Kevin lets out a shaky breath. “Yeah.That was . . . God, that hurt. I knew I didn’t have a right to be devastated, but I was. It just . . . It made me feel like I was so much more emotionally invested in this than you were—like this was proof of what I’d worried about all along.” He looks at me like he’s not sure whether he should have said that. I’m glad he did, though, even if I hate that I hurt him. I don’t want us keeping back anything, not anymore.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “If it makes you feel any better, I eventually realized that I was totally usingTed all along. I was only with him to convince myself I wasn’t in love with you.”
“Really?”The sadness in his eyes is fading, his lips turning up again.
“Really. Which ended up making me a total dick to both you andTed.” I roll my eyes, and he smiles fully.
“Yeah, well,I’mfeeling pretty good about it all now.”
I laugh. “I bet you are.” But the truth is, slight guilt aside, I am too. I’m feeling pretty good about a lot of things now. “So are we doing this, then? Am I finishing this semester and then moving out to LA?”
He looks like he’s trying to keep from grinning at this notion, but he’s failing. “Is that what you really want?”
“It is,” I say. I pick at my own food with my fork, pushing the meat around in the crazy-delicious-smelling sauce. “I’ve spent so much time feeling stuck, but I think I’ve been keeping myself that way. I mean, my health has been a problem, yeah, but I think I’ve let that be an excuse for not doing anything that scares me, anything that’s a risk. And because of that . . . I think I’ve been avoiding reallyliving, you know?” I look across the table at him, at this incredible man I know so well and want to spend the rest of my life getting to know even better. My eyes tear up. “I want to start living my life. And I want that life to be with you.”
His own eyes are shining with tears now, too, his smile so soft, so incredulous. He swallows. “Yeah, then. We’re doing this.”
We both just grin at each other and then laugh, and I don’t know that I’ve ever been so happy. We manage to actually eat our food, our conversation turning to less weighty things—though he definitely gets impassioned talking about the latestBachelorpick—and we laugh some more and order cannoli to go, even though there’s a Cinnabon nearby that we’re also going to order from.
We’re going to need a lot of sustenance for later, given our plans back at his hotel.
We walk out of the restaurant, and it’s there, finally, that he pulls me into his arms and we kiss again.The heat of his lips against mine and the perfect safety of his arms around me and our bodies pressed together—it’s like everything magic and wonderful in the world has all condensed into this moment right here, into us.
I don’t know exactly where the track leads; the truth is, I never really did. But for the first time, the unknown doesn’t seem like such a scary thing. It feels . . . free.
Because I’m with Kevin. We’re in this together.
And that’s the only certainty I need.
