Part Twelve
I don't remember returning to the table that night. I don't remember seeing Ginny again or acting like the perfect, newly wedded couple. I only remember you and how you looked when I, at last, returned to the party.
You sat there with Ron's arm wrapped around your shoulders, a smile on your face as you spoke to his father. You glanced up at me, and I could see everything that had passed between us just minutes before. And still, still there was a question.
A small smile was all I could give you. How could I answer a question I didn't know? How could I reveal anything of how I felt about what had happened? And how could I keep fighting it?
Each day that passed, I grew more and more certain that fighting this, fighting you, fighting me… would surely be my undoing. At the same time, I was desperate to see you and desperate to never look at you again. Which would be easier? Which would cause more pain? How could I know?
Seeing you made me the happiest and yet the most miserable. It was all I wanted, but at what cost? Then there was the idea of never looking at you again, which filled me with an agonizing relief. It would make my marriage a piece of cake, but my life… my life would be pointless.
At work, I was near useless. Hourly, I would leave my office and the growing piles of paperwork just for the small chance of passing you in the hallway. I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't think of anything but you and our few but so massively significant embraces. I shook, my heart racing, at the thought of your eyes and their questions, your lips and their smiles.
From one moment to the next, I went from the idea of taking a few more days off work to considering serious over-time. I wanted to stay, I wanted to go. I wanted you, and I wanted to forget you.
Home should have been my haven, but even there, thoughts of you followed me. And in the rare moments I wasn't thinking of you, Ginny would tell me of whatever lunch the two of you had shared, or the weekend plans she and her brother had made for the four of us. I smiled and feigned interest despite the bile creeping into my throat, the guilt seeping into my veins.
How could I look at her every day, having done what I did? How could I sleep with her and next to her every night with so much sin weighing me down? I knew what we had done was wrong. Why, then, did it not always feel that way?
When I was with you - even when I would catch a glimpse of you departing a lift or arriving by Floo - it felt so right. But then, when she would look at me with her pretty smiles, the guilt would flare up. I would shake, try to catch my breath. And still, it was not enough to keep my eyes from searching for yours. It was not enough to keep my arms from aching to hold you, nor my lips to kiss you.
I felt my grip slipping from this façade. Each week that passed was harder. Seeing you made it harder. Not seeing you made it harder. Basically, I was fucked. I found myself both dreading and eager to go to work, just to see you. And then the same feelings when I was to go home, just to get away from you. It was the same with each lunch, each dinner, each weekend. And my damn grip on our charade just kept weakening.
You never went out of your way to see me. There was the occasional good morning, if by some chance you were passing my office on an errand. You kept up with your small smiles and the question in your eyes, which only served to further my misery.
With everyone else, you acted perfectly normal. We joked around as we were supposed to, as if we were just lifelong friends with nothing but sibling affection. As if we had nothing more, nothing better, nothing at all. And I found myself hating it, hating everything we had silently agreed to be for the sake of them. What about us? What could be done for our sakes? Stolen glances and treacherous secrets? Quiet longings and eternal disappointment?
Weren't we more than that? Weren't we better than that?