Danny starts pacing again, back and forth in the kitchen, running his hands through his hair. “Did I want it to come out the way it did? Obviously not. Am I sorry it did? Absolutely. I am unbelievably sorry, Gracie. I hate that it hurt you, and I wish I could take everything that happened back, even if it meant I never got drafted.”
I raise my eyebrows and tilt my head in annoyance. “It’s not even the fact that I was the last to know, Danny. It’s that you didn’t communicate that you were considering leaving at all.” I obsessively tap my foot, and my voice falters. “And when we broke up, I thought that I was ending things with my boyfriend of two years, not my best friend of ten.”
His jaw slackens. “You…you didn’t want to lose touch with me?”
“When I saidbest friends always, I meant it. The abandonment I felt when you left without looking back absolutely wrecked me. But the silence forten years, Danny? It shattered me.”
He stops moving entirely, and I avert my eyes.
“Your status made you impossible to ignore entirely, randomly pulling me into your orbit against my will. It was a special form of torture to see you in magazines at the grocery store.”
When I look up again, he’s standing right in front of me, nearly chest to chest.
“It was like I couldn’t escape you, no matter how hard I tried,” I whisper.
“I didn’t want to escape you, Gracie. Ineverdid. When you ended things, I was convinced you knew you’d be better off without me.”
I shake my head in disbelief, blinking away tears. My brain is hazy, thoughts scattered, confusing me with all the noise in my head. Overwhelmed, I try to sync up my heart and head but fail miserably.
“Fact for a feeling, Gracie.” His voice comes out soft.
Memories flood my mind and wash away the here and now. He knows exactly what to do to get me out of my head. I grasp for an animal fact—any animal fact—struggling until I land on the perfect one.
“Fact: French angelfish perform a special dance when they reunite with their mate after spending time apart.”
“Feeling: I’ve never stopped loving you.”
My eyes widen. “Danny, you can’t just say things?—”
“I was in love with you when we were something, and I was in love with you when we were nothing.”
His lips are moving, but all I hear is ten-year-old Danny, sayingI love youfor the first time. I hold my breath.
Intense and unwavering, his eyes stay locked on mine. “It would be a fool’s errand to try and fall in love with anyone but you, Gracie.”
Exhaling slowly, I bring a hand to my mouth. “I?—”
“You want to know how I spent the last ten years we were apart? I spent every single one of them loving you.”
Danny’s confession steals the air from the room, leaving ten years of unspoken feelings behind.
I’ve never stopped loving you.
His words hit a spot in my chest that’s been sore for so long, it’s painful to hear them. The biggest lie I’ve ever told myself is that I don’t care if the boy next door loves me or not. God, I was pretending. I’vebeenpretending. And the response in my body proves it. My traitorous heart flutters in the aftermath of his truth, but there’s also a tightness in my throat.
There are so many thoughts swirling in my head that it’s hard to know what to focus on first. I feel a sense of peace in having delivered the letter, like there was a loose thread in a tapestry that’s been sewn up. But it’s almost like it was stitched with a different color; although fixed, I can tell what happened. I can tell it was ripped.
Danny stays quiet, head tilted. He rubs my shoulders up and down a few times, warming me up, before leaning away.
I meet his gaze. “Before, when I missed you, I thought I must have imagined it all. Like some kind of fever dream I had for over half my life. Part of me used to wish I made it up, because then maybe the ten years of memories I carried with me wouldn’t be so painful. Each memory served as a hurtful reminder of what we lost,” I confess as tears slide down my cheeks. “But love wasn’t enough. When everything happened, I needed to find who I was without you.”
I pause, carefully choosing my next words. I don’t want to lose him, not when I’ve just gotten him back, but I can’t—I won’t—force this.
“I’m not ready, Danny. And I don’t know when, or if, I ever will be.”
After what I’ve been through lately, my tolerance for risk is at an all-time low. And Danny is the ultimate risk. I know what it’s like to be loved by him, and I know what it’s like to lose him.
He hunches over slightly, like my words have tackled him. His mouth turns down in a frown of hurt before slowly shifting into a thin line of resolve.
