“With your work?” He prompted and she compressed her lips, irritated by his insistence on pushing her when they’d been travelling along for two months without going anywhere near this kind of personal exploration.
“Work, family, life. Not every woman needs a man to complete her, Samir.”
“So, you plan on being single forever?”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“For you, yes.”
She startled.
“You do not need a man to complete you,” he said, his own tone showing a hint of frustration. “But you are hiding yourself away out of fear, and that is a waste of your life.”
His appraisal, while incredibly accurate, hurt. More than it should have.
“Screw you,” she snapped, shocked at the level of anger that rose through her, at the cold ice spreading inside her veins. She pushed back the sheet to get out of bed but he grabbed her wrist, holding it against the mattress, moving his body closer to hers, and then over hers, pinning her there, his eyes pushing into hers, reading her, so she blinked her own closed and inhaled deeply.
“You act as though you have not a care in the world but inside, you are still carrying all the broken bits from your marriage. When are you going to let him go, Cora? When are you going to get over him?”
She wasso closeto admitting she was over Alf—that she’d been over him forever. It was thewayher marriage had broken down that left her traumatised and closed off, the mortification of having it all play out so publicly, the speculation, the embarrassment to her family. Now, she acted out a very specific role when she was in public—nothing mattered to her quite so much as making the rest of the world think she was totally fine, that none of it had hurt her, when he was right: inside, she was broken.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He made a noise of impatience and then rolled off her, away from the bed, standing and prowling to the other side of the room, where his clothes had been thrown earlier. He pulled on his jeans, snagging them angrily, his chest moving with the force of his breathing.
“You don’t want to talk aboutanything,” he snapped. “Why the hell not? What harm is there intalkingto me?”
“Idotalk to you.”
“No, you talk around me,” he said. “You weave around any question I ask with the skill of an ice skater. Maybe opening up to me mighthelpyou.”
“Don’t be so patronising,” she snapped, sitting up and pulling her knees to her chest, dragging the sheet with her and holding it beneath her chin like a scared child might. “I don’t need your help, Samir. That’s not what this is.”
Their eyes held. It was their first fight, and neither was quite sure how the other would respond. This was new territory, totally uncharted and unwelcome.
“Do you really think that’s true?”
Her lips parted, her pulse picking up a notch. “Which part?”
“That you don’t need my help,” he clarified with a note of reproach creeping into his voice.
She tilted her chin with defiant irritation. “Yes.”
“So, you’re really happy?”
“Yes.”
“And you never look at what your cousins have, your married friends, and yearn for just a little bit more than this?”
“I told you; I don’t need—,”
“Okay,” he lifted his hands in the air, palms to her in a gesture of surrender that was at total odds with the glint of frustration in his eyes. “If you say so. Let’s just drop it.”
She cried after he left,the sting of hot tears falling down her cheeks as soon as the door had closed, and she was surprised only that she’d been able to hold them at bay for a whole hour after their fight, as he got ready to leave.
She pressed her back against the wall, right where he’d held her that first afternoon, sucking in a deep breath as the shockwave of their argument ran through her fully now that he was gone. She hated that they’d fought; she hated that he was right. She hated that he saw through all her barriers no matter how hard she tried to keep them in place. She hated, most of all, that she knew she had to end this.
It was almost impossible to contemplate.