The slap of the glass as Brody slammed it down on the table echoed off the high ceiling. "I love her."
"Simmer down," ordered Cam. "It's a fair question. If Tyler said it, then clearly you did or did not do something to spark that thought. So what was it?"
"Why is this on me? It was her decision."
"Do you want help figuring out what went wrong or not?" asked Tucker.
"She's made up her mind," said Brody. That had been painfully obvious in the set expression on her face, in the fact that she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
"And you're clearly totally okay with that," said Cam, "what with the Little Mary Sunshine attitude you've been sporting all week."
Brody gritted his teeth. "Of course I’m not.”
"She said it was temporary, so she went into it expecting you to leave," said Tucker. “Did you?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think beyond having her back in my life. Having her back was like a miracle. And by the time I realized I was going to have to figure out how to make it work, she’s kicking me out.”
"This might have something to do with it," said Cam, tapping the envelope he'd opened and pointing at the flight itinerary on top. "You're leaving for Portland in January. If she heard about that, could be she's just cutting things off now to make sure it ended on her terms."
"For fuck's sake, I’m practically just hearing about it. Where would she have heard?” Brody stopped, cutting himself off. He had lost the first packet of information. If she’d found it… He shook his head. “None of it was even finalized until after she kicked me out. And why wouldn't she talk to me about it?"
"Because you have a history of leaving without a word," said Tucker. When Brody would've spouted off again, he held up a hand. "It doesn't matter the whys of what happened before. You weren't here to see what that did to her. We were. We were the ones who picked up the pieces. It was bad, Brody. Really damned bad. There’s not a one of us who would blame her for not wanting to go through that again."
Jesus, would he ever be free of the guilt from that? "I'd never do that to her. Not deliberately."
"Did you tell her that?” asked Cam. “Did you tell her, at any point, explicitly, 'Look, Tyler, this temporary thing is not going to work for me. I have no idea how we're going to make it work, but I love you and I want more?'"
"Do actions count for nothing?"
Tucker looked at Cam. "No,” they said.
"Women need the words," said Cam. "Which means we have to man up and say them, no matter how obvious all of it seems to us."
"Sometimes we need the words too. She's never asked me to stay." Not once since that unguarded moment after they'd become lovers again.
"Then you're not only stupid, you're blind,” pronounced Tucker. “Just because she hasn't spelled it out doesn't mean she doesn't want you to. She'd never have let you back into her life otherwise. Tyler's not the type to give an ultimatum. She can't leave, can't change the responsibilities she has here, so the change has to be on you. She’d never outright ask you to give up things for her. She’d feel too much like she was guilting you into it.”
What, exactly, did she think he’d be giving up? "How is saying what you want a guilt trip?"
"I don't know,” shrugged Cam. “Seems to me you both suck at saying what you want. I speak from personal experience when I say you should go grovel and work on that."
Brody thought of that carefully blank face, the hint of banked temper in her eyes. What was behind her mask? "I'm not sure she's in a place where she's interested in listening to anything."
"Then I guess you'll just have to do it in a way she can't ignore."
~*~
How could a house where she’d lived alone for the last five years feel so empty after having a guest for only a week?
Because you never saw Brody as a guest, Tyler thought, clutching a pillow to her chest and staring up at the living room ceiling. Because you built this place for him, for both of you, and part of you has just been waiting all these years for him to come home.
Well, that wasn’t happening again. The pain of that was quick and deep and familiar. For the last week, fresh stabs had struck her everywhere she turned in the house. And that didn’t even begin to cover the misery of rehearsal. There they danced, and Brody’s touch was light and impersonal. That in itself felt like a slap. Dancing had always been an intimacy, a shared pleasure. And now…
Well what the hell did you expect? You took him back, and you kicked him to the curb. Now you have to deal with the consequences.
Still, Tyler couldn’t see getting involved with Brody again as a mistake. She’d wanted closure. In truth, she’d wanted a hell of a lot more than that. But closure was what she’d gotten. No more wondering why he never came back for her or if he ever would. After the play was over, he wouldn’t be coming back to Wishful, back to her. It was done now, settled with the kind of finality their previous parting had lacked. The part of her that had spent all these years waiting could finally move on.
Whatever the hell that looked like.