Don’t Deny Me: Part Three (9 page)

Yet here she sat at the kitchen table, doing none of it. She’d made coffee, but it wasn’t quite right. Not as good as Mick would make it. She didn’t have any food in the fridge to cook for breakfast, and no motivation to run out and get some. All she could manage to do was drink some now-tepid tea and try to think of how she was going to break up with him.

“Morning.” Sleepy-eyed but with a wet head and fully dressed, looking too fucking scrumptious to stand, Mick bent to kiss her. “You’re up early.”

“Mick.”

He paused in looking through her cupboards to glance over his shoulder. “Yeah, babe?”

The words rose up, choking her. Bitter. Sharp as glass. She coughed, but couldn’t force herself to say them.

He was staring at her. “You okay?”

She was not okay. Anything but, as a matter of fact. But all she could do was nod.

“Hey, you wanna go out to a diner or something? You don’t have anything to eat.”

A diner. Oh, God. He wanted to take her to a diner, where they’d order eggs and hash browns and toast and coffee and maybe a pancake or maybe a whole stack, and he would hold her hand while they waited for their food and he’d hand her the cream and sugar without her having to ask because he knew how she liked her coffee, and he would give her the syrup first. He would tell her jokes and make her laugh and shake his leg up and down, rattling the silverware on the table, until she gave him a look that would make him stop. They would play tic-tac-toe on the backs of the menus.

And she would love him, Alice thought bleakly while Mick gave her a curious, confused stare. She would love him and want him and let him take her home and make love to her, any time he wanted. And she would miss him when they were not together, even if he never did.

She loved him, and there was no helping it or stopping it. She’d fallen into it deep. There was no climbing out.

* * *

You’ve known for a long time how I felt about you, and you just kept letting me. Just like I knew for a long time how you didn’t feel about me, and I just kept letting you. So which one of us is to blame, in the end? I guess we both are, or we both are not, but either way, all I know is that I am totally and completely in love with you. I can’t imagine the rest of my life without you in it. And yet all I see for us is good-bye.

—Alice to Mick, unsent

* * *

“Hey,” Mick said, sliding into the chair across from her to take her hand. His thumb stroked the back of it. “What’s wrong, Alice? You’re white as paper.”

“Tired, I guess.”

She sounded tired. Looked it, too. Maybe she was coming down with a post-vacation bug.

“We don’t have to go out for breakfast. I can run to the store, grab some bagels.” Concerned, he put a hand on her forehead to check for fever.

She leaned into his touch, her eyes closed. Her face was cool, though two bright spots of color had appeared high on her cheeks. She put her hand over his when he put it on her cheek.

She opened her eyes. “We can go to breakfast. Just let me take a shower, okay?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

She hadn’t convinced him she was fine. The opposite, in fact, because while normally Alice showered with the door wide open and sang show tunes, today she closed the door tight, and Mick swore he heard the muffled sound of sobs.

Shit.

Anxious, he made the bed while he waited for her to finish her shower. Noticing that her closet door had come off the track again, he tinkered with it until he got it to work. Pleased, he pointed to it when she came out of the bathroom, bundled in her robe with a towel on her hair.

“I fixed your closet door.”

Alice glanced at it. “Thanks.”

He demonstrated how smoothly it now opened and closed, watching her face for signs that she was happy. Or at least that she didn’t look sick anymore. The circles under her eyes had faded a little, but her eyes were red-rimmed.

So she
had
been crying.

At the diner, she ordered eggs and toast. No pancakes, no potatoes. She sipped at coffee and gave him a weak smile when he tried to joke with her. But when he tried to take her hand across the table, she didn’t let him.

His stomach sinking, Mick didn’t have much of an appetite. Neither of them did, apparently, because when the waitress came with the check, she had to take away a bunch of plates that were mostly still full. He paid the check and left an extra-large tip, like that would make him feel better. It didn’t.

In the car, Alice stared out the window in silence as he drove. The radio played one song after the other, none of which he knew the words to, but while normally he’d have made some up to make her laugh, now he stayed silent. The drive back to Alice’s house took only a few minutes, but it felt like hours.

In her driveway, he didn’t move to get out of the car. He twisted in his seat to look at her. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

She gave him a smile that looked like a lie. “Too much vacation, I guess.”

They sat in silence, staring, and for the first time since they got back together, Mick wasn’t sure he knew what to say to her. He wanted to reach for her hand, but didn’t.

“I guess I’ll get going, then,” he said, hoping she’d ask him to come inside with her.

“Sure,” Alice said with a fake smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

When he moved to kiss her, she turned her head just enough so that his lips caught the corner of her mouth. They stayed that way for a few seconds. Then she pulled away.

She looked at him, expression inscrutable. She touched his face, traced his eyebrows with a fingertip. His chin. She kissed him, then, fully on the mouth, soft and sweet.

Then she got out of the car and went inside the house.

* * *

Alice. Answer the door. I’m not leaving until you talk to me.

—Mick to Alice, text

* * *

What more is there, other than wanting you?

Alice couldn’t decide if that were better or worse than Mick loving her “on some level,” which she’d previously thought to be possibly the most horrifically disappointing and gut-wrenching thing anyone had ever said to her. She thought that love on any level had to be better than there being nothing more than wanting. Either way, once again she’d asked and once more she’d been given an answer.

She’d cried herself sick in the shower this morning, but she wasn’t going to do that now. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do. But it wasn’t that.

What she’d said to her sister still felt true. Mick was never going feel about her the way she felt about him. The question was, what was Alice going to do about it.

For now, she thought, she was going to finish unpacking and doing her laundry. The rest would come later, because that was how life worked. Shit happened. You got through it. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes it was hard, she thought grimly, but one way or another, you did it.

She hadn’t noticed her phone’s buzzing until she came out of the laundry room and found it on the kitchen table. Several missed texts from Mick. A call that had come in only a minute or so ago. Before she could even listen to the voice mail, her doorbell rang.

She knew it was him before she opened the door. Talk about déjà vu. What she had not expected was the look of despair on Mick’s face when he came through the doorway.

“What’s going on?” he demanded. “Is there someone else?”

“What?” Shocked, Alice took a step back, then another. He followed her into the kitchen, where she drew a glass of water to help calm her stomach.

“What’s his name. Bob? Bill? That asshole you were seeing when we got back together. Is it him?”

A flash of guilt poked her, but Alice hadn’t done more than exchange a few texts with Bill in months. The guilt lasted only seconds, replaced by a thin anger. “What the hell are you talking about? There is nobody else!”

Mick, breathing hard, a little wild-eyed, ran a hand through his hair and whirled on her. “Then what the hell is going on with you?”

“You. You’re what’s going on with me.” The words popped out of her before she could stop them, but once they were out, she didn’t even want to take them back.

Mick visibly deflated. “… What? What are you talking about?”

“This isn’t working, Mick.”

There. She’d said it. Out loud, to him, no taking it back. Just as she’d hopped on a train months ago at Bernie’s house, now Alice was once more taking a ride. Only this time it was no slow-moving locomotive but the bullet train, no stops. Only one destination.

End of the line.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

Alice swallowed hard and shook her head. “Some things just don’t work. Us. This. Second chances. Things don’t change—”

“Everything’s changed.” He threw out his hands, then curled them into helpless fists. “I answer your calls and your texts. I’m there for you when you need me, I would never leave you sitting the way I did that other time. And I never blamed you for hating me over that, Alice, believe me, I know what an asshole I was, but even murder has a statute of limitations. How much more do I have to prove to you that things are different?”

“But they’re not,” Alice said, voice hard. “Not really.”

“How can you say that? I’ve done everything for you. Everything.” To her horror, his breath hitched. Mick sank into a kitchen chair and put his head in his hands for a second before giving her a look of naked confusion. “What more do you need from me?”

She blinked at him, not sure if she should be furious or desperate or numb. “What do you mean, everything?”

“I try to take care of you,” Mick said in a low voice. “The best way I can. Obviously, it’s not enough for you, and if that’s the case, I don’t know what more I can do.”

She thought of coffee made the way she liked it. Of the closet door he’d fixed. Faucet he’d repaired. Tires, rotated. Alice forced away a sob, thinking of the myriad ways Mick had taken care of her. Of all the things he’d done … but all the things he’d never said.

Before she could say anything, Mick stood. “I showed up at your door and told you that I love you and I want to be with you, that I’d do anything to prove it—”

Finally, at this, she lost it. “Love me? You showed up at my door, all right, but you didn’t say you
loved
me. You said you wanted me. ‘I
want
you more than I’ve ever wanted any woman, Alice.’ That’s what you said. And whenever I asked you about us, you said … you said it was fun. Over and over again, just fun.” Her breath hitched and choked. “So you’re going to blame me for thinking that meant you just wanted to fuck me?”

“I love you!” Mick’s shout echoed through the kitchen. He took a step toward her, eyes blazing, fists clenched. “I might only have said I wanted you, but I
meant
I love you!”

“On some level, right?” Alice sneered. Furious. Broken yet again by his words. She put the glass carefully in the sink even though she wanted very much to shatter it on the floor at his feet. To cut him the way he’d cut her.

“No, Alice. Not on some level. I love you.” Mick shook his head and stepped closer to take her by the upper arms.

No longer shouting. No longer furious. Mick looked broken, too, and though she did not want to soften toward him, she did.

“Then you should have told me that in the first place, instead of assuming I knew.” Her voice cracked, thick with tears.

Mick winced. “I thought I did. I mean, I thought everything I did was enough so that you’d know.”

“Well, it wasn’t. I don’t read minds.” Still angry, but now also aching, Alice shrugged out of his grasp. The sink behind her was too close for her to back up a step, so she went still, instead.

“I’m sorry.” He didn’t touch her, but the way he moved told her that he wanted to.

Alice looked him in the eyes. “You never said it. You never even
wrote
it. You said you wanted me, and I figured that would be enough. I figured it would be whatever it was. Just fun, the way you told me before. And I hoped. I mean, I wished, I wanted, but I couldn’t let myself believe it, Mick. I didn’t want to end up where I was ten years ago, curled up in a ball on the floor of my shower and sobbing my eyes out every night for the sake of wanting you. It was agony then, and it would be even more so, now.”

“I never want to hurt you,” Mick told her. “Ever. I’m so sorry, Alice.”

Hesitantly, he pulled her close until her cheek rested on his chest. Beneath her cheek, his heart thumped in the swift but steady rhythm that had become so agonizingly familiar to her all over again. And though she didn’t want to, Alice gave in to the comfort of Mick’s touch. His warmth. The slow stroke of his hand down her back. And finally, his kiss.

“I love you,” Mick said against her mouth. “I’m sorry I didn’t say it before. I’m sorry I made you think it wasn’t real, or it was only fun, or whatever it was. I’m an asshole. Forgive me.”

She pushed away to look him in the eyes. “I love you, too.”

“Forgive me,” he asked again.

Did she have a choice? This man had been in her heart for a decade. He’d drained her dry, but he’d filled her up, too. She could live without him, if she had to, but there was no doubt in Alice’s mind that without her Mick, her life was an infinitely darker place.

“Kiss me,” she told him. “And take me upstairs. And love me, Mick.”

“I do,” he told her. “I might not always say it in the way you want me to, Alice, but I promise you, I’ll always mean it.”

And that was enough, she thought as the press of his lips on hers took her breath away once more, the way it always did. Always would. Finally, this love was enough.