Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [19]
“I don’t understand,” she said. “We’ve been talking about it all the time.”
“You’ve been talking,” he said. “I didn’t want to ruin our vacation, but when I talked to Cunningham about it, he said he wasn’t ready to move out yet, and I can’t abandon him. Hey, you’re always telling me to follow through on my commitments, right?”
He could not follow through on finding steady work or taking care of her when she got sick as he had promised, but she was supposed to be dazzled by the fact that he felt compelled to keep living with Ben.
“So Cunningham knew I wasn’t moving in before I knew it,” she said.
Anger filled her, anger that she knew would turn to sadness and fear as soon as Gabe was out of her sight, and for that reason she wanted to fix this, to make some sense of it.
“I have my own place. Maybe you should come live at my apartment. Or we can find a brand-new place, and Cunningham can get a roommate off Craigslist,” she said.
“A total stranger?” Gabe said, as if most everyone in New York didn’t live with total strangers. “Why do you want to live together so bad anyway? What’s the difference between that and what we have now?”
Because I’m thirty-two years old. Because my cousin Patty is the same age and already has three kids and a house. Because I want to know when you come in at night. Because I love you.
“You’re the one who suggested it in the first place,” she said.
“I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“It was!”
“But it’s not really what I want. I feel like a big part of the reason you want to live together is just to keep tabs.”
She shook her head. Was this really happening?
“Damn right,” she said. “I thought maybe the possibility of living together meant you’d stop being such a liar, but I guess I was wrong.”
“Guess so,” he said. “Hey, this time you didn’t even need to go through my e-mail to find out.”
She knew all her snooping was wrong, though it never felt wrong when she did it. It gave her a weird high, looking at his e-mails while he was in the shower or out for a run. Maggie told herself that she only wanted proof—just once—that Gabe wasn’t doing anything inappropriate. But she’d always find something: acknowledgment that he had lied about where he was, or an overly friendly e-mail exchange with an ex. And then she would be devastated and unable to explain her sudden sorrow to Gabe.
“Like Ronald Reagan said, trust but verify,” she had told Allegra once to explain why she checked up on him this way, and Allegra had widened her eyes: “Jesus, we’re getting our moral relativism from Reagan now?”
He was still wearing the towel. He let it drop to the floor and pulled on a pair of boxers and jeans.
“We’re done,” he said. “I’m gonna go watch the game. Come out if you want.”
“You’re gonna watch the game,” she said, feeling suddenly hysterical. “You’re going to watch the fucking game? I don’t think so.”
“I hate fighting like this,” he said. “I can’t stand it.”
“We haven’t fought like this in a long time,” she said, getting to her feet.
“Yeah, because you got what you wanted,” he said.
“I thought it was what we both wanted.”
“Look, you don’t trust me,” he said. “That’s what this living together thing is really about. Maybe this needs to be over. Maybe we should take a break.”
“A break?” She felt desperate. She wondered if there was someone else. “Are you kidding me?”
“Nope, starting now. So we’re not together at the moment, and I’m gonna go watch the Yankees.”
“God, you’re horrible, Gabe. You’re so selfish.”
“If I’m so horrible, why don’t you fucking leave?” he said.
“No,” she said. “I’m not leaving. Jesus. Let’s calm down. We need to talk about this.”
Sometimes this sort of fight—the sort where she accused him of lying, and he got all hot and indignant over the accusation, even though he had, in fact, lied—could fade quickly. But not today: