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“Want another one?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
After Lark had her second shot, I dragged her over to the couch and made her sit down.
I took both of her hands in mine and looked into her blue eyes.
“You can talk to me about anything, Lark. I just wanted you to know that,” I said.
Lark gazed back at me and swallowed, looking down at our joined hands.
“I can’t talk to you about this,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because… Because…” she stood up and started pacing a little bit. “I need another shot.”
She went to the kitchen and downed her third and I waited for her to come back.
“Listen,” she said, still pacing. If that was what she needed to do to get this out, then she could go ahead and pace if she had to.
“I agreed to this whole thing between us, the just having sex and still being regular roommates thing with no feelings or commitments or definitions and I was fine with it at first because I knew you didn’t do relationships. I figured if that was the only way I could have you, then it was worth it.” She stopped pacing and looked at me with tears in her eyes.
“I told myself not to fall for you and that I could put bubble wrap around my heart or just not have feelings for you and that didn’t fucking work. Of course it didn’t fucking work. I’m so mad at you, Sydney,” she said. Her words were kind of jumbled, so it took me a second to tease out where she was going with this.
“What did I do?” I asked slowly, so terrified of the answer.
“You made me fall in love with you. Asshole.”
I didn’t think the last word was necessary, but that wasn’t the most important part of what she said.
“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” I said, my body starting to shake uncontrollably.
“I said I love you, and I know that’s not what you wanted. It’s not what I wanted, but it happened and now I’m going to have to move in with my sister and listen to her having loud sex with her fiancée all the time.” Tears welled up and spilled down her cheeks and, even more than her words, that affected me so much that I got up from the couch and hugged her.
“Shhh, it’s okay,” I said as she cried on my shoulder.
What the actual fuck was I supposed to do here? She absolutely was not in love with me, that was for sure. She couldn’t be.
“It’s not okay,” Lark said, and I pulled back and wiped her eyes with my sleeves.
“This is not a big deal, Lark,” I said.
“Me being in love with you isn’t a big deal?” she asked.
“No, because you’re not in love with me,” I said gently.
Lark’s eyes narrowed and she pushed me away. I almost fell against the coffee table, but I caught myself at the last second.
“Fuck you, Sydney,” she said, pointing at me with a shaking finger. “How dare you? How fuckingdareyou?!”
“What?!” I said, completely taken aback at her intense reaction. “Why are you mad?”
Lark closed her eyes and took a deep breath through her nose, as if she was gathering her thoughts.
“I just told you that I loved you, and you decided that apparently I don’t know what I’m talking about. I guess I don’t know my own feelings,” she said, her voice dripping in sarcasm. “You have got some seriously fucked up ideas about how emotions work, Sydney. You’ve just decided to exempt yourself from falling in love, as if that’s a thing that you can just do. A switch you can turn on or turn off. And I did try! But I love you anyway and right now, I really wish I didn’t.”
Her words were like physical blows. Like slices from a knife. She was angry and she was hurt, and it was all directed at me.
