But that wasn’t entirely true. If it had just been his looks, I wouldn’t have looked twice at a player like him. It was the fact that he was Tim.MyTim. The boy who’d tried to chase me with a mud-covered frog in his hand when we were five, and I’d shocked him by taking it from him and examining it and making a ‘perfect’ home for it like only a five-year-old can. He was the tween who’d been the only one who knew I didn’t need words or platitudes during my mother’s funeral. I’d only needed someone to stand by me. To be there. And he’d known that because we could read each other like we were two halves of the same person. He was the teenager I’d held in my arms and comforted while he sobbed with a broken heart after what Annika did tohim. He was the man with the laughing eyes who’d been with me through everything.
And now? Now he was just some guy who’d broken my heart by sleeping with another woman soon after I’d left his bed. And it hurt worse than anything I could’ve ever imagined because I’d believed in him. Tim. I hadn’t thought that player part of him would exist with me. But I’d been so incredibly, horribly wrong.
I was a cliché. Just another girl in his rotation. His very large rotation.
“Nat! Wait! Please, wait.” He had thrown on shorts and was running down his steps bare-chested and barefoot. I was barely able to look at him, but I felt him coming like a head-on collision. I couldn’t make myself leave. I was scared to drive. I’d been blindsided so hard I wasn’t sure my shaking hands could grasp the wheel.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t think it would affect you like this. I thought you knew who I was…”
I stared at him, finally lifting my eyes to meet his. Whatever he saw there made him flinch as if I’d punched him. He took a step back. “Nat,” he begged, “please don’t look at me like that. You knew. You knew how I was before we touched each other. You know I can’t… commit that way. You knew that.”
I looked at him with disgust, contempt, disbelief. “You’re a horrible person.” It was a weak comeback, but I was having trouble gathering my thoughts. It landed, though, like a swift jab to his stomach.
“Don’t say that,” he whispered. “You can’t mean that.” He looked desperate, like he knew he’d already lost me, but his brain was having difficulty making that connection.
“I’ve never meant anything more than what I just said,” I whispered.
He looked shocked. He stepped back and ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up in a way that I would’ve joked withhim about only fifteen minutes ago. But that was over. A twenty-plus year friendship was done, over, dead in the blink of an eye.
“I have to get out of here,” I said, gathering my thoughts enough to unlock the car and open the door. He grabbed my arm, holding me back from getting inside.
“No, no, no, Nat. Please. You can’t leave like this. Just… listen.”
I turned and looked, like an idiot, instead of shaking him off and leaving.
“You know what happened to me and how much it hurt me…”
I cut him off with a sound of disbelief. “At this point, that’s an excuse. I’m not saying you should be over it by now. Everyone grieves differently. But you’ve chosen to ignore everyone’s advice to get help. You made that choice for years. To me, it seems like you want to hold onto that hurt. That you’re using it to protect yourself from ever having deep feelings for a woman again.”
“I have deep feelings for you,” he protested.
“Not deep enough,” I shot back, my pain finally morphing into anger.
He hung his head. “Don’t you see? If I let myself love you, andyoudid to me what Annika did—it wouldn’t just hurt. I think it would kill me. I wouldn’t survive it, Nat. I couldn’t stand to lose you.”
I gave a bitter laugh. “Seriously? You think you haven’t lost me? You just did to me what Annika did to you. Only it’s a hundred times worse because you knowingly stomped all over your best friend’s heart.”
He shook his head, a tear running down his cheek. “I haven’t lost you. Say I haven’t lost you,” he gasped the words like his lungs were collapsing.
“Oh, you’ve lost me. I was gone the moment I opened that door and saw you in bed with another woman.”
He was shocked enough that I was able to break his grasp on my arm easily and got in my car. I locked it quickly, before he could open it, and sped out of the parking lot. He tried to run after me for a while. The last sight of him I had was in the rearview mirror. He was bent over, hands on his knees, gasping for air.
I planned on that being the last time I saw him for a long time.
Possibly ever.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tim
She blocked me.
I couldn’t say I blamed her. I texted, called, and left voicemails over and over again. They went unanswered, unread, not listened to, and so on. She didn’t want to hear from me. But I kept thinking she couldn’t stay mad at me forever. We were each other’s person. She was the first person I called with good news, and the first person I called when I needed cheering up. I was that person for her, too.
She couldn’t stay mad at me. She just couldn’t.
There was a little voice inside me saying that she was more than mad. It went beyond that. That I’d completely broken her trust. If that was the case, how do you fix that? I wasn’t sure it was something Icouldfix.
