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“Yes,” I say quietly, my heart betraying me in my chest, because of course I remember.
We’d been flirting in AP Government for months, to the point where romance-novel heroes had started to take his face. Like most modern relationships, it started over social media. Your color-coded study guides are so cute, he typed, and I responded, So are you. It was easier to be brave when you couldn’t see someone’s face.
Then he asked if I was free on Saturday. It was October, so we went to a pumpkin patch, got lost in a corn maze, and sipped hot chocolate from the same cup. After dinner at a restaurant so nice it had a dress code, we made out in his car. I felt drunk on him, drunk on the way he ran his hands down my body and kissed the tip of my nose. It was more than the omg a boy likes me relationships from earlier in high school. This felt serious. Adult. Like something out of one of my books.
It felt like he could love me.
My face must be turning red because I’m suddenly warm all over.
Evidently, the memory doesn’t trigger the same response in him. He’s still calm, collected. “Okay. Do you remember our second date? Third? Seventh?”
“I mean, no, but I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
“Exactly. I think you want the entire relationship to be like that first date.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I say, but he holds up a finger to indicate he’s not finished. I slump back in my seat, fully aware I could do it now. Grab the bandanna and shut him up.
“I could tell you were disappointed when we just hung out and did homework or watched a movie. I felt this weird expectation with you. Like I was never going to measure up to the guys in your books.”
Of all the regrets I have about Spencer, at the top of the list is that I told him about my reading preferences. He took it better than most, but in retrospect, maybe it was because he just wanted to sleep with me.
“I wasn’t disappointed,” I say, but I’m not sure I trust my memory. “It felt like you just… stopped caring.”
It was more than that, though. It was how I wanted to hold hands in public and he’d keep his in his pockets. It was how I wanted to lean my head on his shoulder in a movie theater and he’d wiggle his shoulder until I moved. I tried to get close, but he kept pushing.
I planned romantic dates too: ice-skating, a picnic, a boat ride. Most of the time, he stared at his phone so much that I wondered if I really was that uninteresting.
“Maybe I did,” he admits. “It started to feel like an obligation, I guess. Okay, that sounds bad, but… high school relationships aren’t really meant to last.”
It’s clear now that Spencer and I were never going to have a happily-ever-after. The best parts of our relationship happened in a bed when our parents weren’t home, and maybe that’s okay. It’s okay that he wasn’t the perfect boyfriend.
What’s not okay is that he’s still sitting here, making me doubt something that’s never let me down.
“I’m sorry our relationship was such a terrible seven months for you.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He grimaces, staring down at his coffee cup. “Rowan…” Then he does something perplexing: he stretches his hand across the table as though he wants me to hold it. When it becomes clear that I won’t, he draws it back.
I think about Kirby and Mara. Their hand squeezes never seem compulsory. My parents, too—they still have major heart eyes for each other after twenty-five years.
“Look, I’m not sure what you wanted from this, but if your goal was to make me feel like shit, congratulations?”
It felt like an obligation. You felt like an obligation is how my mind warps it. I want so badly to be stronger than this. Luke and I even signed each other’s yearbooks. But Spencer has never not been complicated, and maybe it’s because I’m the complicated one.
Maybe I’m too difficult to love.
With a sigh, he scrubs a hand through his hair. “I’m just trying to explain what happened, at least on my side. You want this idealized romance, and I don’t think that’s real life. I’m pretty sure all relationships get boring after a while.”
It’s in that moment that pity is the overwhelming thing I feel. I feel sorry for this troglodyte because he has no idea that love doesn’t have to sour over time. I don’t need to be whisked away in a horse-drawn carriage, and I fully believe both partners are responsible for making a relationship romantic, if that’s what they want. Not whatever heteronormative bullshit that tells us guys are supposed to make the first move and pay for dinner and get down on one knee.
But I do want something big and wild, something that fills my heart completely. I want a fraction of what Emma and Charlie or Lindley and Josef or Trisha and Rose have, even though they’re fictional. I’m convinced that when you’re with the right person, every date, every day feels that way.
“I’m gonna go,” he says, getting up and turning away from the table.
“Spencer?”
He glances back at me, and with a sweet smile, I dive forward to yank off his armband.
1:33 p.m.
