Chapter 4
It turns out that when people feel guilty, they can’t look you in the eye.
From the moment I first saw James until he sent everyone home, he kept avoiding my gaze.
By the time the car stopped in the underground parking of our building, it was already 11 PM.
“Give me an explanation, right here. I don’t want to go home to argue, I have work tomorrow.”
On the flight back, I had already thought of various reasons for him, but I still wanted to hear it from his own mouth.
“Nora is back. She has late-stage cancer, the doctors say she doesn’t have much time left…”
“Hmm, and then?”
James turned his head to look at me, probably not understanding why my response was so cold.
“She has no family or close friends here. I’m the only familiar person she has in the country, so she asked if I could go to the hospital to keep her company. I really couldn’t refuse… You know, I owe her too much.”
“I know I didn’t handle this well, and I’m sorry you had to suffer through the trip. But I promise, there’s nothing between us. It’s not what you think.”
I opened the car’s dashcam records, only to find that the footage from the past few days had been completely deleted.
“I wasn’t thinking anything about you two, but James, what exactly are you feeling guilty about?”
“I just didn’t want you to get angry, but I swear, I didn’t do anything inappropriate. You should trust me.”
Suddenly, I realized that our past tenderness had blinded me, making me completely unaware of the huge difference between James and me in our views on relationships.
He felt that as long as he didn’t do anything substantially out of line, he had nothing to be ashamed of in our relationship.
But what I wanted was undivided attention in a relationship.
I stared at that face, the face I once adored, now feeling utterly unfamiliar.
“James, I’ve been thinking about this the whole way back. Let’s break up.”
“Sophia, how can you be so cold? Nora is dying. Is it too much to ask to help her fulfill her last wishes? Do we really have to break up over this?”
“If marrying you was her dying wish, would you agree to that too?”
James wanted to say something but couldn’t get the words out.
It seemed James didn’t have a clear line in his mind. He didn’t know what he needed to stand firm on for the sake of our relationship.
“Find somewhere else to stay tonight. I’ll move out tomorrow.”
I suddenly felt so exhausted, not wanting to argue for even one more minute.