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“And that will never happen.”
“But you want it to happen?” Antonio asked. “If it was possible, would you want him to be in love with you?”
“No,” I answered honestly. “I like Cal, I really do, but I don’t want to fall in love with him and I don’t want him to love me.”
“Why?”
“Because, Hannah, he made me feel pretty for the first time in my life when I was fifteen years old. He kissed me like I was someone worthy of desire and asked me out, but then he didn’t show up. That devastated me, sure, but you know what was worse? The nothingness that came afterward. He never sought me out to apologize, to explain why he’d clearly forgotten all about me. He just went on with his life like none of it ever happened, like I didn’t matter. I wasn’t even worth an apology or explanation,” I sighed. “Not even for the simple fact that I was his best friend’s sister.”
“That’s not who he is.” Antonio’s defense of his friend felt like betrayal, but he was right.
“I know he’s not that man anymore. I’ve gotten to know him, and I do know that, but I’m not willing to risk my future happiness on a man who doesn’t want the same things I do. It’s a recipe for heartache.”
“He doesn’t realize he’s in love, Teddy. When he does, he will be the man you need him to be.”
“He won’t,” I insisted. “Not because he isn’t a good guy, but because he doesn’t want what I want, plain and simple. Even if he is in love, he wants to just go on sleeping together and hanging out until the end of time. I want more than that.” I shook my head at their matching hopeful expressions. “I know what I want, and I refuse to waste my time hoping he’ll change his mind.”
He wouldn’t, and I’d end up just like his last woman: a teary-eyed mess, fleeing so he wouldn’t be forced to see my pain.
No, thank you.
“He didn’t forget about you,” Hannah said on a sigh. “Not really.”
My eyes went wide with surprise. “You knew?”
“Not that he’d asked you to the dance and bailed, not until recently anyway. Thanks for that, by the way.” She rolled her eyes and offered a smile to show she wasn’t too upset. “But I’ve always known where he was that weekend. With Kara.”
My shoulders sank. For some reason, that made me feel worse. “Okay.” I should have known, and I guess, on some level, I did know that he blew me off for someone pretty, bubbly and popular.
“Not like that, Teddy.” She told me all about Kara’s father’s heart attack and how Cal had been at her side for a full week until he was released from the hospital and she went back to college. “She never reached out to him again, the bitch.”
I knew she hoped that story would make me feel better, but I felt worse. In fact, I felt sick to my stomach. Cal was definitely not the man for me, not for my teenage crush and not for the woman I was today. Kara had been his on-and-off girlfriend all through high school and she was everything I wasn’t.
“I need to go.”
“Come on, Teddy, please. I told you so you’d know he wasn’t off partying. He didn’t blow you off.”
“But he did, Hannah.”
“Okay,” she nodded, “but he had a semi-good reason for it.”
I nodded, conceding the point. “He did, and I would have understood. The fact that he never came to me to explain means he just plain forgot that he’d asked me. It means he never had any intention of taking me to that dance, and honestly that just makes me feel worse. It makes me feel like I was then, and I am now, invisible to him.”
“But he’s in love with you,” she insisted.
I shook my head. “He isn’t, Hannah. He wants me now because I told him in no uncertain terms that I didn’t want him. Somehow, the ugly duckling dinged his ego, and he can’t let it go until I’m begging for scraps of his attention.”
Cal was exactly the man I thought he was. Sure, he was kind and sweet and he loved Rosie to pieces, but when it came to non-family women, he was a cruel jerk who only cared about what he wanted.
“I won’t do it,” I insisted, “not again.”
“And what if you’re wrong, Teddy? What if his feelings are real and deep and meaningful this time?”
“Then I’d say it sucks for him. As someone who’s been in love with someone who doesn’t return the feelings, it sucks. But the good news is he’ll get it over it. We all do, eventually.”
“You haven’t.” Hannah and Antonio’s words hit me simultaneously.
“But I have. I got to know him again, satisfied my curiosity about him sexually, and now I know we would never work. I gave Cal exactly what he wanted—no-strings sex—and I had a good time. Now I’m ready to move on and find someone who’s more suitable for me.”
