Here to Stay by Suanne Laqueur Page A

half her mouth curve up. “I give you a ton of credit, honey.”
    “Yeah, but do you trust me,” he said. “Do you trust I want you and I want us? Do you trust I’m here to stay this time?”
    “I do,” she said. “And while I was trusting you, my stomach was still in shreds. Ninety-five percent of me trusted you. The other five percent was cowering under the bed feeling like I fucked up again and you were gone. I can’t help that, Erik. I can’t help it and I can’t keep it from you. I’m going to tell you everything. I’m going to stamp on every damn eggshell. I’m not going to fall to pieces every time you walk out the door but if you walk out upset with me, it’s going to trigger my residual shit. Especially if it was something to do with David because he’s your trigger.”
    His eardrums flinched against her raised voice. Much as he tried to stay calm, some instinctive involuntary impulse in his gut was bristling, baring its teeth and looking around frantically for an escape.
    “I suck at this,” he said.
    “Suck at what?”
    “I don’t know how to have an argument with you,” he said. “I can’t remember ever fighting with you.”
    “Because we didn’t,” she said. “We didn’t do this twelve years ago. This is way overdue. You were insanely angry at me and never let me see it.”
    “I was angry at David. I don’t know what I was with you. Angry never fit the definition. All the talking out loud I did, none of it was confrontational, not with you.”
    “Then what was it?”
    “Denial. Holding it frozen in place so it could keep being perfect. If it wasn’t perfect it was useless. Sometimes I pretended you were dead because it was easier to maintain the illusion. These weren’t my finest moments but they’re the truth.”
    “Well, I’m alive,” she said. “And imperfect. I have my flawed, weak moments. I have my dark times and my anxiety attacks.”
    “Hello? Have we met?”
    She went on as if she hadn’t heard. “I have ex-boyfriends who stay in touch with me and to an extent, I have David. I made my peace with him. He’s married now, he’s having a kid. His health is fragile and we keep in touch. We’re not best friends, but we have our inside jokes and our history and our regrets and our guilt. We saw each other at Lancaster. We went for coffee and we forgave each other. He writes me. Do you want me to tell him to stop? Because I will. If it matters to you, I will and I won’t think any less of you.”
    “Dais, I don’t know what the fuck I want when it comes to Dave,” he said, looking up at the ceiling with his empty palms up. “As little as possible. That’s what I want.”
    She nodded, stirring the soup again. “Do you trust me?” she said. “I already know you trust me with your heart and your love and your goodness. But I want you to trust me with your darker moods. I want you to trust me enough to be annoyed or irritated with me. Or even flat-out angry with me. I want to be able to tell you David wrote me without it raising your suspicions. And I want you to be able to go back to New York and trust I’m going to be faithful to y—”
    “Stop it.” He stepped and took her by the shoulders. Hard. Her spoon clattered into the pot as he pressed his forehead to hers, pulling air in through his teeth. “Just stop,” he said. “I never once thought you’d cheat on me ag—”
    “I can’t stop,” she said. “I can’t not think it. You wanted to kill him, I watched you try to do it. I wanted you to turn around and throw all that rage at me where it belonged. I kept waiting and waiting for a fight that never came. Empty mailboxes, no messages on the machine, the sound of you fucking breathing on the other end of the phone but never saying anyth—“
    “Because it killed me,” he cried, letting go of her. “What was I supposed to do? You were the one thing I had left. The one fixed point in my life and I found you fucking David and it was ruined for