She watched Bruce and Paige in the room as she was pulled past them into the hallway. Bruce walked toward them, but Paige put her hand on his chest and shook her head. They were in the foyer before Ryan let go of her wrist and disappeared into the coat closet.
Jennifer stood alone in the foyer, looking up to the seating area at the top of the dual staircases, hoping Bruce and Paige would come to the landing. She wondered if Paige was also pissed off. Had she done something terribly wrong? Again?
Her face felt so very hot. She fell into a chair.
All she’d wanted was to go back to the way things had been. She ran through the evening in her mind. They’d done so well, hadn’t they? First fun and flirting at the bar. Then Kendra and Vince, and that had gone swimmingly, hadn’t it? They’d even both had their own encounters. Ryan was Julianne’s type, in fact. That had to have made him happy.
He re-emerged from the coat closet, already wearing his jacket. He thrust hers out to her.
“Ryan,” she said, almost pleading. “What’s—”
“Put it on.”
She took the coat. As soon as it left his hand, he turned away and disappeared out the front door. It stood, ajar, a cold breeze blowing in as the storm door closed behind him. She looked back up to the landing, still empty.
Whatever this was, it could be fixed, right? She put her coat on, then the heels he’d thrown on the floor.
When she left the house, she saw him halfway across the front yard, leaving footprints in the snow cover. It’d be best for her to walk all the way around, in these heels, but she needed to catch up to him. She needed to fix this.
“How much have you had to drink?” he asked without turning back toward her.
“Tonight?”
“Recently.”
She didn’t know. “Two glasses of wine, maybe? I don’t—”
“You’re driving,” he said as he reached the car. “I’ll probably kill us.” She heard the keys jangle, saw them glint in the moonlight and land in the snow in front of her.
She stopped.
He climbed into the passenger side, slamming the door behind him.
The neighborhood was encased in silence. Jennifer looked down at the keys in the snow, then slowly fished them out. The ice crystals immediately began to melt on her hands, hot and red with embarrassment. She struggled to hold back tears as she climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Two people,” he said. “Didn’t even come to mention before going off to fuck—”
“You were with Julianne!” she said, pleading her defense. “I didn’t—”
Ryan slammed his hand on the dashboard hard enough that the glove compartment popped open. They both stared at it for a moment before he reached down and closed it.
His voice was calmer when he spoke again, slow, considered, but no less angry. “I don’t want to talk about it. In fact, I don’t want to talk at all.”
She stared at him.
“This was a bad idea,” he said.
Jennifer didn’t know how to respond. After a long silence, she started the car, and drove.
The silence followed them home.
42
Ryan did not go to bed with Jennifer when they returned home from the party. They made eye contact as she went up the stairs, her eyes red with tears, but said nothing.
They’d arrived home just before four. Ryan’s fitful sleep on their living room couch only lasted about an hour and a half. The next morning, he sat at the kitchen table, still wearing the button down and slacks he’d worn the night before and slept in. He didn’t eat or have coffee, just sat thinking. He sat in the kitchen until the sun came up, watching the rays glisten across the softening snow of their small backyard.
Jennifer appeared in the doorway around 6:30, jumping when she saw him sitting there. “I thought you’d left,” she whispered. “When I didn’t see you on the couch.”
“No,” he whispered back. “No, I didn’t.”
She waited, at the door, holding the frame with her hand as though she needed the extra support it provided. When he said nothing, she moved into the room. “Coffee?” she asked.
“I didn’t make any,” he said.
“I was going to.”
Ryan didn’t respond or look up from his hands resting on the table. Here he could say he was sorry, couldn’t he? Just say it. Let that be it. I fucked up. He could surely say that, couldn’t he. He had, hadn’t he? Whatever sin Jennifer had committed in his mind, couldn’t he just say he was sorry and see if things could be salvaged?
He didn’t say it, and after Jennifer started the coffee pot, she left the room again. When she returned, she was wearing her coat.
Ryan didn’t look up from his hands. He could feel her, though, standing behind him at the coffee pot. He heard her pour the coffee, add her sugar and creamer in, stir it, and screw the top on her travel mug. Then silence. She was looking at him, wasn’t she? Waiting for him to say something. Maybe she wanted to apologize too, though what that could be, other than a vague and ambiguous apology hoping to broadly paper over offenses that were by no means substantial, he had no idea.
After an interminable few minutes, where they both dared each other to make the opening conversational volley, Jennifer left the room, and the house moments later. When he looked up, the clock on the microwave read 9:17. Had he fallen asleep? Sitting here? His hands still sat folded in front of him.
He went upstairs and crawled into their bed, undoing the neatly tucked covers Jennifer had left behind her. He stared at the crack on the ceiling, his old friend. He’d barely noticed it for the last few months, but there it was again, waiting for him, like an old friend. His eyes burned with tears that wouldn’t fall. The frosty reflections of the morning light played wistfully around the crack. He loathed himself for what he’d done.
An hour passed and he didn’t sleep. He could get up again, but what purpose would it serve? He had nothing better to do with his Sunday. He didn’t know where Jennifer had gone, but she’d had the right idea, hadn’t she? Just getting the fuck out of here. Hell, anywhere would be better than being here with him. Unfortunately, Ryan didn’t have the luxury of leaving this prick behind.
The alarm on his phone went off, an alarm that they’d set ages ago for Sundays, a reminder not to waste the day in bed. Today would be wasted, though. The alarm jump started a headache, the morning-after hangover finally making an appearance. He’d wondered where it was, lying in wait until he was no longer drunk and could remind him of all last night’s horrors. The scene he’d made, the brute he’d been, how she’d cried. He looked at Jennifer’s pillow, the lingering makeup, evidence of now-dried tears.
Fuck.
Despite the pain, Ryan made no move to silence the thirty seconds of Muse looped on his phone. He kept his hands under the down comforter, in safety. The repetition, the cycle of it, matched the throb of his headache, and the two synchronized themselves together. The throbbing grew and grew until he couldn’t take it any longer and finally slammed his hand down on the phone, silencing it for another nine minutes.
He wouldn’t sleep. He knew that no matter how long he lay here, he wouldn’t sleep, so he sat on the edge of the bed, the soles of his feet brushing the carpeting, waiting for the nine minutes to be up. Migraine flagellation perhaps. When the song began anew, Ryan lifted the phone from the table hurled it across the room where it dropped behind the dresser.
Maybe a shower.
What had happened last night? His memory wasn’t black, or even hazy. No, everything was vivid in his mind. He stripped off his clothes in the bathroom, dropping them to the floor. He looked at himself in the mirror, repulsed. What was that there? Thirty? Forty? Fifty extra pounds, maybe? More?