I WAKE UP SLOWLY, clinging to sleep as long as I can, mostly because I’m fearful that last night was some delicious dream. In the end, I give in to the pull of consciousness only because I recognize the warm, solid body beneath me is very much real and very much Paul.
I finally open my eyes but quickly shift so that I can look up at him. He’s still asleep, the lengths of his eyelashes resting against his cheek. His stubble is so heavy now, it’s almost a full beard. I hope he doesn’t shave it off because I like it a lot.
“Are you watching me sleep?” he says, opening his eye just a crack. His voice is rough with sleep, but there’s an amused lilt to it.
“Hey,” I whisper.
“Hey,” he whispers back, and then he smiles. “Sleep well?”
“So well.”
“Me, too,” he says, then he reaches down to brush his lips against mine and excuses himself to use the bathroom. I stretch out across the bed, a contented smile lingering on my lips as I wait for him.
“What time is it?” he calls from the bathroom. I glance down at my watch.
“It’s 8:00 a.m.” I run my hands over my breasts, feeling my body coming to life at the thought of continuing last night’s makeup-sex marathon. “Come back to bed.”
“Shit,” he says, “The car will be here soon.”
At first, I assume he’s cursing because the car is coming and he’s forgotten to cancel it. I hear him cleaning his teeth, then there’s the clink of bottles colliding, and then a zip sounds, and Paul saunters back into the bedroom with his toiletry case under his arm.
“What are you doing?” I assumed we’d talk this morning—to make a plan for the future, to figure out how to make a way forward together again, because there’s still so much left unsaid. I’m numb as I sit up in bed.
Paul diverts from his path to brush a kiss against my lips, but then continues his way to the closet. “Packing,” he says easily.
“Paul...” I whisper.
He glances at me, but his path doesn’t falter.
When he pulls the closet open and withdraws his bag, I clear my throat. “I just... It’s just... You’re really going back today? Now?”
“I have to,” he says. “I’m sure Audrey and Jess handled the retreat, but they’ll be waiting on me for decisions. There’ll be things that only I can do that will need to be done today.” He looks back at me again and frowns. “You get that, right?”
“Oh, I get it,” I say. I can’t help the bitterness that seeps into my tone. Even after everything we’ve been through, it seems that the business is still more important than we are to Paul. And the worst thing is, he did tell me on Saturday morning that he still loved his job. As much work as Paul has done on himself and as much as he missed me and missed us, his priorities haven’t actually changed.
“Why don’t you come back early with me?” he says, still cheerful. “We could—”
“No, Paul. I won’t be changing my plans to fit in with your schedule,” I snap. The warm glow I reveled in all morning as I watched him sleep has vanished. I’m overwhelmed by a rush of dark emotions, and I can’t decide if I should climb beneath the duvet and pull it over my head, or if I need to run downstairs and lock myself in the guest room before I burst into tears.
In the recesses of my mind, there’s a warning bell sounding: maybe I’m overreacting here. But Paul’s decision to leave this morning collides with the sorest of my sore spots, and I can’t stop and temper my own behavior because the hurt is instantly fresh and raw again.
I can’t believe he’s walking away from me right now. I let myself believe that things had really changed.
“Hey, listen to me,” Paul says, stepping away from his bag to approach me at the bed. He crouches in front of me and tries to meet my gaze. “Just because I have to go back today doesn’t mean that this isn’t important to me. It is. But there are people counting on me in the city. I can’t let them down.”
“No, you’re doing the right thing,” I whisper.
He nods, satisfied by this, and he stands, but then hesitates in front of me—apparently reading something in my expression that gives him pause. Meanwhile, my grief is rising all over again. I’m vaguely aware that this time it’s going to be even worse, because I had this glorious and awful glimpse of how things might have been.
Paul’s still staring at me, increasingly confused, and so I throw the duvet back so I can climb out of bed. “This was a bad idea.”
Paul blinks at me. “Isabel, what the fuck are you talking about? Two minutes ago you were so happy—”
“We’ve been kidding ourselves, caught up in isolation out here. But there’s a real world back there in the city, and nothing has really changed.” I interrupt him harshly.
“Everything has changed,” Paul says flatly, and all I can think is, My God, I hope he doesn’t fight for me this time. It was hard enough to walk away from him last time, but this time? After the way I stupidly let hope blossom inside me last night? This time, walking away might just kill me, especially if I have to convince Paul not to follow me.
“You’re still you. I’m still me. We are fundamentally incompatible, Paul.”
“Then what the hell were the last twelve hours about?” he says stiffly.
I feel a twist of guilt in my gut, but it’s soothed when I remind myself that he is making the decisions that break us. Not me.
“I was wrong,” I croak.
Paul’s neutral expression shifts, and suddenly he’s staring at me with suspicion. “Was this whole weekend just another way to kick me while I was down?”
“No!” This conversation is going nowhere, and I’m going to cry any second now. I reach into the en suite for a towel and wrap it around myself, then head toward the door.
He catches my elbow, and he ducks so that I can’t avoid his gaze. “Isabel. Talk to me. What is this?”
“Inevitable,” I whisper. I close my eyes and swallow hard. “This was inevitable. I’m sorry, Paul.”
There’s a long, painful moment of silence. When I open my eyes, Paul is staring at me, tightness in the set of his mouth.
“You’re serious.”
“I am,” I say quietly, then I raise my chin and for the second time in a year, I force myself to turn my back and walk away from him.