Page 88 of All Our Almosts

“I would never ask you to give up your dreams for me,” he insists.

“But you want me to ask it of you. You want me to ask you to give up your whole life.”

Andy has no response.

“I would hate myself if you changed everything for me and I wasn’t worth it.”

“You are worth any...” He stumbles again, trying and failing to express his train of thought, and for the first time in our lives I see tears welling in his eyes now.

“Okay, Andy, okay.” I meet him on the floor, kneeling as I take his face in my hands. Then I kiss him, because I don’t know how else to make this better. “I believe you. And I’m so… I don’t have the words to express how much it means to me that you would move with me. But I have to make this choice for myself. And if we’re together—if it’s a choice between doing the program and making you move, or passing on the program and letting you keep your life here—I’m not going to go. It would feel too selfish, no matter what you say, and I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to do it. Do you understand?”

He pulls me into a hug, cradling my cheek against his chest where we kneel. “We can’t undo it, Soph. Maybe we should have waited another month and started things when everything was more sure, but what’s done is done, and I want to be with you. Please, don’t end this.”

“I’m not ending this,” I insist, wetting the cotton of his shirt. “I think I just need a little space to decide what I want to do about grad school, and then when I’ve decided we can take it from there, okay? I just don’t think it’s healthy for either of us to make a choice like this under so much pressure. I need time to think about my career path, and you need time to think about all the things you’d be sacrificing if you moved. Okay?”

I feel him take a deep breath, then loosen his hold on me. “And then what?”

“I guess… either we’ll decide to be together, or we’ll go back to how things were.”

“Back to how things were?”

“Yeah, if… if we have to. Whatever we have to do. I don’t want this to ruin our friendship.”

His hands leave my body, a look of disbelief on his face. “It’s already ruined, Sophie. Don’t you get that?” His voice rises as emotion gets the better of him. “We can’t go back. We can’t pretend this never happened and just be friends. It doesn’t work like that”

He tries to reach for me again but I flinch away, stung by his words. Andy swipes a hand down his face. “That’s not… Soph, that’s not what I meant.”

I stand and back away from him. “Just stop. Please.”

“You have to know what I mean though, Soph,” he pleads, following after me. “You’re telling me you can really keep living here and pretend we’ve never dated? Never had sex? You want to be my friend and date other guys and forget about this? That’s what you mean when you say you love me?”

With that, time stops. Of all the fights we’ve ever had, all the petty squabbles and ideological disagreements that have come with almost ten years of friendship, Andy has never hurt me so much as with those last ten words. It’s bad enough that I love him more than I should—that I’ve told him I’m in love with him, multiple times in multiple ways, and he couldn’t bring himself to say it back. But for him to throw it in my face, for him to twist my love to win this fight… It's a door closing.

I’m sure my face broadcasts every emotion I’m feeling—hurt, disbelief, then ultimately withdrawal—as I say, “We both need to think about things, okay?”

“Sophie.” He tries to touch me again, but I twist away.

“Andy, please stop.”

He freezes. I know he knows he messed up, but that’s just not enough right now.

“I’m going to stay at Lia’s for a while,” I say, affectless voice belied by the tears that won’t stop falling.

He nods. I grab my purse off the table, collect a few items from my room, and pull on my coat.

And that’s all. The door clicks closed and there’s nothing but silence.

27

Andy

I begin my morning deep in denial. Coffee. Toast. Brushing my teeth. Staring at the wall.

Despite my best efforts not to think about last night, everything in the apartment reminded me of Sophie. Her sticky notes on the coffee table, her hairbrush in the bathroom, the couch where I held her just yesterday. Ten years of wanting her, all our memories, and I thought for a moment…

But now I’m here.

Robotically, I lace up my running shoes and force my feet to carry me anywhere else—away from the hollow echoes of our brief life together. Yet even outside, Sophie is inescapable.