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“Shelby.” He said my name, but it was on a sigh, his face tipped up to the sky.
“Talk to me.”
“I can’t.”
I stepped forward, almost reaching for him, then tucking my arms around my torso instead. “You can. I’m here.”
He looked over at me, then turned away before I got a read on his expression. “I knew I should have called this whole thing off.”
Swallowing, I nodded, guilt weighing down on me as I watched him. “I’m sorry I tried to reassure you that it was just nerves. You were so excited about making this big gesture for her, so I thought it was just cold feet.”
This time when he looked at me, he lingered, and his eyes softened. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I shouldn’t have convinced myself to go through with it.”
“What’d she say, Paul? I don’t understand what happened out there.”
He shook his head, looking at the ground between us. “She said things have been different between us since I’ve been home, and I already told you I felt the same way.”
“Yeah, but what does that even mean?” I asked, throwing my arms out and then letting them fall with a smack against my thighs.
My mind spun as a surprising amount of anger burned through me. I didn’t get it. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. What waswrongwith Roxy? Did she seriously not understand what she was giving up? Did she really not get that she’d let the best guy ever slip through her ungrateful fingers? If I were her, I would have been saying yes before he’d even made it to one knee, and then we’d have a laugh over the fact that I was so eager to spend my life with him that I hadn’t even let him pop the question.
But of course, I wasn’t her. I didn’t have the medically-uncomplicated future ahead of me that she had. So, it wasn’t worth thinking about.
“It’s going to sound stupid if I say it out loud,” he said quietly.
“I highly doubt that. What is it?”
He shuffled his feet, tucking his hands into his pockets with a slight hunch to his broad shoulders. “You promise you won’t think I’m totally lame?”
“Ooh, I don’t know,” I said, grasping at the chance to make him smile, even if only for a second. “That’s assuming I don’t already think that.”
The corners of his mouth turned up slightly and he let out a breath. “I think she wasn’t… I don’t know…attractedto me.”
The silence hung around us as I looked him over. What the heck was he talking about? How could she not be attracted to him? The guy could totally moonlight as a male model with his gorgeous green eyes, the way his smooth skin stretched over his strong jaw and cheekbones in a way that gave him that chiseled-from-marble vibe. And let’s not even start on how timelessly handsome he looked in that Marine Corps uniform. Objectively, of course. Anyone would agree. Especially Roxy. She got to kiss those lips and be held by those arms. Surely, she’d agree with gusto.
I shook my head. “No. I’m sure that’s not it.”
I felt him searching my face, but I couldn’t meet his gaze. If I did, I was sure he’d see something there that I didn’t want him to.
He groaned. “It’s hard to explain. It’s just a feeling I got when we were together. Like something was missing. It wasn’t… Ugh. I don’t know.”
I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. He just paced around the small space. I bit my lip. “It wasn’t what?”
“It wasn’t the way it’s supposed to feel, Shel. I don’t know. It was like we were friends.” He stopped pacing and went to the wall, leaning his back against it. “It was like all that time we were talking while I lived in Hawaii, we were so close. And then once I got back here, I expected the sparks between us to be huge when you mixed the in person relationship stuff with the way we were before. It should have been fire. But instead, it wasfriendly.”
“What, like us?” It was a risky question, but it came out before I could stop it.
He let out a dark chuckle. “Yeah, sure.”
I buried the urge to explore his response. “Did she say that, though? Did she say she saw you as a friend?”
“Not in so many words. She basically said she liked it better long-distance, though, so that screams platonic relationship, if you ask me. I mean, come on, you kind of have towantto be around the person you’re with, right? I get being solid when you’re apart if you’re a good couple, but actually preferring to be apart? That’s just wrong.”
I considered this. I was his friend, and I didn’t prefer for us to be apart. Sure, we did great with thousands of miles between us since we communicated really well, and we’d seen each other through some serious stuff while separated. That being said, I definitely enjoyed spending time with him in person and absolutely preferred this to that. But then again, I secretly drooled over him in a way that definitely had nothing to do with platonic feelings. So yeah, I guessed I could see the issue.
“Is that how you felt about her?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“What?”
