“Don’t . . .” Daniel sighed, a long-suffering sigh that I’d gotten to know pretty well. He used it a lot when he talked about his cousins. Talked to his cousins. “It’s not like that,” he said again, his voice almost pleading. “She’s special.”

Dex laughed, and I flinched at the sound. “I’m not hating on you. I think it’s great. I’m just . . . I dunno. Surprised. You could have given me the heads-up that you were gonna handle it that way.”

I caught my breath and inched the door open a little more so I could see them better. Handle what? Handle me?

Out in the hallway Daniel threw up his hands, looking angrier than I’d ever seen him. He wasn’t an angry kind of guy. “What the fuck do you care, man? You asked me to take care of your problem and I did. Just like I’ve taken care of everything else for you for the last twelve years.”

Dex held up his hands. “Hey. It’s fine by me. In fact, I’m impressed. Totally giving you props for the way you did it. Getting her out of my hair. Managed to get a little something for yourself on the side, that’s great. In fact . . .”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I pushed the door open and stepped out into the hallway. Both men saw me immediately. Dex dropped his hands and raised his eyebrows, but all I could see was Daniel. Wide eyes, stricken expression. He knew I’d heard everything. It had to be obvious from the look on my face.

“I was . . .” My voice didn’t work, so I had to clear my throat and try again. “I was a problem?” I drew a shaky breath and looked at Dex. “I was in your hair?”

Daniel opened his mouth, closed it. Surprisingly Dex jumped in, the sudden voice of reason in this conversation. “Naw, Stace. You were great. Honest. We had fun, right?” He nodded encouragingly in response to my own dumb nod. “But then you got kinda clingy last year, sending messages and shit. And you’re a really nice girl, so I didn’t want to just be all ‘fuck off with that.’ So I asked Daniel to do it.”

“Wait. You put him up to it?” This was new information. I flashed back to almost a year ago. That first drunken message, fueled by a little too much wine and way too much loneliness. How different would everything have been if Daniel had just done what he’d been told? If he’d sent back a nice rejection, letting me down easy. Would it have hurt as much then as it hurt right now?

But something about all this didn’t add up. Something about all this made it even worse. I looked back at Daniel. “You said it was an honest mistake. You said you didn’t realize the message was for Dex.”

“He said that?” Dex laughed. It was practically a guffaw, a living thing that swirled around Daniel and me, bouncing off the walls of the hallway while we stared at each other. “Well, he’s full of shit. He showed me the message and asked me what I wanted to do about it. I told him to handle it.”

“Yeah. You said that already. Handle it.” I nodded slowly. “Handle me.”

“Well, yeah. You know, let you down easy. He’s better with words and stuff than I am . . .” He trailed off, and for the first time in this conversation, Dex looked uncomfortable. He rubbed the back of his neck as he looked from me to Daniel and back again. “That’s what he did, right? Told you I wasn’t into you like that? He said he was going to . . .”

“Yeah.” I cut Dex off. I didn’t want to hear any more. Not from him. Not from Daniel, who in all of this hadn’t said a word. He just continued to watch me with pleading eyes, as though his house of cards was falling down. “Yeah,” I said again. “He knew just what to say.” I turned and went back into Daniel’s room. My overnight bag was still on the chair, not even unpacked yet, so it wasn’t like I had to get my stuff together. That last can of soda was all his. I scooped my phone off the nightstand and tossed it into my purse. There. I was ready to go.

But Daniel was in the doorway when I turned, the ice bucket hanging limply in his hand. “Stacey.”

I shook my head hard. “You said there weren’t any more lies.” I wanted to lash out, to hurt him as much as he’d hurt me, but both of those things required breath, and I couldn’t breathe around this stone in my chest. A storm of tears was rising inside me, and I needed to get to my car, ideally to my apartment, before that storm broke. “You promised.”

“I know. I did.” He looked as miserable as I felt, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t care.

“So all this time, I was a joke? All those things you said to me, all those months . . . that was you solving a problem for your cousin?”

“No.” He closed his eyes, pain etched in his face. “I mean, yeah, okay, at first, yes. Your message was so . . . I didn’t want to hurt you.”

I had to laugh, but it was a harsh sound, a cry of pain. “Well, good job on that.” I looped my purse over my shoulder. “You did great.”

He sighed, a deep rush of breath that sounded like it came from his toes. “I know. I fucked up. Again. Stacey, I’m sorry. Please . . .”

“No.” I dug for my keys and clutched them in my palm. “No, I’ve done enough talking. I’ve had enough of your words.” My breath shuddered in my lungs. That storm of tears was getting closer, and I had to get out of there. “It sucked when I thought it was an honest mistake—”

“It was an honest mistake, I told you . . .”

I didn’t let him finish. “I understood then. At least I thought I did. But this . . . this isn’t the same. You were in on it. Dex was in on it. You made me the butt of some little family joke, and I can’t . . .” My voice broke, and the first tears leaked from my eyes. “I can’t,” I said again. “When I thought you were Cyrano, I forgave you. But then . . .”

“What?” His forehead creased. “Cyrano? What are you talking about?”

But I kept going as if he hadn’t even spoken. “Then at the wedding, back at my place, I thought . . . I thought you were The One. I thought . . .” I cleared my throat hard. It didn’t matter what I thought, did it? “But you played me. You and Dex. You both played me.” I pushed past him in the doorway.

“You’re leaving?” His voice was both incredulous and defeated. It was the defeat that got to me, and I turned around.

“Give me a reason to stay.” My eyes hurt; they were burning with tears that I wasn’t allowing myself to shed. Not yet. I made myself meet his eyes, and I waited for him to ask me to stay. To fight for this. For us.

But he didn’t. Just like that first night at the bar, he was silent. I drew in a breath, and to my mortification, it was a sob. “Go on to the next town,” I finally said. “Maybe you and Dex can find another heart to break together.”

“Stacey.” His voice was wrecked, but I didn’t have it in me to care. This time when I turned to leave, he let me go.

Thankfully Dex had had the good sense to vacate the hallway, so no one witnessed the storm as it broke. No one had to watch me swipe angry, humiliated tears from my face as I made my way to my car and drove home, where I could finally cry in peace. I curled up on my bed and let the tears fall, and soon Benedick was nestled against my belly, my hand in his soft fur, comforting me with his warmth.

Our time was up, all right. Just a little sooner, and in a little more final way, than I’d anticipated.

Twenty

My alarm went off the next morning and I swatted at it. Regret settled over me like the worst kind of hangover. I moaned and put my hands over my face as the memory of last night washed over me. Had I overreacted? But Dex’s voice echoed in my head, calling me “clingy,” saying he’d asked Daniel to “handle” me. Ugh. No. I hadn’t overreacted at all.

In a fit of optimism I checked my phone for a text from Daniel, but there was nothing. I took a shower and tried composing a text in my head. First I wanted to apologize, but as soon as I’d composed the perfect apology in my head, I bubbled over with indignant anger, mentally erasing it. I was the wronged party here. He should be the one to be sorry, dammit.

I typed and erased three different texts before I had to leave for work. Once I got there, I put my phone away for the day and tried to concentrate on other things. That went about as well as I expected: by lunchtime my nerves were all live wires, and I dove for my bag before I’d even clocked out.

Nothing. Not a single notification, even from my social media. But I’d been so wrapped up in spending time with Daniel this week that I hadn’t posted much, so there wasn’t a lot for people to react to. I’d never felt so much despair from looking at my phone. Wasn’t he going to apologize?

“What an asshole,” I told myself while in line at the drive-through. Only comfort food would get me through this day. “Is he seriously giving me the silent treatment? Me? He’s the one who messed up.” I took a few deep breaths and pasted a wide smile on my face so I didn’t snarl at the poor drive-through girl when she handed me my cheeseburger.

It was midafternoon when it hit me. He was planning something romantic to let me know how sorry he was that he’d betrayed my trust. Maybe I’d come home to my apartment filled with flowers, Daniel in the middle of them begging me to forgive him. I imagined his words, what sweet things he would say to show that he understood how much he’d screwed up. That of course I was worth fighting for, and how he’d do anything to earn back my trust. My heart was buoyed by this idea, so much so that I didn’t care that my phone was still notification-free at the end of the day. I drove home with rising excitement; I was barely even mad at him anymore. I couldn’t wait to see him, to get this whole fight behind us.