Page 42 of Third Time's the Charm

“I can’t wait to show it to you. It’s gorgeous. And I love Scotland. Have you been?”

“No.”

“Well, you’ll love it.”

He looked confused. “I’m confused.”

Now I was confused. “You’ll come with me. We’ll have a grand adventure!”

He stepped back. “I don’t fly...remember?”

Well, I knew he didn’t like to, but I also knew he did when he had to. “Not even for one giant, amazing trip? Get all your flying miles in at once?”

“Definitely not.”

I deflated.

“But I’m excited for you and I can’t wait to see all your pictures.”

Pictures? I didn’t want to share pictures with Ryker. I wanted to share a life. “Will you ever travel with me?”

“Anywhere we can reach by car or boat.” And then he smiled like the matter was settled.

The matter was definitely not settled.

“So you won’t hike Machu Picchu? Or visit Greece? Rome? Australia?”

He blinked a few times. “As I’ve mentioned several times, I don’t fly unless absolutely necessary. You know this. Why are you acting surprised?”

I heard him say the words, but I also knew he flew to Seattle once for an emergency work thing, and London once when his grandmother died. I must have twisted all that to mean he just needed a little push. Like when I had an idea. He wouldn’t normally picnic on a busy Saturday, but that’s what I was for! To push him outside his boundaries.

He liked that. Surely he’d also like to travel with me.

I could see now that my reasoning was very, very flawed. “I...I just thought if it mattered to me, you’d go.”

It felt like a canyon was opening up between us. Him on one side, and me on the other.

“I have to be medicated to fly. I hate being enclosed with so many other people. I hate being out of control. And I hate the way I feel when I take those medications. Do you really want to put me through all that just to see something I can see in pictures?”

See in pictures? Why, when you could feel it? Taste it? Smell it? Visiting history made my blood pump harder than ever, standing in the same place as someone else got my mind spinning. There was no comparison.

“No, of course I don’t want to hurt you.” But in a way this hurtme.I always knew my life partner would travel with me. As far back as I could remember I imagined visiting all these places with the person I shared my life with.

Ryker was already asking me to walk away from the possibility of having children, and now this? “We’re not very compatible, are we?”

He cocked his head to the side. “I think we’re very compatible.”

I laughed at myself. Everyone saw it but me. “I’m loud, Ryker. I like to travel. I do random things just to change things up.”

“And I love all of those things about you.” He took my hands.

“But only so much of it, right? If I woke you up in the middle of the night and asked you to go skinny dipping with me, you’d say no. You can’t even commit to a planned picnic on a Saturday.”

“True, but you push me and I calm you. We’re opposites in a good way.”

I wasn’t so sure anymore. “I used to think that. I think that’s why I fell for you at first. But...I don’t think it's enough. I feel like you’re asking me to be smaller than I am, and I’m asking you to be bigger. At the same time you’re saying we’re going to live whole parts of our lives apart. I’ll travel alone and you’ll have quiet evenings in. There’s nothing wrong with that, by the way. But it’s not me.”

And I’d already made this mistake. In the end it wasn’t whether Jack and I loved each other, it was that he lived a life separate from me. I hated it. And I couldn’t make the same mistake twice.

---