Page 102 of Lick
“No. I think I get that now. I guess I can be a little slow sometimes picking up on these things. I just wasn’t sure, you know, with everything that’s happened. But I still love you.” Apparently I was back to blurting crap out whenever it occurred to me. With David, though, it was okay. I was safe. “I do.”
“I know, baby. The question is, when are you going to come back to me?”
“It’s really big, you know? It hurt so much when it fell apart last time.”
He nodded sadly. “You left me. I think that’s about the worst fucking thing I’ve ever experienced.”
“I had to go, but also… part of it was me wanting to hurt you like you’d hurt me, I think.” I needed to hold his hand again, but I didn’t feel like I could. “I don’t want to be vindictive like that, not with you, not ever again.”
“I said some horrible shit to you that night. Both of us were hurting. We’re just going to have to forgive each other and let it go.”
“You didn’t write a song about it, did you?”
He looked away.
“No! David,” I said, aghast. “You can’t. That was such a terrible night.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how pissed would you be exactly?”
“Where one is divorce?”
He moved his lower body closer, placing his feet between mine. There was no more than a hair’s breadth between us. I’d never catch my breath at this rate. Never.
“No,” he said, his voice soft. “You don’t even remember us getting married, so divorce or annulment or what-the-fuck-ever is not on. It never was. I just told the lawyers to keep looking busy for the last month while I figured things out. Did I forget to mention that?”
“Yeah, you did.” I couldn’t help but smile at that. “So what’s one?”
“One is now. It’s this, us living apart and being fucking miserable without each other.”
“That is pretty horrible.”
“It is,” he agreed.
“Is the song a headliner, or are you just going to shove it in somewhere and hope no one notices? It’s just a B-side or something, right? Unlisted and hidden at the end?”
“Let’s pretend we’d been talking about making one of the songs the name of the album.”
“One of them? How much of this brilliant album I’ve been hearing about is going to be about us?”
“I love you.”
“David.” I tried to maintain the mock angry, but it didn’t work. I didn’t have the strength for it.
“Can you trust me?” He asked, his face suddenly serious. “I need you to trust me again. About more than just the songs. Seeing that worry in your eyes all the time is fucking killing me.”
“I know.” I frowned, knitting my fingers together behind my back. “I’m getting there. And I’ll learn to deal with the songs. Really. Music is a big part of who you are, and it’s a huge compliment that you feel that strongly for me. I was mostly just teasing.”
“I know. And they’re not all about us splitting up.”
“No?”
“No.”
“That’s good. I’m glad.”
“Mm.”
I licked my lips and his eyes tracked the movement. I waited for him to close the distance between us and kiss me. But he didn’t and I didn’t either. For some reason, it wasn’t right to rush this. It should be perfect. Everything between us settled. No people waiting in the next room. Us being this close together, however, hearing the low rumble of his voice, I could have stayed there all day. But Ruby would be wondering what the hell had happened to me. I also had a small errand to run before I returned.
