Chapter 5: Real Life

We stay in the kitchen through three more toasts to lasting love. Then Rhys says we need to take my things upstairs and asks the others to excuse us.

Jules makes an appreciative, suggestive noise. Dane raises a hand for her to slap, and Bianca winces. She hates high fives.

On the stairs, I try to keep possession of my suitcase. Rhys takes it with so little effort that I barely manage a protest. He switches hands, putting the bag on the side away from me.

"You can let go now."

"You don't have to impress anybody," I tell him quietly. "They can't see us."

"That wasn't the idea."

"Of course it was."

I reach across him. He lifts the suitcase out of range. "I wanted to irritate you. Is it working?"

"You did that when you showed up. Everything since has been unnecessary."

"I'd hate to disappoint you by doing the minimum, Mara."

We're almost past the landing when Livia comes up behind us.

"One thing I forgot! You're taking the large room."

We both stop. Rhys catches my hand before I can turn around. Apparently standing several inches apart would give us away. I suppose I should be grateful he chose my hand.

"The large one?" His fingers shift to my lower back. I lean into him too quickly and too hard. His shoulder meets the wall, keeping us upright. I don't know whether we look affectionate or as uncomfortable as we feel.

"We always use the room with the twins," I say.

The family calls that the children's room. The other two bedrooms each have a king-size bed.

"Bianca and Jules volunteered to swap," Livia says. "You only manage to see each other about once a month. We thought you'd appreciate a proper bed."

Whenever we've stayed here as a couple, we've shoved the two narrow beds together. I don't mention that.

"We're perfectly happy where we usually are."

"You're always perfectly happy with whatever you're given." Livia sounds fond and exasperated. "Let us do something for you. They've put all their things away already."

"Liv, we really—"

"Thank you," Rhys says. "We appreciate it."

He guides me through the bedroom door before I can try again.

I turn on him as soon as it closes. Downstairs I could concentrate on being furious. Alone with him, I forget what I intended to say. My pulse is beating hard in my throat. I can see his pupils widen. He's studying me as intently as I'm studying him, neither of us sure what the other is going to do.

I felt less exposed with all our friends watching. There was something to do, somebody else to look at. Now there's only Rhys, close enough for me to touch.

"This wasn't what either of us wanted," he says. His voice is rough.

"No. Sharing a bedroom with my former boyfriend for a week wasn't on my list."

"Former fiancé."

I say nothing.

He looks away and rubs above his eyebrow. "I'm sorry. I couldn't work out how to refuse her. She told me it was our last chance to be here together. Said she'd never asked anything of me before and wouldn't again." He meets my eyes, and the familiar gentleness is almost worse. "I called you. It went straight to voicemail after one ring. I left a message."

I know why the call didn't reach me.

"Your number is blocked."

I used to lie awake with his contact open, wanting him to call so badly that I could barely put my phone down. I wanted him to say he'd made a mistake. Eventually I had to make it impossible for that call to come. Otherwise I'd never stop waiting.

His mouth opens, but he doesn't speak. He turns toward the balcony, frowning. He often looks unhappy even when he isn't. I remind myself of that before I can try to make him feel better.

He ended our engagement over the phone. Four minutes were enough for him. I don't owe him reassurance now.

When he looks back, his jaw is tight. "What would you have wanted me to do?"

Tell her you couldn't come. Invent work you couldn't leave. Say no.

Or stay with me in the first place. Don't make me spend years loving you and then end it so easily.

I shake my head rather than say any of it.

He comes nearer and lowers his voice. "I'm asking because I want an answer."

I rub my temples. "I haven't got one. We're here now. We can't announce a breakup at their wedding. There are only four guests. Everyone would have to deal with us."

"Then let's leave it for tonight. Be happy for them. Tomorrow we explain."

I look at the ceiling. I don't want to agree, and I can't come up with a better answer. I allow myself a few more seconds without having to give one.

"Mara?"

"All right. We can manage an evening."

He watches my face more closely. "Can you?"

I don't think so.

"Yes. I'm all right." I sit against the edge of the mattress.

After a moment he straightens. "Okay. At least we've agreed on that."

"Apparently."

"Okay," he says again.

I repeat it and get up. He takes a step away, leaving room for me.

"We could say we were having trouble before we came," he suggests. "Being here with them made us admit we weren't the people we used to be."

I feel a sharp ache in my chest. Months ago he told me we'd been young when we started dating. We had changed, he said. We ought to stop pretending that didn't matter. His proposed explanation is close enough that I have to wait before answering.

"You think they'll believe that? Without wondering why we never said anything?"

"We slept together for a year before any of them found out. We're not very good at keeping secrets, apparently, except from these particular people."

I move back and hit the bed with the backs of my legs. I stumble forward into him. We pull away immediately, but I've already breathed in the warm clove scent I remember.

"Hiding this could be rather different."

He pushes a hand through his hair. His shirt rises, exposing a strip of skin above his waistband. I notice, and then hate that I noticed. I look back at his face.

"We only need to get through tonight," he says.

He makes it sound brief. I've spent enough time with him to know how long an evening can feel, and how quickly one can be over when I want it to last.

"We should have told them when it happened." I press my palms against my eyes.

"I know. We didn't."

I hadn't set out to hide it. At first I couldn't quite understand that we were finished. I was too hurt, and part of me refused to believe him. Then a box arrived outside my apartment a few days later. He'd packed up my things and sent them without a note. I wondered how soon after hanging up he'd gone to mail it.

I sent his belongings back that day. I couldn't find the blue velvet ring box, so I dropped my engagement ring loose among the other things.

Three days later, a little parcel wrapped in brown paper arrived. The ring was inside. He thought returning it was decent; I knew him well enough to understand that. It made me angrier. I posted it straight back.

When it reached him, he sent his first text in two weeks. He said I ought to have kept it. It was mine.

I told him I didn't want it. What I meant was that I couldn't stand having it near me.

He suggested I sell it. I pointed out that he was just as capable of doing that.

For five minutes he didn't reply. Then he asked whether Bianca and Livia knew.

I felt sick at the thought of telling them. We had ten years of friendship together. I couldn't see how our group would survive this without becoming different, without people having to decide who to call and who to invite.

I want to talk to both of them together, I wrote. It was partly true.

A couple of people at the hospital knew. My best friends barely heard from me. It wasn't difficult to avoid a proper conversation when all of us had so much to do.

Livia's divorce cases kept her at work late; Dane was just as busy with his public-interest legal work. Bianca and Jules had the farm's four-in-the-morning starts and went to bed early. Rhys was back in his hometown on the Washington coast, running the family's boat-restoration workshop and helping his mother.

I was in Seattle, two years into my veterinary surgical residency at Cascade Veterinary Teaching Hospital. Our hours rarely suited each other. After most shifts I was so tired that even eating or undressing seemed to require more effort than I had left.

On my days off, I went to the pottery studio a block away. Otherwise I'd put on episodes of an old detective series and clean the apartment Rhys and I had chosen together two years earlier. We had expected to live there together. Then his mother's Parkinson's got worse, and he went home.

It was supposed to be temporary. His younger sister would finish graduate school and move back to take over Irene's care. Until then, we'd live apart. For a while, we managed to make it work. Then we stopped managing.

I didn't ask if he'd told Dane. If he had, the others would already have called me. Instead I asked about his mother.

Have you told Irene?

Not yet, he wrote. She's been trying to get me to come back to Seattle. She already hates that I'm here because of her. She tried to arrange a place in assisted living without telling me.

A pause, and then another message: If she hears we've split up, she'll think she caused it.

I loved Irene. I didn't want to cause her pain. I still considered telling him to explain it properly: in his account, I was the one who'd done something wrong. He didn't need to let her blame herself. I didn't send that message.

He asked if we could put off telling everyone. Only for a little while.

I agreed. Mostly, I was relieved. I wouldn't have to hear my friends' shock yet or explain things I couldn't explain to myself. After two months, one night when I nearly called him, I blocked his number.

Sometimes I unblocked it so I could answer something in the group chat. I'd never been reliable about texting, so I hoped nobody would see a difference. Another month passed before I emailed about our annual trip. We worked out how to avoid each other while each getting time with our friends.

That was two months ago. Waiting hasn't made any of this easier. I made those decisions, and now I have to deal with the consequences.

I concentrate on the green around Rhys's irises. Looking at one small feature is easier than taking in all of him.

"What exactly are we going to do?"

He lifts a shoulder. "Let them think we're still together for tonight. Tell them afterward."

I try to fold my arms. There isn't enough space between us, and I drop them again before I can brush against him.

"I meant how we're going to behave." I make myself continue. "Are we supposed to hold each other? Kiss?"

He looks aside, a little awkward. "They've seen us together. They know I don't usually keep my hands to myself."

He would pull me onto his lap without interrupting a conversation. He'd tuck me under his arm, gather my hair in one hand and kiss me over dinner, apparently unconcerned that anybody else was at the table. Sometimes he pressed his face against my neck while I was still speaking. If I fell quiet, he might run a thumb along my lower lip.

I spend a great deal of time thinking. Rhys reaches for things, including me. At least, he used to.