Page 86 of A Deal with the Devil

My eyes close. It sounds bad, when he puts it like that. Far worse than it sounded in my head at the time. “I was just letting him off the hook,” I argue. “I wasn’t about to ask a guy I’d barely begun sleeping with to wait a year for me.”

“You took the decision out of his hands,” Jonathan replies softly, “and maybe you should consider how much that must have hurt. Because no matter how awful you feel right now, you’re not the one who just got dumped.”

I think back to that moment in the airport, and suddenly realize how wrong I was, how sickeningly wrong, because I’m seeing Hayes’s face clearly for the first time...and I know he was crushed.

Hayes, who trusts no one, trusted me. He opened up to me and took the first risk he’d taken in a long time. And what he heard in response was that I didn’t care enough, that I didn’t trust him enough.

I feel like I’ve been punched in the lung.

“Ask me what the surprise was, Tali,” Jonathan says softly.

My eyes close. “What was it?”

“He bought the house you stayed at in Laguna,” he says. “He bought it for the two of you. His somewhat inept way of telling you what you meant to him, and what he was hoping for.”

I cry for a long time after we end the call, fully realizing how badly I messed up.

Every step of the way with him, I’ve wanted to avoid pain. I’ve been the one to jump and run, to make the poorly timed joke before any exchange felt intimate. But I hurt him in the process of protecting myself, and that’s so much worse.

The point was never whether or not I could trust again, because love isn’t an exchange. It’s not something you hand out only if it can be returned in equal measure. Love is handing your fragile heart to someone else because you want him to have it, no matter what he’ll do in response. You do it because you love him more than you love yourself.

I couldn’t even bring myself to let Aisling, who’s fictional, take that risk. Maybe it’s time both she and I become a little braver than we’ve been.

I pick up my phone. No matter how Hayes feels about me, what matters is that he knows—if it were at all possible—I’d have chosen him.

Hey there, I begin typing, but the tone is too breezy, too conversational.

So I was talking to Jonathan…That doesn’t work either. I can’t soft-shoe my way into this. I need to lay it all on the table.

I told you I didn’t want anything, I type.

Really, it was that I couldn’t stand to hear you tell me no to the things I do want. I don’t expect you to wait for me, so I’m not writing this now asking anything of you. I just want you to know I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone.

And then, before I can change my mind, I hit send.

The message is delivered. He doesn’t have to respond, but if he wants what I do, he simply has to say let’s try. I see those three dots. He’s typing.

Typing more than a simple answer, which isn’t necessarily bad, but isn’t necessarily good.

They disappear again. Return again. And then they disappear entirely. Failing to answer...is still an answer. And it hurts. My stomach is in free fall. My chest aches, exactly as I knew it would. It’s too late.

But I’m still glad he knows.

37

The next morning, I sit next to my mom on the couch for an online meeting with Dr. Shriner to discuss Charlotte’s transition home.

I know I need to focus for my sister’s sake, but it’s hard to hear anything when my head and heart hurt like this. When, every few seconds, I find myself thinking I can’t believe he didn’t write back. Even if it was simply to politely decline, to tell me he didn’t see it working...I really thought he’d leave me with something.

Dr. Shriner is reviewing ways to help Charlotte when she’s struggling. I feel overwhelmed, listening to it—mostly because I suspect it’s all on me. Liddie nods along from Minnesota, and my mom seems focused primarily on throwing out objections as if Dr. Shriner is asking too much of us when nothing matters except what Dr. Shriner’s asking.

“She’s supposed to be applying for college,” my mom says now. “She’s not going to have a lot of time for therapy over the next few months.”

Dr. Shriner, who has remained almost entirely expressionless during the time I’ve known her, stops just short of rolling her eyes. “Therapy needs to be a priority right now,” she says to my mom.

“But college—” my mother begins.

“I’m not even sure Charlotte will be ready to go away for college in a year,” Dr. Shriner says.