Page 60 of The Square

“And that’s what I thought we were doing. Fixing it. But now that we’re here, shit still looks broken to me. So what’s left? What’s left to be fixed? Because I thought we were going to put our fuckin’ triangle back together, but right now we still feel like three broken lines. So what else aren’t you telling me?”

He lifts his hands and rubs his palms around and around each other. Like he’s soaping them up. Like he’s washing them. Like he’s been holding on to something dirty and now he wants to get clean.

I take a breath, look at him, step over, place my bloody palms around his fists—in effect, dirtying them up again—and say as softly as I can, “Not now, OK?”

“Not now what?” he asks with exasperation.

“I’ll get into everything. I will. I promise. I just… not now.”

“Is it just the kid? He had a kid with Eliza. So what?”

“Danny—”

“I know you a little, Christine. Y’know? I do. So, is it that her life looks like this?” He gestures around us. “That she gets to have this and we’re… where we’re at? Because we could have this too. Y’know? We could have all this shit too. I mean, to be fair, life in the Cook Islands was pretty fuckin’ plush. We could’ve just stayed there. So I’m saying, if it’s some kind of suburban-ass, tea-and-biscuits bullshit you want, we can fuckin’ have it. Just tell me and we’ll fuckin’ do it. Because we’ve been through way, way too much and paid way, way too high a price to not be a little bit happy.”

I stare into his eyes. There’s something urgent in them. Desperate. Wanting. I know that Danny loves me. I have always known. And I’ve known that he would do anything for me. But until this moment, here, now, I don’t know if I realized how much.

He did come all this way, asking almost no questions and just trusting what I was telling him. He found out that I had been with Alec, without him, for four years, and I know that hurt him, but he still let me back in. He let us both back in. The way I’ve seen him in this time that we’ve been alone together again—dark, angry, intense in a way he doesn’t show other people… there’s still so much pain inside him. And he knows he can show me that part of himself and I’ll still be here.

He trusts me. He loves me. And he came for me just now. He’s the one who followed me. Not Alec. I know that Alec van den Berg believes he has special powers. That he wields some kind of control over people. Over me. But I didn’t come for him because he’s got some magical ability to control my mind or my heart. I came for him because it was the right thing to do. And because Alec, Christine, and Danny are who we are meant to be. I can feel it as much as I can feel my heart pumping the blood that oozes from my hands. The sped-up heartbeat that reminds me that I love Danny with everything inside me and would do anything for him, and despite his best attempts to make me hate him… I love Alec the same way.

“Is that what you want, Christine? Is it? Because we can have that. We can.”

I stare into his beautiful, haunting eyes and I nod. “I do. I do think I want that.”

He claps his hands. “Fuckin’ A. Then let’s make it happen. You, me, and Alec. Yeah? Let’s make it happen.”

I don’t say anything. Just keep staring. Because… because… because that is what I want. That life I dreamed of once where I was an executive assistant or whatever and things were “normal.”

“Christine?”

That’s still what I want. Right? Me, Danny, and Alec. That’s what I want. Isn’t it?

“Christine? You, me, Alec. We’ll make a life. Somewhere. Yeah?”

Isn’t it?

“Christine?”

Isn’t it?

“Christine…?”