Page 90 of Here & There

He drains his beer. “I need another.” He shoves the glass at me.

His eyes are slightly glassy but still focused on me. Boring into me. It’s a challenge. He wants me to be his server. To humiliate myself.

This isn’t him.

“Were you drinking before you got here?” I ask. Because I’d rather he just be forthright.

Richard shrugs.

Then he meets my eyes. And that’s when I see it—the pain there. The smallest part of me softens, feeling guilty for thinking so uncharitably about him.

It’s gone a moment later, though, when he pushes the glass into my hand. “I said I need another.”

I pick it up and set it out of his reach, like he’s a child. “Why are you here, Richard?”

“Because I had to see it for my fucking self. Bryony Jones, MBA, CEO, living in butt-fuck seaside nowhere.”

Heat rips through me. “Fuck you, Richard,” I say through gritted teeth.

“You don’t even like places like this. You’re a restaurant snob.”

“I like the kinds of restaurants we used to go to, Richard. But I like these kinds of places too. I likethisplace. It’s possible to contain multitudes.”

I glance toward Mac’s office. To where a man twice the person Richard is contains so many multitudes in that stormy, beautiful face he takes my breath away.

“I want another beer, Bryony.”

“You’re being an asshole, Richard. This isn’t you.”

“And this isn’t you!” Richard shouts, making me rear back in my seat. Lana meets my eyes from where she’s standing at the point of sale machine. “What the fuck are you doing here, Bryony?”

I hold up a hand, letting her know I’m okay. Lunch is over, and there are only a couple of other customers in the bar, both local fisherman—distant relatives of Mac’s. They both look at Richard like he’s the kind of fish they’d toss back into the water.

I rub my temples. He deserves an explanation, at least. “I’m sorry for the way I told you, Richard. I didn’t exactly prepare for doing what I did. I know the way I left was…”

Richard’s eyes are red. “Insane?”

I nod. “Yeah. I guess. But I should have taken a break from work—from my family—before going off the deep end.” I hesitate. “And I should have ended things between us a while ago.”

Richard gives a mean smirk. “But you didn’t. You couldn’t. You said we were taking a break because you couldn’t stand to really call things off, Bryony. I know how you are, okay? You have these little bouts of moodiness, then you go right back to the way things were, and everything goes back to normal. This time, you just went too far.”

I curl my hands into fists under the table. Moodiness? Those are justfeelings.Normal human feelings a Ken doll like Richard wouldn’t understand. Actually, that’s an insult to Ken dolls. “Ididn’t change my mind, Richard,” I say, choosing to rise above picking things apart. “I broke up with you for good.”

“It was that wedding, wasn’t it?” Richard muses as if I didn’t say anything at all. “Tim and Charlotte. You saw them having their big wedding, and I saw the way you looked at me. Like you were so devastated it wasn’t you.”

That was the second time I saw him shit-faced. I lean forward, flattening my hands out on the tabletop. “Richard, you came on to a bridesmaid at that wedding. That’s why I was looking at you like that. You wouldn’t let her see us too close together because you wanted to give the impression you were single. Do you know how insulting that was?”

Looking at Richard now, I can’t fathom what I ever saw in him. Why I made so many excuses for his shitty behavior. It wasn’t really that I didn’t think I was a loveable, was it? It was that my life felt like it needed all those pieces to keep glued together. Me being CEO at work, giving up all the parts of my job I loved even though it nearly broke me. Me staying with Richard because my parents wanted me to—at least, Dad did. Mom didn’t really express an opinion either way. But I also stayed with him because I thought he kept me contained. I thought he calmed me down when I threatened to go off the rails. He kept my expectations reasonable, my sights logically close. But really, I realize now, being my whole self with Mac—and we’re not eventogether—that a partner’s not meant to be a stopper. Richard didn’t calm me. He kept me small. I only thought I was too much—too big, too expressive, too excitable—because I was.

To him.

I think of Mac, looking at Nate and me with wonder when we made a mess of the kitchen. At him watching me today as I bounced around the whiteboard, barely able to write as fast as our ideas came. Whooping when we landed on something great. He doesn’t squish that in me.

Helovesit in me.

Richard glances sideways, then grabs his glass and shakes it in the air. Little drops of beer splatter on his face, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “Can I get some service in here? Mine sucks.”

I shake my head firmly at Lana.

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