Page 124 of Abyss

“Fiddling with my ring, you mean?” She laughs like a chorus of tinkling bells, bashful and unsure. “Yeah, I guess I do. Just a habit at this point.”

I cherish her habits, her tells, like the shiny trinkets I find more precious than all the riches in the world.

Bringing her hand to me, I brush my lips over her knuckles and savor the scent of her lemony fragrance.

“It was Nathan’s,” she explains, a tremble meeting her chin as she wades through memories. “We’d both gotten ones and had them engraved in high school, but I lost mine. His mom gave his to me after . . .”

I nod, gliding my thumb over her silver band. This is one ache I’ll never be able to diminish for her. “You turn it whenever you’re nervous. Are you?”

Her eyes widen as if she hadn’t realized it herself. “Am I what?”

“Nervous?” I ask.

She regards our linked fingers and I squeeze tighter,letting her know I’m right here. “Yeah, I suppose I am a little.”

“About what?”

Maybe I should just give her the key now. Maybe this whole plan to wait was blown out of proportion. It’s not like a proposal or a surprise birthday party. It’s just a key to tell her that I can’t stand the idea of being apart from her any more than I know she can without me.

That I can’t live without her. That I only want to live with her.

A strange urgency springs up inside me, and I’m about to ruin the surprise I had planned when she answers, her face a mix of concern and resoluteness, like she’s battling her decision to speak. “I wanted to know what you wanted—”

Knock, knock!

We’re both interrupted at the sound coming from the front door when Kavi rushes toward it, announcing it’s likely our food.

I take the time to saunter into my bedroom where I have the key resting in my nightstand. I’ll give it to her during dinner.

Key in my pocket, I’m on my way out of my room when I hear a familiar voice at the door, other than Kavi’s. My mind whirs as I shuffle into the foyer. “Kav, what’s going—” My surprised gaze meets identical eyes over the threshold and my heart thunders inside my chest, like I’m about to take an exam I’m ill-prepared for. “Maddy? What are you doing back so early?”

Maddy assesses me and Kavi as if she’s trying to trace the lines of an unfinished story. “Brie’s mom was admitted to the hospital for a minor heart issue—”

Both Kavi and I jump at once to ask if Brie’s mother is alright, to which Maddy confirms that she is before turning hurt and astonished eyes back toward me. “I thought I’dsurprise you. But, clearly, it’s the other way around. Care to tell me what’s going on between you two?”

I’m not sure what overtakes me—my nerves when I’m working without a plan or my anxiety at having been caught in this way. It also doesn’t help that Maddy looks like she’s been stabbed in the back, and for whatever reason, I speak at the same time Kavi does.

My words, “It’s not what it looks like,” collide with hers, “We were going to tell you when you got back,” and for a moment, time stands still.

For a moment, I wonder why or how I even said what I said.

Of course we were going to tell her when she got back. Of course it is exactly the way it looks. So why did I fumble the way I did? Why was my brain not aligned with my mouth?

I’m about to retract my words, noting the horror on Kavi’s face, when Maddy speaks, her hard eyes betraying her bruised heart. “I’m pretty sure this looks exactly as it is. But can you just tell me one thing? How long has it been going on? Since before or after my wedding?”

“Since before,” Kavi answers, while a part of me wants to hit pause or rewind or something, just to give myself a moment to figure out how to navigate this entire situation.

“Wow,” Maddy says with a strangled laugh. “I-I don’t know what to say.”

I want to go to her, to hold her by the shoulders and tell her everything. That I’ve found the person she’s been begging me to find for God knows how long. That I’m madly in love and so goddamn happy. But with the way she looks, both disappointed and shocked at having found her father with her good friend, I first need to tend to her wounds.

I suppose the father in me will always put her first in that regard.

“Maddy, why don’t you come in?” I ask tentatively, as ifI’m dealing with a wild animal, unsure how it’ll react to my attempts at gentleness. “Let’s talk about this inside.”

Kavi mumbles something about changing her clothes, and I reach out a hand to grasp hers, but she hastily skirts by me, not noticing my crestfallen face.

Looking back, I know there was a better way to have handled this, but it’s as if my brain was in slow-motion while everything else was whizzing by. If I’ve ever thought I was good at thinking on my feet—and I seem to be when it comes to work-related situations—life is giving me a look at myself from another angle, and it’s fucking pathetic.

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