Thief .(29)

Sidney walked briskly through the door, holding up her skirt and looking apologetic.

“Traffic, Caleb. I’m so sorry.”

I nodded and held out my hand for the key. She looked so forlorn when she dropped it in my palm that I grabbed her wrist before she could pull away.

“Sidney? What’s wrong?”

Her bottom lip quivered. She pulled away from me and walked to my desk, leaning up against the side of it.

“Can I see the ring?”

I cocked my head and resisted the urge to look at my watch. Eventually, I nodded and went to get it from the drawer. I opened the box and showed her. Her eyes grew wide.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. And then she started to cry.

I flipped the box closed and put it in my pocket. “Sidney? What is it? What’s wrong?” I gripped her shoulders, and she looked up at me with mascara running down her face.

“I’m in love with you.”

Her words rocked me. I brought my forefinger and thumb to my forehead. This wasn’t happening right now. I needed to find Olivia. I couldn’t deal with this. I didn’t want to.

“Sidney, I-”

She shook her head. “It’s okay. I’ve lived with this for a long time. I’m just emotional because you’re getting ready to propose and all that…”

I ground my teeth and considered how to proceed. All I could see was Olivia. But, Sidney was my friend. I wasn’t in the habit of telling crying women to fuck off. Okay, I could do this quickly. I handed her a tissue and she proceeded to clean up her face.

“Sidney, look at me.”

She did.

“I’ve been lonely. All my life. I was the popular kid. I’ve always been surrounded by tons of people, but I was indescribably lonely. I didn’t know how to cure it. Until the day I saw Olivia. I saw her for the first time standing under this tree.” I laughed and rubbed my jaw, remembering. I hadn’t shaved. I should have shaved. “When I saw her, I knew she was what was missing. It’s crazy, but it’s true. I had this flash in my mind, where I saw her sitting at my kitchen table with me, her hair up in this messy bun, drinking coffee and laughing. Right then, I knew I was going to marry her.”

Sidney was looking at me with such awe I didn’t know if I was doing more harm than good. I had a brief moment when I wished Olivia looked at me like that. I had to fight her to love me. I was in a constant emotional wrestling match with her. I could be with a woman like this, who adored me. I could muster old feelings for Sidney. She was beautiful and kind. I shook my head. Wrap it up, Caleb. I told her what I knew to be true.

“When you find him, his name will course through your veins. Olivia courses through mine. She runs through my heart and my brain and my fingers and my penis.” Sidney laughed through her tears. I grinned.

“You’ll find him, Sidney. But, it’s not me. I belong to someone else.”

I hugged her. She was sitting on my desk and I patted her leg. “Go back to the party, I have to go.”

When I looked up, Olivia was standing in my doorway. I felt a rush of blood to my head. Had she heard what I’d told Sidney? Seen the ring box? I had a moment of panic where I didn’t know what to do.

She said my name. I watched Sidney hop down from the desk and walk quickly out of the room. She darted a look at Olivia over her shoulder before she closed the door.

Olivia’s emotion was frozen on her face. Slowly, it dawned on me what she saw when she walked through the door. How it must have looked. I wrestled with what to tell her. If I explained who Sidney was, I would have to tell her about the ring and the house. I was about to explain the whole thing, anything to get that look off her face, when she told me she loved me for the first time.

“I loved you.”

My heart ached. It should have been one of the happiest moments of my life. But, she wasn’t telling me because she wanted to. She was telling me to hurt me. Because she thought I did something to hurt her.

I heard my mother’s words, about her being too broken. Everything shifted in that moment. I wish it hadn’t, but it did. I couldn’t fix her. I couldn’t love her enough to chip away at the calcified hurt that was affecting everything she did. My thoughts about our life together went from a house in the sunshine and a yard full of children to Olivia crying in a corner, blaming me for rushing her into something she wasn’t ready for.

Then she accused me of being like her father.

The hurt was profound. Especially since I’d spent the last year and a half trying to show her I was nothing like him. When she ran out of my office, thinking that I cheated on her, I didn’t stop her.

I stood frozen, the ring box pressing against my thigh, the room swinging around me.