Page 15 of Now That It's You
“I won’t disagree.” Kyle cleared his throat. “So is it your turn?”
“I guess.” Meg bit her lip. “You were right that I was thinking something I didn’t want to say out loud, but it wasn’t really like the stuff you just shared.”
“Do you want to tell me?”
She sighed and closed her eyes, the back of her head still resting against the wall. “I was just thinking how weird this feels. There’s a part of me that’s still really, really angry with Matt for the affair.” Her words tumbled out in a rushed frenzy. “Like so angry I want to kill him, and then I feel guilty for even thinking that, and then I also feel really, really angry with myself for walking out the way I did instead of making a clean break or having the respect to talk things over with you or with your family, and then in the middle of all that anger I think about how Matt’s gone forever and now you’re standing here in my living room and I can’t decide if the sick ache in my gut is because I feel guilty or because I feel sad or because I missed our friendship so much these last two years.”
She was breathless by the time she got all the words out, and her eyes stayed shut tight. Her lower lashes looked damp, and he watched a single tear slip down her left cheek. He ached to reach out and swipe it away, but he stayed rooted in place.
Meg opened her eyes and took a deep breath. She rubbed the back of her hand over her cheek and gave a sheepish shrug. “And now I feel like a total dumbass.”
“You’re not a dumbass.”
“I kinda wrecked the jovial vibe you had going.”
“Under the circumstances, I think it’s okay not to be jovial.”
Meg gave a tiny little half smile and blew a curl out of her eye. “I should have made up a story about having toilet paper stuck to my shoe.”
“I missed you, too.” Kyle swallowed, still not daring to move closer. “As a friend, I mean.”
“Friends.” Meg nodded. “We were good friends, weren’t we? I mean before everything—” She waved a hand, encompassing everything with one small gesture.
As if that could be enough.
“Yeah.” Kyle’s throat felt tight, but he cleared it and kept going. “Matt and I always had a hard time relating unless it was over some bullshit testosterone-fueled competition. Then you came along and—” he swallowed again, sidetracked by the memory his first glimpse of Meg with the sunlight in her hair and bare feet in the grass and her hand linked with his brother’s. “You connected us,” he said at last. “Matt and me.”
Meg nodded. “I’m glad.” She blinked hard. “I just wish . . . never mind.”
He watched her left hand start to lift, but she dropped it back to her side. He wondered if it had been en route to her earlobe, and felt bad for making her self-conscious.
“I wish things hadn’t ended the way they did,” she said at last.
“With you and Matt?”
“That, too. I shouldn’t have cut and run. But I also regret losing friendships. I know that’s how breakups go, but it was still hard. Having your family punish me by cutting me out like a bruise on a pear. I guess my family did the same, punishing Matt for cheating in the first place?—”
“You took it as punishment?”
“Of course.” She blinked. “How did you see it?”
Kyle shoved his hands in his pockets, not sure how they’d gone from lighthearted banter about tortoise penises to adultery and forgiveness and death.
But maybe this conversation was long overdue. Two years overdue, to be exact.
“I guess I saw it as making a choice to have your family member’s back.” He swallowed, remembering the dark spiral of depression that gripped his brother after the breakup. He’d promised Matt he’d never breathe a word about it to anyone, and he hadn’t. He still wouldn’t, not even now.
He cleared his throat and met Meg’s gaze again. “Being there for your family is important, even if that comes at the expense of another friendship.”
The words hung there between them for a moment, and Meg studied him so intently he had to fight the urge to look away. He watched her digest the words, and he braced for an argument or a flash of defensiveness.
But that wasn’t Meg’s style. It never had been. When she finally spoke, it was a single word. “Interesting.”
“That’s it?”
“I’m not sure what else to say.” She wiped her hands down the legs of gray yoga pants that hugged her thighs, and Kyle tried not to imagine that softness against his own palms. “How about a peace offering?”
He nodded at the flowers. “You mean besides secondhand daisies?”
