“Yeah, I know.” Banner bends to retrieve her laptop from the floor. “I . . . I’m covered and, uh, clean.”
She glances up at me, silently asking the question.
“Me, too,” I answer. “I’m clean, of course. I’ve never . . . I always use protection. This time I . . .”
Forgot. Failed. Spiraled out of control.
I don’t have to say those things. She felt them. We felt them together. Neither of us cared or considered it. The only thing I paused for was her consent. I had to close that escape route. Not that she would say I took her by force, but that she didn’t want it as badly as I did. Her yes yanked the pin on a grenade. Everything from there was as instinctual as breathing. My brain took a back seat to my body.
“I get it,” she says, her voice low, subdued.
She stands, appearing as unraveled as I am. Her skirt looks like a stretched accordion from being shoved up around her waist. Her blouse is half-tucked in and missing a few buttons. Red lipstick smears her jaw. Dark, silky hair tangles around her shoulders. The office doesn’t look much better. Papers litter the floor. A vase of flowers lies on its side in a puddle of spilled water. Picture frames flat face on the desk. I could at least help.
I start setting the desk to rights and flip over a photo that arrests my attention. It’s a shot from the holidays. Banner’s family poses in front of a Christmas tree, all smiling. And there, sandwiched between Banner and a woman I assume is her mother, stands Zo, seamlessly integrated into the family like thread in a tapestry.
“Christmas two years ago,” Banner says, taking the photo and setting it on the corner of her desk.
“Zo spent Christmas with your family?” I ask carefully, practically f
eeling the shaky ground under my feet.
“He’s spent every Christmas with us the last ten years.” She swallows convulsively and brushes tears from her cheek. “Ever since his family died.”
For a moment, the weight of what I’m up against is crushing. I’ve known Banner longer, but he’s had the last ten years with her. I had what? A semester? One night? I can appreciate the sheer audacity of me barging into her life and dismembering a relationship, a decade-long friendship. It’s a hard road ahead of us, but I’m willing to walk it if she is.
I hope she is. I don’t feel remorse, but Banner feels enough for us both. It’s written in every line of her body. Stamped on her face. It’s beyond remorse. It’s sorrow— a union of grief and shame.
Because of me.
That does sting. I hate seeing Banner hurt. Always have. Even knowing I’m the source of it, I’m compelled to comfort her. She’s shuffling the papers littering her desk into neat stacks. I put my hands over hers, stopping her and pulling her into me. She looks up, tears standing in her eyes.
“We shouldn’t have, Jared,” she whispers. “We—”
“You can’t unfuck what’s been fucked, Ban. I’d do it again right now if you’d let me.” My voice is husky, but certain. “I don’t regret it. That you regret me is . . .”
I’m not sure how to express what her response does to me. How it makes me ache and itch and want to flee, but I can’t leave her. You’d have to drag me out of this room right now, away from her.
“Not . . . you.” She lifts a hand to cup my face, meeting my eyes squarely and with honesty. “It was amazing. You know that, but that doesn’t make it right.”
I press deeper into her hand, turn to kiss the palm.
“Right is relative.”
“For you it is. Not for me.” She clenches her eyes closed, and tears trickle under her long lashes. “I can’t believe I did this to Zo. He won’t forgive me. I’ve lost my best friend and I . . .”
Sobs shake her body, and she’s an earthquake in my arms, ripping apart at the fault line. Her head falls to my shoulder and my shirt is instantly wet with her tears. Some feeling claws through my belly. It’s the closest to remorse I can come. Not because of what we did, but because she’s hurting.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into her hair. I inhale her scent, the freshness, the cleanness of her, and I know I’m not worthy of this woman. She’s right. She is too good for me, but it’s the fact that I’m not good that will secure her as mine. Another man would allow his scruples, his values, his fucking conscience to give her up. To cede the field to the better man, but in the end that man wouldn’t have Banner.
And I will.
23
Banner
I’ve dreaded this sound all day.
The sound of the front door opening. Of approaching footsteps. The sound of pending devastation, Zo’s and mine.