My next question is: “What are those?”
“I’m so sorry, Staten,” he says, regret ripening his tone, loud enough to spar with the heavenly hoofbeats crackling overhead. He looks as if he’s on the verge of falling to his knees in front of everyone. “I’m so sorry for everything. I needed to do some rom-con recon to give you the best romantic gesture in the world. They’re, um, they’re flowers.Crystalflowers, because I know you don’t like the real thing.”
I know I should be mad at him, but I can’t help that my mouth forms a perfectO.
Knox Mulligan took a note out of film’s grand romantic gestures? For me?
“Holy shit. How much money did you spend, Knox?”
“Not nearly enough.”
“I don’t even know what’s going on anymore.”
His teary gaze cuts to me, underpinned by incontestable regret. A similar feeling—albeit unnamable—crawls into my stomach to hibernate there. Seethes even in the stillness.
“I never should’ve broken up with you. Everything I said to you was a lie—a belief put into my head by someone else—and I didn’t have the strength to come to you and communicate like I should have.”
I knew it. God, I should’ve made sure Knox was okay after that disaster of a tailgate.
“What are you talking about?” I croak, exerting a Sisyphean effort to keep calm.
The inkwells of Knox’s pupils are the only things I can see in the dark, even as his back is flush against the U-Haul’s headlights. Each sprinkle of rain is caught in the whit of luminosity like a mote weaving between the slipshod cracks of a shanty.
“Leif told me that you were better off without me—that I couldn’t be a stable partner for you in the future because of my trauma. And I believed him. I was trying to do the right thing; I was trying to let you go.”
I can’t believe Leif said those terrible things. No universe exists where I’m better off without Knox. Life is built to have ups and downs, and there are going to be periods of instability. That’s why love exists—to buttress an open sore of doubt.
“That’s not your decision to make,” I exclaim, trying to remind myself that Knox doesn’t deserve my anger—that the detonator in my hand should be reserved for my ex-best friend.
It all makes sense, why Leif was so quick to try and win me back. He knew Knox would sabotage our relationship.
The longer I stand outside in my tiny camisole and shorts, the faster paresthesia cinches around my legs. My tear-free interim isn’t going to last long.
Knox cringes as if the flame he’d been hovering his palm over finally bit back, surprised to feel something after an unfinished chapter of numbness. “No, I know. I assumed that your line of thinking matched his, and that was a grave mischaracterization of who you are. You’ve shown me kindness and patience when I didn’t deserve it. You’ve shown me loyalty and love and it fuckingterrifiedme. All I’ve ever wanted is to be good enough for you. From the moment we first met, I made your life a million times harder. I thought things would be better if…”
“If you just left? If you made mehateyou? That’s not making things better, Knox. That’s running from your mistakes. I get that you were trying to do the right thing, and I appreciate it, but you should’ve just talked to me. I’m right here. I’ve alwaysbeenright here,” I wail, finally losing my shaky grip on my composure as moisture blooms in the corners of my eyes.
I want to scream. I want to bang my fists against his chest. I want to show him every broken piece of me so he canunderstandthe extent of the pain he left me in.
“I was intent on just smothering everything until I saw you with Leif on campus. You guys looked so happy together. I…I didn’t want to rob you of a chance to be with him.”
My wrath, unfortunately, is in hot pursuit, and I have a feeling that biting my tongue will hurt more. “Leif will always just be a friend to me. I don’t want him like I want you. You’re theonlyoption for me, Knox. I don’t care if you don’t have some ten-step plan for the future. If you think I’m so shallow that I’d leave you just because you’re still figuring things out like the rest of us, then you don’t know me at all.”
He furls a fist in the front of his shirt, his downturned lips evolving into a frown that creases all his features. The heartache is as plain as day on his face—a face that has a cropping of stubble from sleepless nights, that ages him by years, that erases the carefree boy I met mere months ago.
“Of course I don’t think that. There are no words in this goddamn universe that can make up for what I’ve done. I let my insecurities get the better of me, and I sacrificed the one thing in my life that was unnegotiable: our relationship.”
And just like that, a wrecking ball comes swinging into the center of my ribs, fracturing all the progress I’ve made in one measly swoop. Reinforced defenses reverted to prestressed steel and synthetic fibers.
“I thought you—God, I thought youdespisedme. Do you know how fucked up that is? I thought I meantnothingto you,”I shout over the downpour, my mother tongue—eloquent in grief—aching with a gut-wrenching asseveration.
I never signed up to play this cat and mouse game.
He doesn’t step closer to me, even though I want him to. “I’m so sorry, Ace. I’m sorry I didn’t have the courage to stand up to Leif. I’m sorry I didn’t have the courage to tell you the truth. You mean everything to me, and that’s why I thought I was doing the right thing by giving you the chance at a better future.”
“You’re the only person I want in my future.”
“I should’ve trusted you when you said you needed time to process Leif’s words. You didn’t tell him yes. I picked a fight just to pick a fight,” Knox confesses, evading my line of sight, so sick with himself that understated power lances through his muscles in self-directed rage.
