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“I love you,” Jonathan said.
Her stomach dropped like she’d just done a corkscrew on a rollercoaster, and she jerked her hand away from the wall.
No man who wasn’t related to her had ever said those words to her before. It felt as if the sky had reached down and smacked her in the face. “What?” she said, squeezing her fingers around the phone.
“You heard me.”
“Jonathan.” His name came out in a strangled whisper. “Please don’t.”
“Don’t love you or don’t say it?”
“Both.” She felt faint. Her hand reached out for the wall again to hold herself up.
“I can’t change how I feel. And don’t try to tell me you don’t have feelings for me, because I know you do.”
“Of course I care about you, but…” It was too much pressure. She felt paralyzed. Unable to think of anything to say.
“But not enough, is that what you’re saying?”
She blinked at the wall separating them. She could picture his face perfectly. The dark eyebrows, drawn together. That crinkle he got in his forehead when he was being serious. His eyes, soft and earnest behind his glasses.
She reached up to wipe the tears from her face. “I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” he said. Bitter. Resigned. “I guess that’s it.”
He hung up.
Esther sank to the floor and hugged her knees to her chest, still clutching her phone.
He didn’t really love her. He was in love with the idea of being in love. He’d been looking for someone to fill the empty space in his heart for so long, he’d settled on the first person who came along. He’d only fixated on her because she was there. Because she was convenient.
That was what she tried to tell herself, anyway.
But deep down, she knew it was a lie.
Chapter Twenty-Four
No one had ever fallen in love with Esther before. Not once, not in her whole life. She’d thought it would feel…better. And less vomit-inducing.
Maybe it would, if she wasn’t so broken. If she was capable of responding the way she was supposed to. Normal people probably didn’t feel like they were having a panic attack when someone they cared about told them they loved them.
Esther went to work the next day and tried not to think about it. There was a meeting coming up she needed to prepare for. A conflict had been identified between some of the power and payload sub-assemblies, and there was a roadblock meeting Monday to go over the problem and decide what to do about it.
It was a chance for Esther to ingratiate herself with both assembly teams. If she could come up with a solution and convince them to implement it, it would go a long way to proving her value.
Except she couldn’t concentrate. Every time she tried to think about the problem, she wound up thinking about Jonathan instead. Replaying their phone conversation in her head, or remembering lines from his script. And then her stomach would start to hurt and her chest would feel too tight, and she’d have to squeeze her eyes shut to keep from crying.
At lunchtime, she went down to the cafeteria to get her food to go, like she always did. Yemi and Jinny were already there, at a table in the far back corner. Heads together. Huddled. Smiling at each other like there was no one else in the room. Esther watched them while she waited in line. They were in love. They might not know it themselves yet, but it was there to see, plain as day.
They looked so happy, it made her stomach hurt even more. She wasn’t just feeling left out, she realized. She was envious of what they had together. That they could let themselves love like that.
She spent the rest of the afternoon struggling to focus on work. It was a relief when five o’clock rolled around and she could bolt for the door.
Jonathan’s car wasn’t there when she got home. She felt disappointed. Her daily glimpses of his car were as close as she was able to get to seeing him. She wondered where he was, and if he was okay after their conversation last night. A fresh pang of guilt stabbed at her.
As she was letting herself into her apartment, her phone rang. Great. Her mother. Another source of stomach-grinding stress.
“You answered your phone,” her mother said. “You never answer your phone.”
