Page 46 of Yours, Forever

My insides went still, and remained so while I searched my memory files.

I gulped. "No… you haven't. Not explicitly like that, but I said I wouldn't make too many waves in your life. Since I'm already asking so much."

"Give me more credit than that,sweetheart." She smirked. "I knew you were going to occupy space in my life. I knew what I consented to when I agreed to be your temporary wife— for the second time."

"And you still agreed." It wasn't a question, and it didn't sound like that.

She nodded. "This arrangement is good for me. Patriarchal and old school as it is."

Right, I'd made sure to make it worth her time and the disturbance I caused in her life.

I smiled. "Javier called it a nonsense, toxic mess of a situation."

"That, too. But you're not too hard to spend time with."

I chuckled. "Thank you. I try. I know I'm a bit…"

"Bigger than life? Too fancy for small town life? Speak like you had a private English tutor?"

She may have thought she was teasing me, this time; a retaliation effort. She had no way to know she spoke to my insecurities, and the reason I couldn't build castles in the air. I knew a guy like me didn't fit with most people. Chasing a sense of belonging was a scary, exhausting thing. Wanting it and not finding it caused terrible pain. I didn't need the reminder that, to Laguna Island, I was odd.

Her words didn't cut, per se, but they sat in my chest with a dull throb.

I let my lips take on a half smile, half pursed shape. "I did have a private English tutor. Rhetoric and etiquette. My speech coach, the one that helped me get rid of my accent, was from the US."

"You had an accent… and got rid of it?"

"Yeah. This is what I used to sound like—" I let my training drop. I couldn't quite get my accent to what it used to be, but I let the echoes show for my next several words. "For a while. I already knew English when I moved to live with my dad, but he didn't think my immigrant accent would work well in our circles."

She remained quiet for a second, solemn eyes on me. A raw feeling added to the rollercoaster of emotions I'd experienced that day; quite the birthday, indeed.

I breathed through the tender, exposed feeling pulsating between my lungs.

"That makes me sad for you," she finally said.

I smiled, but couldn't quite take that in. I shrugged it off.

"Oh, no need." I went back to my polished, coached accent. "No one should have to care about how a guy like me hurts. Why don't you tell me what is on your mind instead?"

In the brief silence that followed, in the low light of the living room in the middle of the night, I waited to see what she would do. Would she notice the grain of truth and pain in my words?

She sighed. "I don't know what I actually wanted to talk about. I think I'm feeling out of sorts with Javier's visit."

It was okay that she didn't.

"How come?" I asked. "He's an amazing guy. Are you getting bad vibes?"

"Not at all. He does seem nice. It's a reminder of your true life and where you'll go back to one day… It's also a reminder of how much I don't know about you. I don't think that your friend group should have come as a shock. How did I not know?"

"Darling, the only reason I didn't tell you about them is because I didn't think you wanted to know."

"Because you thought I wanted you to make yourself small?"

"Yes. And because you don't share much about you with me, either. I thought that you were unsure about me, and how much we'd end up entwining our lives. You don't open up easily…"

"Okay... that's fair. I'm naturally guarded, I know, but... I'm also very aware that you will leave. Makes it harder to share."

Shot number three. No foundations in the clouds for castles of any sort, because I was odd, and she expected me to leave.