Page 20 of Ardently Yours

Thunder rumbles in the distance. A storm is coming.

By the looks of how my chaotic evening is going, a storm may already be here.

I tuck my hands under my arms, not taking the flowers from him. I don’t even comment on the fact that he got it wrong about the flowers.

Bitterly, I say, “I don’t want to see you and I don’t want flowers from you.”

“Come on, Liz,” he says, but I cut him off.

“No. Don’t tell me to come on. Don’t call me Liz. Don’t call my mother ‘mama.’ Don’t show up at my cafe, bothering me at work. Don’t do anything near me or for me ever again. You need to leave.”

“But I came back for you,” he says, eyebrows furrowed together. Is he confused about why I don’t want to see him?

“Is there something wrong with you, Billie?” I ask, beyond fed up.

He looks taken aback. “What? No.”

“Are you sure? Because the last time I checked, you left me like six years ago and broke up with me via text, as if I were some random girl you met once and didn’t want to see again. And now you’re back like nothing happened.”

“I’m back because I want to be with you. And I want to know why you’re bringing some other guy to dinner when you knew I was coming? I assume Wickham is here with you? What happened to that other guy from the cafe?”

“You don’t get to ask me questions, Billie. You proposed to me and then left me. You lost your privileges.”

“I left because I was scared.”

“You must be scared and stupid to think that running away from a committed relationship with no warning and then showing up again is okay.”

He takes a step toward me. “I missed you, Liz.”

“Oh, well, that takes care of everything,” I say, exasperated, turning my back to him. “You haven’t changed, have you?”

He steps around me, so I’m facing him again. He touches my chin with his finger, lifting my head up. “I’ve changed, just give me a chance to prove it to you.”

I jerk away from his touch and take a step back. Looking him up and down, I can see he hasn’t changed a bit. I didn’t see it then, I ignored how self-involved he was.

I used to think it was so nice how he put so much effort into his image. He may look nice, but he spent more time on making sure the outside looked good, that the inside didn’t matter as much. He used to do and say things that I ignored.

The red flags were waving at me and I just pretended not to see them because he would plan these elaborate dates, shower me with gifts and tell me sweet nothings. And on top of all that, he went to church every Sunday and my Mama loved him.

He was perfect for me, so I thought. He was the one who made me feel better after George low-key broke my heart when I saw him making out with that girl towards the end of junior year. Billie was the one who pursued me like it was his main goal senior year of high school.

And I was so willing and weak then. I fell fast and hard for him. I thought he fell for me too. Why else would you date someone for years and then propose to them?

“Why did you leave me, really?” I ask. I hate how vulnerable I sound.

“I was scared to make a lifelong commitment, Liz. I was twenty-one. Just a kid.”

“Then, why were you grown enough to pick out a ring and get down on one knee and ask me to marry you if you weren’t ready to make a commitment, Billie?”

He shrugs, but he doesn’t speak. Neither do I. I don’t know what I was expecting, but somehow this is still disappointing to me.

That he did come back like I used to pray he would, even so, he doesn’t even really want me. Because if he wanted me, he wouldn’t have left in the first place.

“You don’t know?” I ask.

“I think I just needed to live on my own for a while, away from Selah Falls, to get myself together and figure out the kind of man I wanted to be.”

“Did you figure it out yet?”