Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [86]
“Well, I felt things for you.You’re funny and sexy and talented.” I sounded so angry the compliments sounded more like indictments. “You even like my stories.”
He smiled. He looked at me the way every woman wants to be looked at. “Amy Gallagher, you are the most interesting woman I have ever had the misfortune of living with.”
“What about ‘you’re beautiful’,” I said. “Or ‘I’m deeply attracted to your intelligence.’ ”
He told me I was beautiful and gently touched my cheek, ran his thumb across my lower lip. He told me he was very attracted to my intelligence. He would have kissed me if I’d let him.
I told him to take me the rest of the way home.
We walked side by side. When he reached for my hand I let him. He laced his fingers through mine. The streets were empty, and in the moment’s anonymity I was free to enjoy what it would be like to belong to Eli. All our other many walks through campus, hands in pockets and cautious distance between our bodies, seemed unnatural in retrospect.
I asked what he was going to say to Jillian.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t quite figured that out yet.”
“You have to tell her.”
“Of course I have to tell her.” He let go of my hand, slipped it back in his pocket.
“Look,” I said. “I’m not interested in anything that’s not going to be serious from the beginning.”
“Neither am I.”
“I don’t want to date and I don’t want to mess around.”
“We’re in total agreement then.”
I crossed my arms. “There’s no way you and I would ever work.”
“Why not?” He shrugged, half laughed, as if I’d given him reason to hope.
“We don’t want the same things,” I said, exasperated by his good humor.
“Try me.”
I tried to imagine Eli holding a child or balancing a checkbook. With complete honesty I confessed, “I don’t even know where to start.”
“I promise you, I’m breaking up with Jillian.”
Of all the things he could have said. That he would so fervently offer her disappointment as foundation for my happiness made me sick to my stomach.
“That’s too convenient, Eli.”
“Why does it have to be hard?”
“Shouldn’t it be? Shouldn’t breaking up with someone you’ve been with this long at least be a little hard?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Jillian adores you,” I said. “You have to at least try to make it right with her.”
“You’ve become quite the expert on someone you’ve never met.” He began to say something, stopped, then said it anyway with a spitefully calculated superiority: “Don’t flatter yourself that you’re the only problem we’ve been having. You have no idea what she needs.”
“What she needs? Isn’t this about what you need? You live like there’s no consequence, like you can walk away and live your own life and no one’s the better or worse, but nobody lives like that, Eli. When you leave you hurt people, and there’s nothing you can say about your work or your art or your needs that will justify it.”
He was taken aback. “What are you talking about?”
Beyond his pretense of innocence I recognized the likeness of my father, the ever affable, the ever apologizing, the man whose love wasn’t enough. What kind of idiot would I be to make myself the moving target for the same misery Jillian would suffer tomorrow?
The torrent came easily, and each spiteful word filled me with relief: “You don’t care what people think of you and you think that gives you license to do whatever you want without consequence. You’re done with Jillian? Walk out on Jillian.You’re done with your aunt? Walk out on her, leave her alone after all she’s done for you.”
“Amy, wait a minute—”
“You’re not as independent as you’d like to think you are, Eli Morretti—you just delude yourself into thinking that just because no one follows your long meandering quests no one cares or misses you.”
“You don’t know anything about my family.” I had never seen him angry before. “My family,” he said fiercely, “is my business.”
“I know that you haven