Page 83 of Not You Again

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOURKIT

Andie is quiet on the drive back to Midtown. Even now, when Cassidy and Steve are long gone, when the camera is miles away, Andie still doesn’t speak.

I follow her to the apartment from our parking garage, not sure how to break the silence.

Jamie and Leslie save us the trouble, all but crashing into us on the stairs. They’re giggling, holding hands. Andie and I exchange surprised looks, eyebrows raised.

“Sorry, sorry!” Jamie whirls around to put up his hands in apology.

Leslie is smiling as wide as I’ve ever seen him. “We’re off to have some fun.”

Jamie tucks into Leslie’s arms and kisses him on the cheek. Leslie’s blush grows deeper.

Andie smiles too. “Have a great time.”

“Oh, we will,” Jamie promises as he tugs Leslie to their car.

“They look happy,” Andie says wistfully, watching them go. “I’m glad.”

“Must be the magical therapy session Jamie was talking about the other day.” I shrug. “Good for them.”

Andie keeps a small smile on her face on the way to the apartment, but it’s full of pain. Her eyes say it all.

Now she knows—why I left without a word, how we were both in pain we didn’t know how to express. It should feel lighter. I always thought if she understood what my dad’s death did to me, it would feel like a revelation. Instead, the heaviness of the night weighs me down, my vertebrae grinding together as we walk through the door.

Andie kicks off her shoes and drops her bag on the bench by the door, then beelines for the kitchen. I hang up my messenger bag and remove my shoes too, unsure of what’s coming—a storm or quiet so loud it drowns out everything else.

When I finally have the courage to join her, she’s pouring wine. Two glasses. Some of the pressure building in my chest dissipates.

She picks up her glass and takes a sip, closing her eyes. I follow suit, watching her for a sign of … anything at all. She’s been so quiet; I don’t have a clue what’s going on inside her head.

When her eyes meet mine, she says, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did.” I shrug. “You wouldn’t let me in the door.”

She winces, looking down at our feet on the linoleum. “You left me in the middle of the night after I told you I loved you and you couldn’t say it back. What else was I supposed to do?”

I want to give her the same answers I’ve been giving myself for the better part of a decade: I was in shock, it happened so fast, I forgot my laptop, my phone bill was delinquent, and I couldn’t turn it back on. When I returned, she’d blocked me on every social media platform, and her school email didn’t exist anymore. I finally found her, and her roommate stood guard when I wanted to fall into her so I could fall apart again. All the words get gummed up in my throat, and they won’t come out. I swallow some wine.

Finally, I tell her the truth. “If I kept saying it out loud—that my dad was gone, the person who wanted so much more for me—that would make it real. And it couldn’t be real, Andie. It couldn’t be.”

She blinks. Sniffs. Shifts on her feet. “I’m so used to not knowing my own father, I just assumed … If I’d have known how much he meant to you, I’d have never—” Her voice breaks, and she wipes a tear off her cheek with the heel of her hand.

The voice mail. She’d have never left me that voice mail. “I didn’t tell you. How could you have known?”

“I should have felt something,” she says, her cheeks splotching with pink. She curls her free hand to a fist at her side. “Even then, it felt like you were some missing piece of me that fit into a forgotten corner of my heart. I should have been able to feel it when that piece of my heart broke.”

Her words startle me. She never spoke of how she felt for me then. The only evidence I have of her feelings were days and nights of laughter twining around my heart like our limbs wound in bed. And that one whispered confession before it all fell apart—I love you.

All I can think of is the qualifier in her confession: even then. Which means we still have a chance now, don’t we?

At my silence, she says, “I never even told you what you meant to me. I’m sorry I didn’t make you feel like you could tell me those things.”

“Andie,” I scold gently. “I knew how you felt. You did tell me.”

She keeps going, pacing the small kitchen like she didn’t hear me at all. “I’d have waited for you. If I’d known, I’d have waited. But I was selfish, because selfishness is how I’ve survived, you know? But I could have waited. I could have done better.”

I sigh and set my wine aside. On Andie’s next turn of the kitchen, I hook my finger into her skirt pocket and tug her back to me. Her hands shake when I pluck her wineglass from them. Quietly, I tell her, “You’d have been waiting a long time.”

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