Which, in a way, I was.
“Feelings are ... they’re ... debilitating.” It took me forever to dig the word out of the storm in my head. Which, in itself, proved my point. Feelingsweredebilitating. I flung a hand at myself as if to say—look at me. Exhibit A.
“They can be,” Rio said, calm as ever. “But they can also be the opposite. They can lift you up.” She didn’t let my silence stop her. “You know, for a long time I thought you and Sebastian were just placeholders for each other. But that’s not it.” She was smiling, actually smiling. “You two love each other. A lot. You’re best friends—with ridiculously amazing attraction and sex. You called me out for being scared to admit my feelings for Owen.” She tilted her head. She wasn’t smiling anymore. “Well, look who’s talking now.”
“God, I hate that word.” The bitterness burned as soon as it left me.Why am I so screwed up? Why can’t I just be normal?
“What,feelings?” Rio leaned forward, eyes glinting. She wasn’t about to let it slide. “Here are a few other F-words for you: fidelity, forever, future, family.” She lobbed each one at me like she knew exactly where they’d land.
“Flirt, fling, fondness, friendship, fucking! What’s wrong with those?” I shot them back, desperate, clinging to them like driftwood I knew couldn’t save me.
“You think you can do this forever—fucking with a friend?” Rio asked.
“The best marriages have friendship and good fucking.”
“There it is—the forever talk you swear you don’t believe in.” Rio cocked her head, eyebrows raised, like she’d just caught me with my hand in the cookie jar.
She was right. I was the one with Forever and Sebastian on my mind. Because the persistent truth was: he was already etched into me, in more ways than one, woven through me in ways I could never undo. My body and my heart had been whispering pieces of it for years. Now they were screaming the whole of it. And my mind was finally, terrifyingly, catching up—I wanted him for forever. I needed him for always.
Evangeline’s eyes sharpened, like she’d caught the truth flicker across my face. She edged forward in her seat, refusing to let me wriggle free. “You know what you want, but you’re afraid of taking the wrong step. You’d rather tolerate feeling like you do now because at least you know the outcome,rather than risk it and go for something good, because you can’t be certain of the future. Is that true?”
I didn’t respond. The ocean inside me was holding its breath, the water drawn all the way back, exposing everything raw and vulnerable. The final recede before the crash. I wanted good. I wanted Sebastian. The man who “good” was too small a word for. The anchor in my chaos, the one who saw me, the compass pointing me back to myself.
I want this. You.His words that day, knowing my too-muchness, yet thinking I was enough.
I want this. You.I now wanted to scream, whisper, cry back.
The tears stung so badly my eyes brimmed, threatening to spill. Rio, sitting closest, noticed and laid her hand over mine.
Eve’s gaze flicked to her, worry softening her eyes, but she pressed on. “You can’t have a guarantee, ever, Rub. Not in life. Not in love.” She was one to know. “I think you’re hoping we’ll give you that. But we can’t. No one can. Only you. And Sebastian. But look at the facts—the love, the years that never wore it down but only deepened it, all he’s done for you, and the ache you carry now. You don’t ache for any man, Ruby. Except him. There’s a void in your heart only he can fill. That’s the truth you don’t want to face.”
Love. Years. Him. Each word struck another crack in the seawall. She didn’t even have to say his name—just that word,him—and my heart split clean in two. Everything I’d held back poured out, drowning me.
The tsunami hit.
It crashed through me, merciless, unrelenting, and the tears broke free, rushing down my face as wildly as the wave inside me. My chest heaved as the ocean of pain and longing and love, so much love—surged untamed. It shredded down every defense and left me gasping in its force.
The sobs ripped out, raw and uncontainable.
“You’ve tried to play it safe, and I get that,” Rio said louder, her hand on my knee squeezing tighter, undeterred by the fact that I was openly weeping now. “But, Rub, you already lost, sweetie.” Her tone was soft, like she was soothing a four-year-old. “You’renotsafe. You’realreadybroken-hearted—the very thing you’ve been phobic of and trying to avoid.”
“What am I supposed to do?” The words came out ragged, torn between sobs. I felt lost, desperate for answers. I’d broken my own heart and his because I was so afraid of heartbreak. Was it too late now to want what we could be?
“I even did this.” My legs wobbled as I pushed myself upright, uselessly wiping my face before tugging my shirt up.
Their eyes widened, locked on my left ribcage where the small black-and-white shield nestled just beneath the band of my bra. My sobs frayed into rough breaths, and for a moment, that was the only sound.
“You love Superman that much?” Eve whispered, stunned.
“No.Hedoes,” Rio said quietly. “And S is also Sebastian. Am I right, Ruby?” Her voice was hoarse.
“Owen, he ...” I started, fumbling.
Rio’s smile was tight-lipped, like she was holding back tears, too. “You got it from him?”
Owen had tattooed a river and the lyrics of the song Rio was named after, and that gave me the idea.
I nodded.
