I take my time in the theater restroom, washing my hands, wiping the counter, then washing them once more. On the way back through the carpeted arcade, I nearly run into Rhys.
“Sorry,” we say together, stopping short.
He has enough candy in his arms for a sleepover: Twizzlers, Nerds, Red Hots, Whoppers, Milk Duds. I look from the boxes to the cup of water balanced on top.
“Thirsty?”
“I thought you might want something.”
“You brought the entire concession stand.”
“Was that a mistake?”
“No.” I try to keep my attention on the candy. His eyes are too green in the low light. “But you didn't need to.”
“I didn't mean to. I went for water, and somehow came back with a cartload of corn syrup.”
“Your family's famous bargain instincts. Buy the cart once and the refills are free.”
He groans and drags a hand over his forehead. “I'm so hungover.”
“From one drink?”
“If we don't count the half bottle in the cellar.”
“Then let's not count anything that happened in the cellar.”
He studies me, then says he hardly drinks these days. “I've been taking edibles instead.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“They help Mom. She feels awkward doing them alone, so we split a brownie a couple times a week. She'd never tried weed before. She gets so giggly.” He shrugs. “Maybe it's placebo. Doesn't matter if it helps.”
I hold back a smile. “Moved home and got high with your mother twice a week.”
“Living the dream.”
“Sounds pretty good, actually. I'm jealous.”
“It is fun. She gets the munchies, though. I've put on fifteen pounds.”
“It suits you.” I pause, then ask, “How is she really?”
He gives me a sideways look. “You haven't talked to her?”
I still text Irene. Sometimes his sisters message, too. Lou asks what gag gift Rhys might like; his older sister, Michael, asks for veterinary advice on ailments that have nothing to do with surgery. As far as they know, Rhys and I are still engaged.
“I do. I just think she's putting on a brave face.”
“I'm sure she is.”
His gaze falls. I watch his lashes and the shape of his mouth until he looks up again.
“The weed helps,” he says. “Just not enough.”
The ache rises into my throat. “I'm glad you're there with her.”
He sets the candy and water on the air-hockey table and shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “I know you don't want to talk about everything, and I respect that. But something you said yesterday—in the cellar—made me realize you thought he was why I ended things.”
The word he hits hard.
“You thought I blamed you for what happened with him,” Rhys says.
“Of course you blamed me.” I straighten, fighting to keep the cracks in my voice from showing. They're already there.
“I didn't. I don't. I swear.”
My chest tightens. “Convenient that I told you about him and you broke up with me right after.”
Surprise and hurt cross his face. I don't know what to make of either. I went into the restroom in one world and came back to a different one.
“Mara,” he says, voice rough. “It was more complicated than that.”
Not that he thought I had betrayed him. Not that he was angry or couldn't trust me. He simply didn't want me anymore. I feel as if my body might come apart, leaving me on the floor in pieces.
“I was in a dark place,” he says.
I turn away. My eyes sting. “I know.”
I had known every day. I hadn't known how to help him. “I just didn't know how to fix it,” I say, my voice catching.
“You couldn't have.”
I close my eyes and try to push the feelings back where they came from. I knew how much he hated Seattle. I felt guilty that he'd followed me there, and guilty that I couldn't make him happy while we stayed.
His fingers slide between mine, tentative, and he draws me back toward him.
“It wasn't only that. My dad...”
I nod. The loss of Hank had come without warning. There would never have been a good time for Rhys—or anyone who loved Hank—to lose him. Everything had happened at once, and still I had believed we'd make it. When Rhys promised to love me forever, I believed him. That made me angry at both of us.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he says. His jaw shifts as he holds my gaze.
“I know.” It doesn't change anything.
“All I want is for you to be happy.” That word again.
“That's what I was trying to say in the cellar. I don't want to do anything this week that complicates the rest of your life. I'm sorry I almost did.”
The pieces come together.
“I'm not with him,” I say. “There's nothing to complicate.”
Rhys's lips part. I wish I could take the words back. “If that's what you meant.”
“Okay,” he says.
Okay? What am I supposed to do with that?
After a pause, he adds, “I'm not with anyone either.”
I swallow a laugh. “You're not in a long-distance relationship with my coworker, whom you've met once?”
Color rises over his cheekbones. He taps his shoe against the air-hockey table. “The chemistry was undeniable, but it wasn't enough.”
I have to bite back another laugh. He looks up from under the lock of hair falling over his forehead. “There's no one else.”
It shouldn't matter. He broke my heart. He wasn't happy with me. He had never been mine to keep, and I'd known it somewhere inside me.
But the way he looks at me makes all that certainty harder to hold. My chest hurts, and I don't want the feeling to stop. For once my heart, body, and mind seem to occupy the same moment, here with him.
I can't go back into the theater like this. We can't keep edging along without saying anything; someone will get hurt. I'll get hurt.
I clear my throat. “How's the boat shop?”
His mouth curves. “Still restoring boats.”
“Good. I was worried you'd turned it into a drug den with illegal card games.”
“Are you still in the same apartment?”
“Our apartment.” It still holds traces of him, or perhaps I carry them with me. “Yeah.”
“How's your sister?”
“Good, I think. She started a business with a friend who does hair. Mostly weddings and dances. She FaceTimes twice a month, makes small talk for about five minutes, then says goodbye.”
He bites his lower lip. “I'm sorry.”
Rhys knows how much it hurts that I barely know my sister. We grew up six years apart, and she was always at odds with our parents. Even with a sister, I felt alone in that house.
“Some things don't change,” I say. “It's easier to stop expecting them to.”
“Some things do change, though.”
I look away. “How are your sisters?”
“Good. Lou's with Mom this week. She said to tell you hi.”
I smile despite the ache. “And Michael? Still in Colorado?”
He nods. She's dating another aerospace engineer, this one at a competing company. They live together, but both have nondisclosure agreements, so neither lets the other into their home office.
“That is so perfectly them,” I say.
“I know. Lou finished the Iowa Writers' Workshop in May.”
“That's amazing.”
Together, the three siblings can be loud, rude, and fiercely competitive. They argue over dinner, showers, domino rules—whatever comes to mind. But the arguments fade as quickly as they flare, and soon they're joking or hugging again, like the siblings in a movie.
I wonder whether Lou is only visiting Irene or has moved back after graduate school, as she once planned, to help care for her. I don't ask.
“I miss them,” I say.
“They miss you too.”
“Do they wonder why I never visit?”
“I go out of town sometimes for work.”
“Work?”
He nods, leaving it there. “They think we're seeing each other then.” I have no answer.
He clears his throat. “Mom said you're taking pottery.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“I acted like I already knew.”
“Good save.”
“She also says you're getting better. Your newest bowl looked less like a butt.”
A laugh bursts out of me. “You should've seen the glowing message she sent about that bowl. She pretended it was great.”
“She didn't pretend. She told me it was great. It just also looked like a butt. You know Mom.”
“Remember that painting we gave her as a joke? The one where Elvis looked like a cartoon gangster?”
He grins. “She kept calling it unusual.”
“She made “unusual” sound like praise. Irene can fit a lot into one word.”
“She can know something's terrible, but if it's connected to family, it has to be important and brilliant.”
The thought of being Irene's family—of mattering that much to her—catches at me.
“It's been strange in a good way, living with her,” he says.
“There's nothing strange about that. She's fun.”
He smiles to himself. “I spent years telling myself I had to leave. My sisters were finding their own plans, talking about going places, and my parents were proud of them for making lives of their own. I thought I had to do that too.”
I remember lying with our friends on the Rowans' dock, without Jules, as we talked about alternate lives. Even then, when Rhys imagined another path, he found his way back to the one he'd left.
When I first visited him, met Hank and Irene and the girls, and saw the workshop and his childhood room full of evidence of a happy home, I understood why he belonged there. I tried to keep him in Seattle anyway. I watched him become more unhappy, and I wasn't brave enough to let him go. Maybe part of my anger came from knowing I hadn't loved him well enough to make him happy—or well enough to release him.
“If someone had told me at twenty-two that I'd be back in my childhood room doing crosswords with Mom every morning, I would've believed it,” he says. “I just wouldn't have expected to be happy about it.”
“You do crosswords? You never wanted to when we lived together. I tried to get you to do them whenever it rained.”
“I always said yes.”
“And we never finished.”
“Mara.” His eyes settle on mine. “I couldn't sit across from you that long without touching you.”
Heat spreads across my face and down my chest. We've moved closer without either of us deciding to. Maybe our bodies still know the distance between us better than we do.
“I thought it was the crossword that got you worked up.”
“Turns out, filling in little squares isn't what does it.”
“That's probably for the best. Breakfast with Irene could get awkward.”
A draft lifts a strand of my hair. Rhys catches it and winds it around his rough fingers. My pulse quickens; every part of me wants to move closer.
The theater door swings open behind us. Our friends spill out, talking and laughing. Intermission.
I start toward them. Rhys catches my wrist.
“I like the bowl,” he says. “Mom showed me a picture. I thought it was beautiful.”