Page 36 of The Apparent Trap

He puts his head in his hands. “Can I . . .” He stops again. Looks up. “Can I give you a hug?”

My hand shoots out, a physical stop sign. “Absolutely not.”

“I hate that you think that,” he says, looking miserable. “Your dad . . .” He sighs. “He didn’t forget you, he’s just being a lovesick moron.”

“Gross.”

“But maybe in the long run this will be good for you guys—this system you have is clearly not working. You think you’ve been leaning on each other to hold you both up, when really you’re just using each other to avoid grief.”

“Thanks for the psychoanalysis, Doctor,” I chide, his words hitting harder than I want to admit.

He ignores me and keeps going, undeterred. “But that doesn’t mean you did anything wrong—it was bound to topple over at some point, and, honestly, I’m glad it did.”

I scoff. “You’re glad now that he’s dating Carmen?”

“No,” he says, with so much emphasis I almost laugh, even as my lungs are on the verge of imploding. “I’m glad for you that this is getting hashed out one way or the other.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but nothing is getting hashed out. We’re just going to keep bumbling along, and it’ll be fine.”

“He didn’t forget you,” he repeats again softly, ignoring my obfuscation. “No one could forget you.” His eyes flicker to the blush creeping up my collarbone. “I haven’t been able to forget you for a single fucking day, and it’s driving me insane.”

“I’m supposed to believe you not recognizing me was an act?”

He shakes his head, like I’m clearly missing the entire point. “Well what would you do? Imagine you chickened out and acted like an asshole running away from the first woman you’d felt a connection with in years. You kicked yourself all night, settling on the fact that you fucking deserve to have lost the chance since you would’ve eventually ruined it anyway. Then, in some divine twist or cosmic joke, you see that woman again, but now it’s in the context of her being the one person who can make your estranged daughter’s actual dreams come to fruition. So yeah, maybe you wouldn’t want to fuck that up for your daughter by awkwardly having to apologize instantly for ghosting the one person she needs.”

My brain is reeling, his words seeming impossible. “You could’ve said something later,” I eke out.

“Carmen asked me not to tell anyone I’m her dad. I assume you’ve noticed she’s not exactly a beacon of openness, and I’ve been desperate to get a real start with her for years. You think I should’ve jeopardized that for a woman I figured I’d be able to forget?”

“See,” I say, the triumph of the admission not as acute as the reminder of my forgetfulness.

But he just shakes his head at me. “Ezzie, don’t you get it?! I can’t.” His eyes are all over me again, and I’m scared to see how much truth is behind them. “Even after I realized your connection to Carmen, after that you were still everywhere. And then at some point you started coming up in a lot of my conversations with her, where she talked about how brilliant you are with her.” That news is almost as shocking as his confession, but I can’t think about that right now. “I had to see you every week standing next to the camera, looking impossibly gorgeous. I had to learn she told you she’s my daughter and then assumed you probably disliked me even more.” I cringe, knowing how true that assumption is. “And now we’re stuck in this bizarro connection with Carmen and your dad, where we need to work together, but it’s completely distracting me.” He takes a step forward again. And this time I don’t move back. “I haven’t been able to forget you for one goddamned minute of peace since the moment I met you.”

“I . . .” I don’t know what to say. He’s reached in and grabbed every last word from my vocabulary. I can’t rearrange every moment from the last two months quickly enough.

But he seems just as stunned, like someone else pulled his thoughts into the light and aired them out for everyone to see. We’re both staring at each other, gunslingers waiting for the other to shoot. Neither of us ready with a response.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers finally. “I shouldn’t have said any of that.”

“Because it’s untrue?” I venture, a clumsy attempt to uncrease an already-crumpled paper.

He just slowly shakes his head. “No.” He keeps shaking it, like it’s the period on the end of the sentence, the necessary emphasis. “I just don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“You said that before.”

“When?”

“That night.”

“Oh.” He grips the counter.

Now I’m the one looking down. I’m not sure I can let all my thoughts come together if I have to see his eyes on me. “If it was such a bad idea to tell me then, why are you telling me now?”

I glance back up and see he’s avoiding my gaze too. “I just can’t stand you thinking for even one second that you aren’t luminous.”

My eyes widen again, the words washing through me, but I don’t know what to do with them. The tension between us that previously felt like a manageable albatross is now so thick I can’t move.

“So what happens now?” I let out at last, the only question I can muster.