. But to just cut this off—”
“You knew what this was, too. We talked about it.”
“Fine. You don’t have to tell me twice. I’ll go.”
“No, Lauren, that’s not what I—”
“You can’t have it both ways, Caleb.”
***
Lauren didn’t like the idea of ultimatums. Often they were unfair or set up impossible choices. But “take me or leave me” was starting to feel like something she should say aloud.
Instead, she said, “All right, I’m sorry for barging in here. I thought after the other night, something had changed between us, but I’m clearly wrong.”
“Lauren, don’t—”
“Or, you know, you could just interpret the fact that I came over with sandwiches as me wanting to have lunch with you on my day off and not like I’m trying to trap you into marriage.”
Caleb frowned. “I didn’t accuse you of—”
“We all have baggage! I’ve been in good relationships and bad relationships and had my heart broken a time or two. I get that you’re skittish. Hell, I’m skittish. My ex just announced on Facebook that his first child is on the way, and I still haven’t figured out how to process my feelings about that.” She paused to rub her forehead. She’d just seen that particular post this morning and was still reeling from it. There’d been a time in her life when she’d imagined making such announcements with Derek. Watching him put out this announcement today was like looking at some kind of alternate universe. But she focused back on the more immediate issue. “Let’s not cut off our noses to spite our faces.”
“We probably spend more time arguing about our relationship than being in our relationship,” Caleb said.
