Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 97073 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97073 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
“How was your flight?” I ask as I reach for a bottle of red, knowing Andrew will like it.
“No complaints.”
I’m sure he flew first class, which I can’t fault him for. If I had the means to travel in luxury, I would probably do the same. He would have never survived in my economy seat on the way over here, not with the man beside me openly weeping at the end of Ratatouille or the woman in front of me unwrapping a tuna melt that had been concealed beneath her seat for the first seven hours of the flight.
I work on uncorking the wine bottle as Andrew tugs out a seat at the kitchen table.
“I didn’t realize people still lived this way. Is that a wood-burning fireplace?”
I smile at him. “Yes, what’d you expect?”
Andrew has a fireplace in his apartment, but it’s flush to the wall, and the blue flames dance behind glass. I don’t think it puts off any heat; it’s purely for aesthetics.
“Don’t tell me he chops his own wood,” Andrew says with a teasing smile. “You’re really roughing it out here, Summer.”
I pour him a glass of wine and set it down in front of him with a sarcastic smile. “Oh yes, roughing it.”
But he’s right, in some ways I am.
“There’s nowhere to order takeout,” I tell him, taking the seat across from him at the table. He’s in my usual seat, and I’m where Nate usually sits. For some reason, I’m happy this is the arrangement. I would have felt bad if it were the other way around.
Andrew feigns a heart attack, and I laugh.
“No pizza?” He asks like he’s horrified by the concept.
“Nope.”
“No Thai?”
I shake my head.
“No sushi?!”
“Nothing.”
“You’re going to waste away.”
I think of the dinner party we had the other night, all the delicious food we shared with Nate and his friends. “We’ve been cooking a lot,” I tell Andrew.
He looks like he’s having a hard time wrapping his head around this. No one we know cooks. Outside of the fact that everyone works long hours, kitchen space is not a top priority in most Manhattan apartments. It’s more convenient to eat out or pick something up on your way home from the office.
“Had I known you were living like this, I would have figured out a way to bring you something from Satsuki,” he tells me with a wink.
That’s our favorite sushi place. We used to go there every other week, but I haven’t been since our last breakup a few months ago.
God, I can’t believe it’s been that long. I doubt he thought our break would last a week, let alone a few months. I know he’s been waiting for me to come back to him with pleading hands, resolute about my future with him.
“How have things been for you? With work and everything?”
He’s studying me now, and I get the sense that our thoughts have drifted to the same place. Mention of Satsuki has brought back a flood of memories for the both of us.
He puffs out a heavy breath then reaches for his wine glass. “Work has been work. You know how it goes.”
Outside of my parents and siblings, Andrew is the most driven person I know. He has clear-cut goals for himself that aren’t just centered around productivity and his net worth. I know he wants to eventually move back to Connecticut and follow in his parents’ footsteps. I know if I were only more willing, he would have already proposed. He would have tackled wedding planning, paid for all of it, and he would have done it with a smile on his face because that’s just the way Andrew is. Emma has made it clear how lucky I am. We’ve had dozens of conversations about how many of her girlfriends would die to be in my shoes. These conversations never have the effect of making me feel lucky, though, more so just…ungrateful, like I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth. Like I don’t know how to get out of my own way and accept happiness for what it is rather than what it could be.
No one needs to explain to me all the ways Andrew is a total package. I know that. He is not the problem, I am. My inability to commit to Andrew feeds on my insecurities about my general disinterest in relationships and love in general. I’ve pushed myself on Andrew for so long because deep down I’m scared there’s something broken inside me, scared I’m not like everyone else.
For a while, Andrew and I catch up at the kitchen table, talking about his work and the last time he saw Emma and Lincoln out for dinner a few days ago. He told them he was planning to come here and surprise me, and Emma teared up at the table.