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“I can’t. I can’t leave after all of this.” I gesture around the room at nothing in particular.
“You have to. Because if you continue to stand there looking at me, I’m not sure what I’ll do. And for the sake of our friendship, as well as mine and Lulu’s, I need you to go.”
“Hope. Please.”
“Go, Alec.”
My feet feel weighted to the floor. How can I leave? How can I walk away knowing it will be months, possibly even years before I get to look at her again? How can I leave things like this between us?
And yet somehow I find the strength to reach for the door. Flipping the lock, I tug it open, a heaviness I’ve never felt before settling deep in my gut.
For a year and a half I’ve spent burying my feelings for this girl. In that time, I’ve tried to ignore the way my pulse spikes when she walks into a room or the way my breath catches when she smiles at me. All this time believing it was only me.
Now to learn that she felt it too. That this whole time we could have been together. That I’m just learning this as the world is driving us apart. It’s the most bitter pill I’ve ever had to swallow.
“Alec.” Her hand brushes the back of my arm as I step into the hallway.
I turn and she immediately slides into my arms. Wrapping her arms around my middle, she squeezes me impossibly tight.
“I’m going to miss you.”
“I’m going to miss you too,” I admit, kissing the top of her head.
“This isn’t goodbye forever.” She pulls back and hits me with a watery smile. “Just goodbye for now.”
“I know,” I say, even though something deep in my gut tells me otherwise.
How do we go back? How do we erase the last twenty minutes? What we’ve admitted to each other.
And how do we move forward? How do we return to being just friends when we both want more and know it?
“Just so you know,” I cup her face, dropping my forehead to hers, “everything you wrote in that letter was true for me too. I’m in love with you, Hope. Always have been. Probably always will be.”
She lets out a gargled noise somewhere between a sob and a laugh. I can’t bring myself to look down at her face to confirm which it is. So instead, I press my lips to her forehead before I quickly turn and walk away.
