A Deal with the Devil by Elizabeth O’Roark

36

I’m not surprised when my agent calls to express her displeasure with the book. While it was certainly realistic to have Aisling leave Julian behind at the wall, with everything they felt unspoken, people aren’t paying good money for realism. Realism and sad endings are something most of us get for free.

“It’s not going to fly, Tali,” she says. “I’m not saying it’s bad. But you sold them a romance, and a story that doesn’t have a happy ending isn’t a romance.”

“The Hunger Games and Divergent don’t have especially happy endings. They seemed to do okay.”

“They had romances but they weren’t solely romances. Unless you want to have Aisling actually overthrow the kingdom, this book is.”

I don’t really know what to do without rewriting everything. Aisling and Julian can’t end up together: she needs to be home with her brother—it was the whole point of the book—and it would be unrealistic to have Julian come through the wall to her. He’s fae royalty. What would he do among humans—farm?

I tell her I’ll think about it some more.

But the only conclusions I can think of at this particular moment are bittersweet at best.

* * *

Sam returnsfrom his trip to California and comes out to see me the night before Charlotte is released. We sit together on the front porch, talking about his trip and potential endings for the book my agent won’t hate.

“Maybe there can be someone back home for Aisling,” Sam says. “Someone less flashy than Ewan or Julian, and it took the adventure in Edinad for her to see it.” His hand covers mine, leaving no doubt what he’s really talking about. It’s sweet, and if I were going to move on with anyone, it would be him, but I’m not ready for there to be an us yet.

“I started dating Hayes,” I say. “A few weeks ago. I just want to be honest with you. It’s not going to work out with him but I’m...not in a good place right now. It’s made coming home a lot harder than I expected.” I know the day will come when we will sit on this porch and I’ll feel something other than sadness, because humans are made to bounce back. If I can recover from my father’s death, I can recover from Hayes too. But it’s going to be a while.

Sam gives a short, unhappy laugh. “I can’t say I’m surprised. He was jealous any time you even looked at someone other than him. But you must realize that guy isn’t waiting around for you out there. He’s not the type.”

I rub at my chest, at the ache his words create. I’m not sure why they hit me so hard, given it’s what I’ve been telling myself all along too. But even after Sam leaves, I can’t seem to get them out of my head. You must realize that guy isn’t waiting around for you. It’s the reason I haven’t been returning Jonathan’s calls, why I’ve shut down in so many ways: because I was scared the truth would break me. But dreading the truth is hurting nearly as bad.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Jonathan says when he answers.

“I just knew how busy you must be.” I fiddle with the hem of my T-shirt. “And I felt bad leaving the way I did, when you had no one to replace me.”

“I hired someone the day you left,” he says smoothly. “Things are fine. Delia, your replacement, is amazing.”

My stomach falls.

“Delia?” I ask weakly. I’m not ready to hear Hayes is dating if I can’t even stand the thought of a female assistant.

“Super competent. MBA.”

“That fucking figures,” I mumble.

I sink to the floor as I picture her—blonde and beautiful like Ella, good at everything. She comes up with an innovative way to organize his inventory, has better lingerie than I do. Her MBA is, undoubtedly, from Harvard.

“Are you not even going to ask how he is?” Jonathan asks. There’s an edge to his voice I haven’t ever heard directed at me.

“Are you mad?” I ask. “I’m sorry I left the way I did, but you know I had no choice.”

“Yes, I’m mad, and it has nothing to do with the fucking job,” he says. “How could you leave him like that? Without ever telling him how you feel?”

My throat seems to swell, and it’s hard to swallow around the lump there. “Because there was no point. We barely dated. It wouldn’t have been reasonable to ask him to wait, and hearing him say so would break my heart.”

Jonathan snorts. “You have this set up in your head like you’re Little Red Riding Hood and he’s the Big Bad Wolf. Has it ever occurred to you he might be even more terrified to trust someone than you are? I know what Matt did sucked, but can you please look at how different that is from having your fiancée leave you for your father?”

“I didn’t know it was a competition.”

“You’re intentionally missing the point, which is that you’re acting like you’re the only person here who’s broken, or vulnerable, and you’re not.”

The desire to argue with him springs up, reflexively, but my stomach is bottoming out at the same time, because I know he’s right. I didn’t suffer having the rug pulled out from under me the way Hayes did. I was naïve with Matt, but even if I never admitted it at the time, I knew we were having problems.

“You say all this as if Hayes begged me to marry him and I said no,” I whisper. “He didn’t say a thing.”

“That’s not what he told me,” Jonathan counters. “He says he asked point blank what you wanted, and you said you didn’t want anything at all. While moving twenty minutes away from the friend you planned to date.”

My eyes close. It sounds bad, when he puts it like that. Far worse than it sounded in my head at the time. “I was just letting him off the hook,” I argue. “I wasn’t about to ask a guy I’d barely begun sleeping with to wait a year for me.”

“You took the decision out of his hands,” Jonathan replies softly, “and maybe you should consider how much that must have hurt. Because no matter how awful you feel right now, you’re not the one who just got dumped.”

I think back to that moment in the airport, and suddenly realize how wrong I was, how sickeningly wrong, because I’m seeing Hayes’s face clearly for the first time...and I know he was crushed.

Hayes, who trusts no one, trusted me. He opened up to me and took the first risk he’d taken in a long time. And what he heard in response was that I didn’t care enough, that I didn’t trust him enough.

I feel like I’ve been punched in the lung.

“Ask me what the surprise was, Tali,” Jonathan says softly.

My eyes close. “What was it?”

“He bought the house you stayed at in Laguna,” he says. “He bought it for the two of you. His somewhat inept way of telling you what you meant to him, and what he was hoping for.”

I cry for a long time after we end the call, fully realizing how badly I messed up.

Every step of the way with him, I’ve wanted to avoid pain. I’ve been the one to jump and run, to make the poorly timed joke before any exchange felt intimate. But I hurt him in the process of protecting myself, and that’s so much worse.

The point was never whether or not I could trust again, because love isn’t an exchange. It’s not something you hand out only if it can be returned in equal measure. Love is handing your fragile heart to someone else because you want him to have it, no matter what he’ll do in response. You do it because you love him more than you love yourself.

I couldn’t even bring myself to let Aisling, who’s fictional, take that risk. Maybe it’s time both she and I become a little braver than we’ve been.

I pick up my phone. No matter how Hayes feels about me, what matters is that he knows—if it were at all possible—I’d have chosen him.

Hey there, I begin typing, but the tone is too breezy, too conversational.

So I was talking to Jonathan…That doesn’t work either. I can’t soft-shoe my way into this. I need to lay it all on the table.

I told you I didn’t want anything,I type.

Really, it was that I couldn’t stand to hear you tell me no to the things I do want. I don’t expect you to wait for me, so I’m not writing this now asking anything of you. I just want you to know I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone.

And then, before I can change my mind, I hit send.

The message is delivered. He doesn’t have to respond, but if he wants what I do, he simply has to say let’s try. I see those three dots. He’s typing.

Typing more than a simple answer, which isn’t necessarily bad, but isn’t necessarily good.

They disappear again. Return again. And then they disappear entirely. Failing to answer...is still an answer. And it hurts. My stomach is in free fall. My chest aches, exactly as I knew it would. It’s too late.

But I’m still glad he knows.