“I know.”
“So what’s this about?”
“I just… don’t make this harder, Sabby. Today already sucked,” he says, putting more space between us. “I had a hard talk with my mom this morning. Before I left.”
Like me, Hanry doesn’t usually bring up his family without provocation. The fact that he’s doing it now, to avoid talking aboutus? Not my favorite.
“Cool,” I say, in an attempt to be the queen of sympathy.
“I told you I have a brother, right? Seb. He’s about the same age as me. The way Mom was going on, I don’t know. It made me worry about him. I think she might try to fuck up his life more than she already has. That’s what she’s good at—causing situations to spin out of control—so I know I shouldn’t be surprised.”
Hanry must’ve been hiding these feelings behind his sexy tuxedo mask all night. Maybe it was good I pulled him into this closet before he publicly had the stuffing squeezed out of his feelings-burrito. I’m unsure whether or not I’m helping him, though. He’s still not quite meeting my gaze.
He also remains unspeakably hot. I reach across what feels like a thousand miles to squeeze his thigh, but Hanry moves my hand away. Damn him.
Without looking at me, he speaks so fast, I almost don’t catch the words.
“I can’t keep dating you,” he says.
I go still.
“Youwhat?!” I burst out. “You can’t kiss me like that, then break up with me seconds later!”
“I’m sorry,” Hanry says—a total nonanswer. And total crap.
“What’s your deal? Is this because you’re too serious for me? You don’t want to waste time dating someone you can’t be with forever, and you can’t see yourself in a suburban, single-family home someday?”
Hanry shifts as he resettles on the cart.
“I can’t see myself doing that with you, Sabby. No.”
I want to scream.
Of course he doesn’t. Who was I kidding? Woodsy, artsy Hanry has no interest in the banality of the American dream. I knew that, and yet my lungs feel like they’ve been crushed by a giant, rolling boulder chucked out of a temple of doom.
I feel utterly crushed.
I think I might not survive the hurt of it, not to mention the humiliation.
And, what makes it worse? It’s not Hanry, or his dreams, that are so painful. It’sme. I’m the problem. I knew he was just a fling, something that would end the moment I figured out how to leave Salem—but I kept spending more time with Hanry than I should’ve. I let myself think of him before falling asleep at night, wanted his opinion anytime I finished a wedding proposal or envisioned a new décor idea.
I let him seeme.
And that’s who he’s rejecting. He’s rejecting the real me and the idea of an “us.”
I know this is the last moment I should be vulnerable, but he hasto know how I feel. It’s my last chance to stop this, to show him there might be another way.
“I don’t want to lose you,” I say, the words burning as they escape my throat. Hanry swallows, evidence heisconflicted, in spite of everything. “We could do long distance?”
“You told me this was always going to end at some point,” he says.
“I… did,” I admit.
“What if you don’t go back to New York?” Hanry suggests out of nowhere. I’m not sure whatthatis supposed to mean, and since I’m lost for words, of course he thinks he should keep talking. “I’m not saying you need to quit your job for me. I’m just saying you don’t have to go back if you don’t want to.”
“But—but I do want to.” I lick my dry lips. “You know I’ve been faking this wedding planning schtick for weeks so I could leave.”
“I hear you. I’ve heard you. I just, I don’t know. Seeing you out there tonight, you were in your element. There’s no shame in walking away from something that doesn’t serve you anymore,” Hanry says.
