He Said I Was Slow to Commit While He Was Slow to Tell Me About Her Chapter 17

He Said I Was Slow to Commit While He Was Slow to Tell Me About Her Chapter 17

That night, Garrett called me more than thirty times from different numbers.

I turned off my phone.

He called my mother instead.

“She’s married now,” she said. “She’s not here.’

Then she hung up.

The next morning, I went to work.

From a distance, I saw someone sitting on the front steps of the building.

His hair was a mess. Cigarette butts were scattered around his shoes.

The second he saw me, he stood.

“Avery.”

His voice was so hoarse it barely sounded like him.

I stopped three steps away.

“Been here all night?”

His throat moved several times before he managed to speak.

“You’re finally willing to talk to me.”

I took my badge from my pocket and swiped through the security gate.

He rushed after me and caught my wrist.

With his other hand, he pulled a velvet box from his pocket.

Inside was a plain wedding band.

No stone.

“I bought it. The kind you like. Simple. No diamond.”

His voice broke.

“Come back to me. Please.”

I looked at the ring for a moment.

Then I gently pulled my hand free.

“Garrett, keep it. Give it to the woman who needs it. I don’t anymore.”

“Avery…”

I walked inside.

The glass doors closed between us.

He came back a few more times after that.

Sometimes in the morning.

Sometimes after work.

Then eventually, he stopped showing up.

A coworker asked me one afternoon if I knew the tall, thin man who had been waiting outside the building.

I said I did not.

Then I went back to my blueprints.

Stella sent me one long message.

After Garrett ran out of the hotel on my wedding day, he never came back.

She called, but he would not answer.

By the time she saw him again, he had lost weight and barely spoke.

She said she did not know what to do.

My mother called with the same story.

“Garrett’s mother came by a few days ago. She cried.”

“She said he stays in his room all day and won’t see anyone. She asked whether you’d be willing to talk to him.”

I kept drawing.

My pencil never stopped.

“Mom, don’t tell me about him anymore.”

After we hung up, I worked for another half hour and finished the last line.

I lifted the blueprint and checked it.

Weston set a cup of chamomile tea on the corner of my desk.

“Done?”

“Mm-hm.”

Life after the wedding was quieter than I expected.

Weston was nothing like Garrett.

He did not arrange my life before I had a chance to speak.

When he brought me tea, he did not ask whether I wanted it. He simply set it within reach and let me

decide.

If I came home late, the living room light was always on.

One night, I worked until one in the morning.

When I finally looked up, Weston was asleep on the couch.

I walked over and covered him with a blanket.

He stirred and opened his eyes halfway.

When he saw me, he smiled.

“Done? Go get some sleep.”

I crouched beside him and looked at his face.

He had waited all those years.

One message from me asking whether he still wanted to swoop in, and he had shown up without hesitation.

He had not demanded explanations.

He had not pushed.

He was like the chamomile tea he brewed.

Never too hot.

Something you could take your time with until the warmth reached all the way through.

I leaned down and kissed his forehead.

His eyelashes moved.

Then he fell asleep again.

We had not been married long.

But sometimes it felt as if I had known him all my life.

Two months after the wedding, I was cleaning out a drawer in my studio when I found an old

photograph.

It had been taken on graduation day.

The quad was packed.

I stood near the center of the crowd.

Weston was in the last row, almost hidden in the corner.

There was a slight smile on his face.

He was looking in my direction.

I laughed softly and slipped the photo between the pages of a book.

(The End)