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My eyebrows soar. “Are you kidding? They voted him captain? That dude’s got the personality of a cactus.”
Case snickers. “Accurate assessment.”
Several seconds of silence tick by, and I brace myself for the change of subject. I feel it coming the way I always know when it’s going to rain. I’m a barometer for rain and awkward conversations.
“I’ve really missed you.”
His grief-stricken confession hangs between us. My heart can’t handle it when he says things like that.
I bite the inside of my cheek. “Case…”
“I know I have no right to say that. I just…I miss you. I can’t help it.” He hesitates. “Do you miss me at all?”
He gives me that earnest expression, and it’s another hit to my already aching heart. It sucks because Case is a genuinely good guy. He wasn’t being malicious when he did what he did. I truly don’t believe he meant to hurt me. He made a mistake.
No, corrects the sharp voice in my head. He didn’t make a mistake.
He made a choice.
“G?” he prompts.
“Of course I miss you,” I answer, because I’ve never been able to lie to him. “But that doesn’t change the fact that we broke up.”
That brings a stricken look to his face.
Letting out a defeated breath, Case walks to the black leather couch my roommate’s parents bought for us when they realized the prior sofa we were using had come from a garage sale in Hastings. Mya’s parents are…snobs is putting it nicely. But they’re snobs with great taste.
Case sinks onto the couch and drops his head in both palms.
It takes all my willpower not to go over there and wrap my arms around him. I’ve always hated seeing Case upset. It’s just such an unnatural state for him. He’s generally a positive person, taking everything in stride. And like I said, he’s a good guy. With a truly good heart. That makes it impossible to hate him.
Finally, he lifts his head. “I want you back. Please, baby.” His voice cracks slightly. “I hate not being with you.”
Little fissures form in the armor I’ve erected around my heart.
“I know you hate this too,” he pleads. “Being apart. Like this summer, not being with you? It was brutal. Just fucking unbearable.”
Yes and no. I did miss him this summer. I’m not going to deny that. But I also wasn’t crying myself to sleep and composing lovelorn messages in my Notes app, paragraph after paragraph about how much he hurt me and what it would take for us to be together again.
The truth is, I don’t know if it’s even possible. I’m not a cold or rigid person. My friends tell me I forgive way too easily. And I have forgiven Case, truly.
But I also can’t forget what he did.
“You cheated on me,” I remind him. My tone is flat.
“It was just a kiss,” he says miserably.
A rush of anger and indignation heats my throat before I can stop it. I open my mouth, but he’s quick to speak before I can.
“I know, I get it. We don’t agree on what cheating is. I don’t think what I did is exactly cheating—”
“You made out with someone else! That’s not ‘just a kiss,’ Case. And it’s cheating.”
“It was stupid, okay? I fully acknowledge I fucked up.”
This is the same fight we had in June after he confessed what he’d done. The same fight we kept having when he tried to win me back. I’m sick of it.
“You want to get back together, and yet you won’t even admit that what you did was cheating.”
“It was a mistake.” His features become strained when he clocks my inflexible expression. “All right. I cheated. Okay? I cheated, and I’ve regretted it every second of every day since it happened. I was drunk, and freaking out because it was getting so serious with us, and I…freaked out,” he repeats, hanging his head in shame.
I feel awkward standing there in front of him, so I walk over to sit down. I keep a couple feet of distance between us, but he turns, shifting his body so he’s angled toward me. His legs are so long that one of his scuffed-up sneakers grazes my socked foot.
“You told me you would think about it,” he reminds me in a soft voice. “About trying again.”
I release a weary sigh. “I did think about it. But like I told you the last time we texted, I don’t want to get back together.”
His face falls. When he reaches for my hand, I let him take it. He laces his fingers through mine. His hand feels so familiar. Warm and dry, the pads of his long fingers callused.
He implores me with his eyes. “Please. I just want to prove that I’m not messing around here or playing games. I made a mistake and I own it. But the only thing I need you to know right now, the thing that matters most, is that I love you.”
