The Spare Room by Andrea Bartz

Author:Andrea Bartz [Bartz, Andrea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2023-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

“I promise it’s not you.” I stroke Sabrina’s arm. I couldn’t orgasm despite her best efforts, and now my room feels twitchy, unfinished. I forgot to close the curtains and we’re reflected in the window, pretzeled in a restless cuddle.

“Are you sure?” She herself had no trouble. I failed to notice the lopsided nature of hetero sex before I got tied up in all this—if the man gets off, we can deem the sex over, period.

I suck in a breath. “I think I’m still processing everything about your ex.”

It’s been two days since our showdown in their bedroom. She and Nathan are acting like it never happened. I guess for them, it’s settled. My shoulders tense. Will this go poorly, my surprise inquisition?

“Oh yeah?” she says. Flatly, I think. Or am I just expecting her to resist?

“I want to know more about her.” I struggle to force out the words. “Now that I know it wasn’t that long ago, I’m kinda spinning.”

“Kelly, there’s a reason we don’t talk about her.” Her voice comes out strangled. “There’s a lot of pain there. It’s still raw. I mean, imagine if Mike went missing right now—how hard that would be.”

I stare at the ceiling, unable to breathe. I feel like I’m being carved out, eviscerated. Because I heard the unspoken sentiment between every sentence:

You do not get to set the conversation.

We loved her more than you’ll ever know.

I set the rules.

It’s not your house—you just live here.

“It’s not fair, you know.” I pull myself up to sit. I hate that I sound like a toddler, but I’m quaking with frustration. “We’re in this supposedly ‘equal’ partnership, but it’s not equal at all. Why are you always making all the rules?” It shoots out of me, deadly as a bullet: “I bet she didn’t like that either.”

The fury in Sabrina’s eyes is like a blast of white light. “You didn’t know her.” The whole room’s silent, like the particles in the air have stopped vibrating. Her anger is a molten force. “To you, she’s an abstract concept. But to us, she’s real. And thinking about her is like a knife in my gut. So we are not going to talk about it.” She straightens up, a little calmer. “That’s…that’s a boundary I’m setting.”

My gut kinks with guilt. She’s right—she doesn’t owe me details, she needn’t thrust my curiosity up above her own pain. I’m the selfish one, demanding answers, looking to soothe the dark part of myself that suspects there’s more they’re keeping from me.

I remember something Amy once said. I’d fallen into a bad habit of sharing my relationship anxiety with Mike, blathering on about how I worried he might leave me, that he might not love me enough. “You know, intimacy isn’t telling your partner everything,” she said. “Total honesty is actually pretty toxic to a relationship. What matters is trust—believing that, day after day, you can keep showing up for your partner.”

I didn’t do that with Mike. I have to do better this time.

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