Chapter 60 The Fight
Crew's POV,
Harper was crying in the hotel bathroom.
Not loud, dramatic crying. Quiet tears that I only noticed because the light was on under the door and I could hear her trying to muffle the sounds.
We'd been back at the hotel for twenty minutes. She'd gone straight to the bathroom, said she was taking off her makeup, told me she was fine.
She wasn't fine.
I knocked softly. "Harper?"
"I'm okay. Just washing my face."
"You're crying."
Silence. Then the water turned off.
The door opened. She stood there in her navy dress, mascara streaked down her cheeks, looking small and broken.
"I don't know why I'm crying," she said. "Everything went well tonight. I got closure. Joel apologized. Brianna apologized. Everyone was civil. It should feel like winning but I just feel sad."
I reached for her. She let me pull her against my chest.
"You're allowed to be sad," I said into her hair. "Ten years is a long time. You're allowed to grieve it."
"But I don't want to grieve it. I want to be over it. I want to be the person who walks away and never looks back. Why am I still crying over someone who doesn't deserve my tears?"
"Because emotions don't follow logic. You can be completely over Joel and still be sad about the time you lost. Both things can be true."
She pulled back, wiping her eyes roughly. "Stop trying to therapize me. I'm allowed to be sad without turning it into a learning opportunity."
The words came out sharp. Defensive.
"I'm not trying to therapize you. I'm trying to help."
"I don't need help. I need space to feel this without you trying to fix it or make it better or turn it into some kind of growth moment." She moved past me into the room, kicked off her heels. "Why do you do that? Why do you try to solve everything?"
"Because that's what I do. I see a problem, I fix it."
"I'm not a problem, Crew. I'm a person having feelings. You can't fix feelings."
"I know that—"
"Do you? Because every time I express anything difficult, you immediately jump to solutions. 'You learned from it.' 'It made you stronger.' 'It's not wasted time.' Like you can't just let me be sad without reframing it as some positive thing."
I felt my jaw tighten. "I'm trying to be supportive."
"Supportive would be just sitting with me. Not trying to make me feel better. Just being present while I feel bad." She sat on the edge of the bed, still in her dress. "But you can't do that, can you? You have to fix it. You have to solve it. You have to turn every negative into a positive because that's how you cope with your own shit."
"That's not fair."
"Isn't it? You spent three years solving pain with pills instead of actually dealing with it. Now you're sober and you've just transferred that compulsion to fixing other people's problems. Including mine."
The words hit like a slap. I stood there, anger and hurt mixing in my chest.
"I'm not trying to fix you. I'm trying to support you. There's a difference."
"Is there? Because from where I'm sitting, it feels like you can't handle me being upset. Like my sadness makes you uncomfortable so you try to rush me through it to get back to happy Harper who's easy to be around."
"That's not what I'm doing—"
"Then what are you doing, Crew? Because right now it feels like you're more concerned with managing my emotions than actually letting me have them."
I sat down in the chair across from the bed, trying to breathe through the defensiveness rising in my throat. Dr. Okonkwo's voice in my head: When you feel attacked, pause. Don't react. Respond.
"You're right," I said finally. "I do try to fix things. It's how I'm wired. I see someone I love in pain and I want to make it stop. But you're right that sometimes that means I don't actually let you feel what you need to feel. I rush you through the hard stuff to get to the resolution."
Harper looked surprised. Like she'd been expecting me to argue more.
"Dr. Okonkwo called me out on this two weeks ago," I continued. "She said I have control issues. That I try to manage other people's emotions because I spent three years unable to manage my own. And she's right. I do that. With you, with my teammates, with everyone." I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. "But Harper, I'm not doing it because your sadness makes me uncomfortable. I'm doing it because watching you hurt kills me and I don't know how else to help."
"You help by just being here. By not trying to make it better. By letting me be sad without commentary." Her voice was softer now. "I know you mean well. But sometimes I need to sit in the shit for a while before I can climb out of it. And you trying to pull me out early just makes me feel like my feelings are wrong or inconvenient."
"They're not wrong. They're not inconvenient."
"Then stop trying to fix them."
We sat in silence for a moment. The hotel room felt too small. Too warm. Too full of things we weren't saying.
"I'm sorry," Harper said finally. "For snapping at you. For taking my Joel feelings out on you. That's not fair either."
"It's okay—"
"It's not okay. You've been perfect tonight. Supportive and patient and exactly what I needed. And I'm repaying that by yelling at you about therapy techniques." She wiped her eyes again. "I'm a mess, Crew. I thought I was over this. Over Joel. Over all of it. But sitting through that dinner, listening to him say he loves me, watching Brianna prepare to marry someone who doesn't love her back—it brought up all these feelings I thought I'd dealt with."
"What kind of feelings?"
"Grief. Anger. Regret. Not about leaving Joel. But about how much time I wasted. Ten years, Crew. Ten years of my life I spent making myself smaller so he could be bigger. And I can't get that time back. I can't undo those choices. I just have to live with the fact that I chose wrong for a really long time."
I moved from the chair to the bed, sitting next to her. Not touching yet. Just close.
"You didn't choose wrong. You chose the best you could with the information you had at the time."
"That sounds like therapy talk."
"It's true though. You loved Joel. You thought he loved you back the same way. You made decisions based on that belief. That's not choosing wrong. That's just being human."
"But I wasted so much time—"
"You didn't waste it. You lived it. And yeah, in retrospect, you'd do things differently. But that doesn't make the time wasted. It makes it part of your story." I reached for her hand. "Harper, if you hadn't spent ten years with Joel, if you hadn't gotten your heart broken, if you hadn't gone through all of that shit—you wouldn't be the person you are now. The person I fell in love with."
"So you're saying Joel breaking my heart was a good thing?"
"I'm saying it was a thing that happened. And you survived it. And came out the other side stronger and more yourself. That's not redemption of Joel's choices. That's credit to your resilience."
She was quiet for a long moment. Then she leaned her head on my shoulder.
"I hate that you're right," she whispered.
"I'm not right. I'm just present. There's a difference."
"When did you get so good at this?"
"Four therapy sessions a week for six weeks. Eventually something sticks." I kissed the top of her head. "Harper, I'm sorry I tried to fix your feelings. I'm working on it. But it's a process. I'm going to mess up sometimes."
"I know. And I'm sorry I snapped at you. I'm working on not shutting people out when I'm upset. But it's also a process." She laced her fingers through mine. "We're both disasters, aren't we?"
"Recovering disasters. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Yeah. Disasters are people who've given up. We're people who keep trying. That makes us recovering disasters. Much more dignified."
She laughed, small and wet. "I love you. Even when I'm crying and snapping at you and taking out my Joel trauma on your therapy techniques."
"I love you too. Even when you're sad and messy and don't want me to fix it."
We sat like that for a while, holding hands on the hotel bed, both still in our rehearsal dinner clothes. Outside, the city hummed. Inside, we just existed together in the aftermath of difficult conversations.
Finally Harper stood up. "Help me with this zipper? I need to get out of this dress before I murder it."
I unzipped her carefully. She disappeared into the bathroom to change. I took off my suit jacket, loosened my tie, tried to shake off the tension of the evening.
When she came back out, she was wearing one of my t-shirts and her face was clean of makeup. She looked younger. Softer. More like the Harper I'd first met three months ago in Maya's office, before everything got complicated.
"Tomorrow's the wedding," she said, climbing into bed.
"Tomorrow's the wedding," I agreed, getting in next to her.
"After tomorrow, we never have to see Joel again. We move to Vancouver. Start fresh. Build our life."
"Exactly."
"Are you scared? About the move. About everything changing."
"Terrified. But I'd rather be terrified in Vancouver with you than comfortable in Seattle without you." I pulled her close. "Harper, we're going to fight sometimes. We're going to have nights like tonight where we both mess up and hurt each other's feelings. That's what relationships are. Imperfect people figuring out how to love each other despite the imperfections."
"That's very wise of you."
"I have a very expensive therapist. She'd be disappointed if I wasn't retaining something."
Harper laughed against my chest. "Tomorrow we survive the wedding. Then we leave Seattle. Then we figure out Vancouver."
"One disaster at a time."
"Exactly."
We fell asleep like that, still in our dinner clothes, holding each other in a hotel room that cost too much but felt like exactly where we needed to be.