For as long as I lived, I’d never forget walking out of that therapy session with him as a general sense of relief washed over me. We’d walked into that building as struggling marital partners, and we walked out of that building as new old friends. He’d held my hand the whole walk home, and we’d spent the better part of that evening reminiscing about our better days. That night we flipped through our wedding album and shared a bottle of wine, and after that we changed into sweats and I helped him move into the guest suite.
Addison never understood it, but I couldn’t help that. I didn’t understand it either. Harrison had been my rock when I first moved to the city. He was the first friend I made. The first guy I trusted with my heart after Beau broke it. He got me. And for that reason, I never felt the need to let him out of my life completely.
“But we didn’t and what’s done is done,” I said as I felt his mouth inch closer to mine. “Please don’t.”
I backed away from him. “I think it’s time I move out. Get my own place. I’m meeting with Addison tonight, so I’ll have her find me an apartment. It’s going to be better this way.”
“He doesn’t deserve you, Coco,” Harrison said, letting his hands fall from my face to the bend in my arms. “You should know things about him. He’s a womanizer. He’s been around. He’s-”
“Enough,” I silenced him, unwilling to listen to his spiteful word vomit. I wasn’t sure if any of it was true or if he’d hired a private detective on some jealous whim while I was gone, but my situation was already confusing enough. “You will not speak about him.”
I didn’t allow Beau to speak of Harrison, so it was only fair.
“Pull yourself together, Harrison. Your mother would be ashamed right now if she saw you acting like a petulant child. I know you were raised better.” I pulled my arms out of his grasp with one quick tug and took a step back. “You’re thirty-fucking-eight for Christ sake.”
“Get that twang out of your mouth.” Harrison rushed at me once again, smashing his lips against mine in a frighteningly desperate attempt to salvage what was rapidly disintegrating before our very eyes. Gone was his class, his subtle arrogance, his New England aristocratic pedigree. Harrison Bissett was a desperate, desperate man showing all his cards and wearing all his colors.
“God, Harrison, what are you doing?” My face scrunched as I peeled myself from his clutches.
“You fucking taste like him,” he seethed, his shoulders drawn back as he reached for my arm. I’d never seen him acting this way before, holding onto me with a bulldog grip. Years ago, I’d caught a glimpse of a nasty, jealous side of him once. A man was hitting on me at a bar when Harrison had slipped off to use the restroom. When he returned I thought he was going to beat the man to a bloody pulp, but after a heated exchange, the bartender asked us to leave before it escalated.
My fingertips rose to my lips, tracing along the tender space where Beau had left his mark on me that morning before I left the ranch. “Yeah. I kissed him. But I didn’t cheat on you, Harrison. You’re acting like I’m still your wife, and that’s completely absurd.”
I imagined the things Beau would do to Harrison if he could see what was unfolding. He’d tear him limb by limb and throw him out our tenth story window when he was done.
“Believe it or not, I still love you, Coco,” Harrison said in a way that I wholeheartedly believed. “I never stopped. I pulled back because you pulled back. I thought giving you more space would somehow bring you back to me. And when that didn’t work, I thought giving you the career of your dreams – something no other man could ever do – would show you how much I loved you. I meant it when I said I was your biggest fan. I have been since the day we met.”
“Harrison.” I crossed my arms, though not in an angry way. My heart broke for him, because I saw a part of me in his eyes. The desperate longing, the clinging onto something so hard it slipped through your hands like tiny grains of sand. I’d been there. I’d felt it before. “Then why didn’t you speak up at therapy? You just sat there, going along with everything I said and agreeing that you weren’t vested anymore.”
“Do you have any idea what it feels like to look into the eyes of the person you love more than anything in the world and hear them say they don’t feel the same way about you?”
Yes, more than anything.
I knew that feeling like an old friend.
Harrison snapped backward, falling into his easy chair like a rubber band that had been pulled to far. “The morning of that therapy session, I was looking for an old sweater in our closet.” He reached down, retrieving something from under his chair: my box of all things Beau. “Found this.”