Her hands fly up, and she huffs. She marches past me and up the stairs, but I’m hot on her tail.
“Where are you going?” I ask, following her.
“I don’t know.”
“Dove, wait.”
“And for the love of all there is in this world, will you just tell me why you call me Dove?”
I shake my head. If she weren’t visibly upset, I might tell her. But this isn’t the time for me to reveal that.
“Typical.” She tosses her hands up again, heads into the bedroom, and opens the closet. She jerks the door so hard that it slams off the wall behind it.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Leaving,” she says and grabs her suitcase.
“Leaving?” I grab her bag out of her hands.
“Stop. Give it back.”
“You’re not leaving. You're running.”
“Because this is going to end eventually. It won’t work out. It’s better to call it now.”
“It won’t work out?” I repeat back to her. “How do you figure that?”
“Because we … the longer we let this go on, the harder it’ll be when it ends.”
She can’t be serious right now.
“Why does it have to end?”
She sighs, reaching again for her suitcase, but I move so she can’t grab it. She takes a breath and then looks me dead in the eyes.
“You don’t want me, Tobias. You only think we should keep doing this because you’re afraid to lose me.”
“You’re damn straight I’m scared to lose you.”
I toss a hand into the air, turning away from her and then circle back.
“You,” I gesture to her with my hand. “You’re my best friend.”
“I know,” she says softly. “And you’ll aways be mine, even if we aren’t together romantically.”
“No. This is not happening right now,” I start to argue. She’s scared, and I get it. But she’s making a mistake, and I won’t let her do it. I open my mouth to say more, but she beats me to it.
“We never talked about what being more to each other would mean. Or about where this will go. We didn’t think things through. We just started being more and went with it.”
She starts to pull clothes off the hangers. Did she ever mean to make it more than what we were? Hell, it was more. Itismore.
“We can talk about it now.”
“I think it’s too late for that,” she says, refusing to look at me.
“Fine. Then you can listen. I don’t see an end for us. For me, the end is each night you are with me, in my arms, in my bed. You are the last thing I see at night and the first thing I see when my eyes open every morning. Tonight, tomorrow, next month, next year, twenty years from now. You’re it for me.” I toss my hands up, waiting for her to say something. All she gives me is silence. “I’m sorry I didn’t go about it the right way and that I didn’t tell you fully how I felt the moment I felt it, but I’m telling you now. Don’t go. Please.”
The suitcase drops, and she starts to cry. I reach for her, feeling as if someone had just shoved a knife into my heart. She doesn't back up or try to step away; she just lets me hold her.
