Page 160 of Only After We Met
She nodded, nibbling her lower lip, and I tried not to watch her too long. Before she could wake her baby, I grabbed her wrist and pulled her close, almost touching—close, the way we’d always been, despite all those miles, despite the obstacles. “That fucked me up. You not talking to me fucked me up bad. But I understand. I’d have understood if you hadn’t caught the plane. I don’t deserve having you here.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You were right.”
“Rhys…”
“I lost control.”
She shook her hand and rested a hand on my chest. It was warm. And it brought me peace. “Everything that’s lost can be found.”
“But it’s the searching that’s so hard for me.”
She smiled. Gorgeous. The same smile that had lingered in my memory for so long. I wanted to stare into it forever, but I turned and walked up the white marble staircase instead. Once in the shower, hot water flowing over my face, surrounded by mist, I felt less dirty, less contaminated. The echoes of that night of music and shadows that had taken me to the limit faded away with the realization that Ginger was just a few feet away. So close, and yet so far…
102
Ginger
It was hard to find a simple little spoon in that modern minimalist kitchen. It didn’t even have handles on the drawers. It seemed like it had never been used. Holding Leon in my arms and feeding him a late lunch, I looked at the high ceilings, the impersonal furnishings. I’d never have thought such a house could belong to Rhys. I’d known him as a person who could live anywhere in the world: in a wooden bouse by the ocean in Australia, which he must have adored; in an attic in Paris with a view of the moon; in an apartment in Ibiza, simple, but nice and comfortable. But where he lived now, this house…it was for someone else.
It terrified me to think that he had changed. Too much, maybe. That the way I’d trembled when we touched wasn’t enough. That we couldn’t just pretend those two years had never happened. And that even so, I still loved him in an irrational, crazy way I couldn’t understand…
I looked at the shelf near the TV, full of books. I knew all of them well. I could recognize them by the spines. They were the ones I’d published those past two years. Organized in order of publication.Without a speck of dust. Well cared for, proudly displayed, and they made me blink as I tried to suppress my tears, imagining him buying them every month.
I remembered his emails. The ones I’d read waiting to take off, with Leon sleeping in my arms. In those messages…he was him. Completely. Anxious, lost, angry at times, insecure at others, destroyed, sensitive, open, depressed.
Rhys. Just Rhys. No filters. No armor.
103
Rhys
My hair was still wet when I walked downstairs in gray sweatpants and a T-shirt. Ginger looked up and smiled at me, nervous.
“You mind if I shower too?”
“No, go ahead. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
She kissed Leon on the forehead. He was still in the carriage. Then she grabbed her handbag and went upstairs. I sat on the sofa in the same room where I’d spent the past year and a half, but now everything felt different. Fuller. Warmer. Leon looked at me, and I looked at him. I took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure what to do with a baby. This was the closest I could remember being to one. I jiggled one of the toys hanging down over his head, and he laughed, moving his arms, trying to grab it. I pulled it away a little, and he reached higher. Maybe this wasn’t so hard. Maybe we could get to know each other, like each other, even if I had no idea how.
I thought that, at least, until he started crying.
At first, it was just pouting. His lips crinkled and he moaned, but then he closed his eyes, clenched his fists, and shouted so loud he scared me.
“Hey, Leon, look.” I shook his rattle.
He didn’t care. And he didn’t like the funny faces I made either.
“Shit. No, fuck, I shouldn’t have said that.” I bit my lip. “Hopefully the thing about your brain being like a sponge is just a myth. Wait a second.”
I hurried upstairs and knocked on the bathroom door. I heard Ginger turn off the water and couldn’t help but imagine her naked. That still stung me. My lust. My desire.
“Rhys? What’s up?”
“Leon won’t stop crying. Can you hurry?”
“Pick him up. He loves to be carried around.”