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“No,” I said. “Not exactly, but…”
It was the wrong thing to say, and I knew it immediately.
“Excuse me?” she said, pulling away from me.
I was frustrated. With the paparazzi. With my ex holding power over Taylor on the cheer team. With the way I hadn’t been able to hold onto a football to save my life lately.
So I made a mistake. I doubled-down.
“We’re in the playoffs,” I said. “We have a real chance to go all the way this year! With you in my life—all of you—everything else is easy. Things have a way of working out, in my experience. And they’ll work out with all of the shit going on with you. Taylor, what I’m trying to say is that I love—”
“Your priorities are way out of sync with mine,” she said, stepping back. “You don’t care about me as much as you think you do. You’re just like Eric.”
The word felt like a knife in my gut, blinding me with pain. And the pain caused me to say something I didn’t mean.
“And you’re more like Isabella than you think!”
She sucked in her breath.
“Isabella wasn’t interested in being with me,” I said bitterly. “She only cared about herself, and how I made her look. That’s what you’re doing right now. Prioritizing how you look with the Dean over actually following your heart.”
I regretted the words as soon as they left my tongue. There was some truth to them, but I still regretted saying them out loud.
Taylor started to say something, shook her head, and then turned and walked away. If she weren’t wearing heels, she probably would have run. I didn’t bother trying to chase her.
Luna heard the park gate close shut, and came running. She stood up with her paws on the chain-link fence and barked at Taylor, as if personally offended that she would leave without saying goodbye.
The woman I loved never looked back as she drove away.
