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“I know, Erika mentioned it. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’ll be seven days a week at first, until I get it up and running, but then I’ll split my time. Weekdays there. Weekends here.”
Just like my schedule. “That’s great, but what was with the big secret? You didn’t think that I’d want to know my best friend was going to live in the same city all the time instead of half the time? That I wouldn’t be thrilled that my best friend was taking a huge step forward in his career?”
“I was hoping that when you found out you wouldn’t be my best friend. Or at least not just that. I was biding my time, hoping that when I found an apartment there, it wouldn’t be my apartment, but our apartment.”
My brain scrambles to sort all this out, but it’s too much. I can’t think, I don’t know how to feel—
“I’m in love with you, Kelly. I’ve been in love with you since the day I met you. I loved you like a boy loves a girl back then, when you were the only one there for me. And now I love you like a man loves a woman, because you’re the only one I want. For always.”
My heart leaps, but he’s not done.
His voice is sad. Resigned. “But I don’t…” He gives his head a quick shake. “I don’t want to take it slow. I can’t sit around and wait for you to figure out if you feel the same.”
My heart stumbles in my chest. “Mark—”
He lifts his hand to my cheek, and though the gesture’s gentle, the expression on his face is resigned, and my heart beats faster in panic.
“I can’t keep waiting for you, Kelly. I can’t keep wasting year after year hoping you’ll feel the same, only to lose you every time a tarot card or crystal ball leads you elsewhere.”
His lips are soft against mine, a whisper of a kiss that’s both meltingly tender and heartbreakingly bittersweet.
“Mark.” My voice is a shattered whisper, and I lift desperate fingers to his wrist, clinging. “I told you I think I love you.”
His smile is sad. “I want more than ‘I think,’ Kell. I deserve better.” He gently eases away, handing me the car keys. “Take it. I’ll find another ride.”
Helplessly I watch him go. And as tears run down my face, I realize why his kiss seemed so brutally bittersweet.
The kiss was a goodbye.
December 24, Sunday Afternoon
“Thanks again for inviting me to this,” I tell Erika as I follow her around the auditorium, putting cups next to the plates that she places at each setting.
She glances over her shoulder with a slight smile. “You’re welcome. Figured you could use something to keep your mind off…you know.”
Yeah. Yeah, I do know. I know all too well that my ex-boyfriend flew out to Oklahoma this morning after a painfully awkward talk over pancakes at the local diner. I’d told him that while I was pretty sure someone out there wanted us to be together…it wasn’t me.
But who are we kidding? Colin is so not the problem here.
The real problem is that Mark’s at his parents’ house. Without me.
I wasn’t quite uninvited. Mark’s mom called this morning saying that they’d all still love to have me over for dinner, and that Mark’s dad could come pick me up, drive me out there, and then take me back home afterward.
That just about says it all, doesn’t it? Mark doesn’t hate me so much that he wants me to be alone on Christmas Eve, but neither can he bear to spend time with me alone.
I lied to his mom, told her that the sore throat I’d been fighting all week had finally won and that I was sick.
I’m the worst. There’s got to be a special place in hell for people who lie on Christmas Eve to their best friend’s parents, but the alternative was unthinkable. I can’t sit across the dining room table from him eating mashed potatoes and knowing that things will never ever be the same between us.
Erika texted to see if I was okay, and when I babbled out the whole sad story, she insisted I come over to the high school auditorium to volunteer with the dinner for the homeless that she’d helped plan. Desperate for a distraction, I happily agreed.
“I have dinner with my mom,” she goes on, “but if you want to come over after, I was going to watch Christmas movies. I haven’t seen Love Actually this year. Seems like your jam. All that cheesy romance?”
I make a rude grunting sound.
“No?” she asks.
