“It’s not a big deal, Alex. You had your book to finish, and I graduate next month. Besides, I still have to find a job. No worries. We’ve both been busy.”
“I tried to forget you.”
“Excuse me?” I meant it to sound like a question, but it swam in sarcasm.
He rubbed his forehead. “I thought up a million reasons to stay away, but I love you and you make me feel so alive. We understand each other. But then I worried about honesty. There’s so much about me you don’t know. Things that may make you hate me. And while I love that we can talk, really talk, I wondered how honest you’ve been with me. We owe each other that.” He stared at me. “Don’t you think that we’re worth that?”
“I’m not following you.” I’d caught his “I love you,” but the rest of his garbled speech was vaguely reminiscent of Mr. Darcy’s first declaration to Elizabeth—the one in which he claims to love her and then proceeds to insult her.
“I thought if I kept away, I might feel less. And you’d forget me. You’d find someone without the baggage we both carry. You didn’t need to know about all the mess in my life. The mess I’ve created. It could stay secret. I could be done.” He leaned forward. “I thought I’d be okay. There are a lot of women in New York, right? You said so yourself. I just have to let it happen. And the same holds true for you, Sam. Tons of men could love you. Who wouldn’t?”
“Excuse me?”Are you for real? You can’t think this sounds good.
He raked his hands through his hair. He’d let it grow this fall, and it reached beyond his fingertips. “But I can’t do it, Sam. There isn’t anyone else. There’s only you. It’s been only you for a long time now.” He looked at me expectantly, like this final point cleared everything up.
“Meaning . . . ?”
“Marry me? . . . I’m asking you to marry me. Will you marry me?”
Alex spread his hands across the table, his eyes eager and begging. I wanted to stop time.Marry him?I closed my eyes for a moment, wondering what it would be like—Alex Powell’s wife. Someone he loves. Getting to rake my hands through that hair every day. I wanted to rest in that moment.
My eyes flew open.He said he loved me, but had been trying to forget me? He looked for someone else? What happens when he tries that again? Does he actually think this won’t infuriate me?
“Are you serious?”
“Proposing marriage? Yes. I’m sorry. I’m doing this all wrong. It’s just that I’m nervous. There’s so much you need to know, Sam. But I’ll tell you. I won’t keep anything from you. And this fall was no good without you.”
I think Alex babbled on, but I didn’t hear him. I was still lost in “I tried to forget you” and, my favorite, “There are a lot of women in New York.” A few seconds of these gems bouncing in my brain and I couldn’t help myself . . .
I will be ashamed to my dying day for what I did next. Not for saying no. That was right. But for how I said it. I wanted it to be from me. I wanted to stand on my own two feet and say what I felt. I wanted to say that I was mad at him—furious—and deserved more than this pathetic explanation and certainly more than his insulting pseudo-Darcy proposal. What was he thinking? I had a right to be angry, and I had a right to be heard. I lost both by hiding in the most despicable way I could.
“I think I should be thankful to you, Alex, but I don’t feel it. I don’t want your love and, clearly, offering it isn’t what you want either. I’m sorry if this hurts, but I’m sure you’ll recover quickly.”
“Sam . . . don’t do that.”
I was paraphrasing, not quoting, but he knew.
“It’s no worse than what you just did. You told me you never meant to love me, tried to forget me, even sought others to replace me. Were you playing our game, Alex? Because if you weren’t, you missed the mark.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I was just . . .” He reached for my hand, but I pulled it back. “Please. Talk to me.” His eyes glistened.
I didn’t know I had any power over Alex. His silence this fall led me to believe I held none, but he was clearly upset. He shook his head as if trying to push the moment away. I should have stopped. I didn’t.
“ ‘You’re the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.’ ” I finished with a direct quote, just to drive the nail deep. One single tear ran down my cheek before I could stop it. I swiped at it and hoped he hadn’t noticed. He reached for me again. I looked away.
“I’ll get the check.” He sounded so disappointed. “If all you can offer is a hackneyed refusal stolen from Elizabeth Bennet, we have nothing more to say.” He captured my gaze until I pulled away. “We were more than that, Sam. We saw each other—really saw each other from the first moment we met. There was none of this between us. It was our game because we never needed it as a weapon. And I wasn’t playing tonight.” He got the check, and we left in silence.
At the Muirs’ walk he turned to me. “I can’t stay and see Mom M and Pops tonight. Tell them I had to go.”
I nodded and walked past him, but then he called me back.
“Sam, is this really how you want us to end? Why won’t you trust me?”
My heart was broken, but I was still angry. Maybe it was pride, but mostly fear. “I did trust you, and look what it got me: a long, silent fall and an insulting proposal. Don’t look so sad, Alex. You’ll forget me soon—again.”
“Forget you? If you only knew . . .”
I looked at him. Part of me wanted to grab him and share everything. Tell him that he was already an indelible part of me. Tell him I loved him—that I felt alive and whole and excited when he was near, and that, when we were together, the world glowed shiny and bright and I could be brave. And tell him I hated him—that the fall was gray and grim and felt like drudgery without him, but that he had abandoned me, and now my happiness would never be tied up with him because I would never make that mistake again. I clenched my jaw and shook my head. It was all I could do.
