Page 87 of Yours, Forever

He worried the inside of his cheek, his eyes jumping between mine.

He sighed. "I'm thinking about the Venturelli house, too. A lot. How… normal it felt. My wife and I, looking at a house we want to buy. Where we plan to live together. Talking through things together. I want that. Badly… but I know you're hesitating. It makes me…" he moved a hand over his stomach as if discomfort had settled there. "I don't like how that feels. It forces me to remember you're going to divorce me one day."

"You always say it like that." I frowned. "You always say,you're going to divorce me. Like you're not the one who's thinking about it."

Humor returned to his face, but his eyes remained sad. Still, he gave me one of his teasing smiles.

"I'm only thinking about it when you bring it up. I have never spent more than two seconds thinking about it, not unless you mentioned it." He watched me think through his words. When I didn't say anything, his cheekiness intensified. Even if his eyes remained quiet. "Name one time I talked about divorcingyou, darling."

My heart tripped. It forgot how to beat for a second. When it jumped back into it, the rhythm drummed fast and loud in my chest.

A hundred thoughts clashed in my mind, moving almost too fast to grasp. Of course we had to divorce. I couldn't live in his life, and he would never fit in mine and be happy. Would he? What would he do, shrink to fit my small town life until death do us part? Two years was manageable; forever was a different story. What would I be asking him to do? Love me enough to sacrifice the life he had never planned to leave?

We were too different. That had always been clear. He'd been with me in Laguna Island for a few months; I gave him a year before the novelty wore off and he got restless. I couldn't see the joy in his eyes die, the shine of his smiles disappearing little by little. To know he wanted to leave, and me tying him here out of some sense of responsibility.

But I wasn't ready to say those words and challenge him, not when we had another fifteen months together. He'd promise me he would stay and love my hometown; I knew he would. Then his spark would dim, I'd have to confront him and tell him I knew it from the beginning, and let him go.

No. It was on me to know better. I'd seen it happen all around me. My parents, school mates, friends. I would protect us from that.

Emotions pooled in my throat, their edges sharp and jagged.

"Max..." I reached across the space diving us, and put a hand on his chest. "We're not all in. We can't be. Your father put you in an unfair situation, and you ended up in a small town in the middle of forests and the sea. In a town that needs help, with me. No dry cleaning here, remember?"

His eyes saddened even more. "Don't make this about my suits. They can get ruined for all I care. You'd like me better withnothing but overalls, wouldn't you? I can get a coach and work on my accent again, in a wholly different way.

His voice almost resembled his cheeky tone.

A slightly amused gust of air left my nose. "No need to get ridiculous now. You don't need to change. You also don't need to make jokes like that all the time. Especially not when your eyes look so sad."

"I thought you liked them?"

"I do, but half the time they're just… I don't know. There's this tiny space inside of you that you won't share. I've seen its mirage. I can see it right now. It looks so real, so clear out there ahead, but we can never reach it. Then you go and make a distracting joke..."

Distractingjoke.

My fingers clenched in the crisp fabric of his shirt. I got it. The realization clicked and latched in one smooth, effortless burst of synapses. I searched his eyes, seeking confirmation in his silence, but all I saw was a mix of expectation, hope, and panic.

He watched me, frozen.

I saw him.

"This is how you keep me away," I said. "It wasn't that you didn't talk about your friends before Javier showed up out of the blue. Nor the fact I still don't know exactly how your father could have put you in this absurd situation. Just like I protect myself by not kissing you, you protect yourself by being charming and brazen all at once. You joke and tell me not to worry about it so I won't look too close."

He made to leave, to create distance between us.

I grabbed his arms, fistfuls of his shirt sleeves in my hands to keep him close. "Tell me. Show me. I thought I was alone in being scared."

"Of course I'm afraid. Very few people have ever seen me without my mask. Ilikemy mask. Most of it is the real me. But ifI keep a tiny piece of my heart secret from you, you keep most of it away from me. Maybe optimism is my weakness, but I'm wise enough to know I shouldn't offer you all of me, when you're not sure you want it."

My heart ached.

"I get it, Max. I get it." I pulled him to me, inviting him into a hug. He stumbled forward, but resisted me. "I'm not going to ask you for everything. Maybe we can make something beautiful out of the pieces we can give each other."

Maybe we could share in the comfort of intimacy— the closeness of friendship. The warmth of each other's bodies. Maybe the next couple of years could include a little bit of risk.

I held his gaze. If he looked away, I followed. Our eyes remained locked.

"Darling." He seemed to be in a pull and push, anguish on his face.