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“He did?” She seems almost surprised by this. “You must think I’m a horrible person.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to understand why people make the choices they do. I wasn’t there, so I can’t judge your actions. It’s clear you two were meant for each other,” I tell her instead of saying what my initial reaction was to finding out this little piece of information.
“Thank you for saying that. Though I wouldn’t blame you if you thought poorly of me for it. I wish I could say I was young and clouded by love, and while both of those things would be true, I was also extremely selfish.”
“Sometimes life warrants a little selfishness,” I say, my mind once again drifting back to Blake.
I know I hurt him. I know some people might learn of what happened and question how I could just end our engagement so abruptly and with no real reasons to give other than my mom was sick and judge me for it. But life is too short to settle for things that don’t make you happy. So in that way, I was selfish. And while I felt awful for it, I don’t regret my decision for a single second because it brought me here, to Remi. And while I may not know exactly where this is going, I’m excited to find out, and excitement has been in short supply in my life until recently.
“I guess it does,” she quietly agrees. “So when are you seeing Remi next?” She changes to a lighter topic of conversation, going from serious and contemplative to excited and nosy in a matter of seconds.
“Tonight.” Warmth creeps up my neck at the thought. “I’m actually going to stay the night with him again.” I don’t know why I tell her as much. Maybe because she’s the closest thing I have to a friend, and right now, that’s exactly what I need. Or maybe it’s because I suffer from word-vomit-itis and don’t know when to shut up sometimes.
“Again?”
I don’t realize this is the first time I’ve mentioned as much. Then again, I haven’t really seen her a lot in the past three weeks outside of with patients.
“I stayed with him last weekend, too,” I admit. “And the weekend before that.”
“I knew it!” She slaps her knee excitedly. “I knew something was up when Remi missed two Sunday dinners in a row and then showed up at the last one looking like he hadn’t slept in two days. So this is like legit. Like you two are together, together.”
“Yeah, I guess we are.” I nod slowly.
“You have no idea how happy I am to hear this. I mean it. There isn’t a person on this planet who deserves happiness more than Remi.”
“Well, it is still really new.” I try to reel her in, or maybe it’s me I’m trying to reel in because I’ve kind of gone off the deep end myself.
“No, I know.” She shakes her head. “It’s just... well, we’ve all been kind of waiting for this day for years. You know he’s never had a girlfriend before, right?”
“He really hasn’t?” I ask, just to confirm something Remi already told me himself.
“He really hasn’t. He’s never even so much as kind of dated someone. So to say this is a big deal, well... It’s a big deal.” She gauges my reaction, quickly adding, “I’m sorry. That probably feels like a lot of pressure.”
“Is it weird that it doesn’t?” I ask, dragging my bottom lip between my teeth to stop the smile that threatens to split my face apart. “I mean, I kind of like that he hasn’t been with anyone else in that way, if that makes any real sense.”
“It makes total sense.”
“And I thought I would be scared by how fast I’ve fallen for him, and while I am terrified for other reasons, I’m not scared of my feelings for him.”
“I get that. When Sutton and I first got together, I was scared, too. Mainly because we were hiding it from everyone, and I was forced to lie to my best friend in the whole world. But I never felt scared of how I felt for him. I knew I loved him from the first moment I saw him. To me, it was years of pining finally coming to fruition, and all I wanted to do was wrap him in my arms and never let him go. Consequences be damned.”
“How did you know you loved him?” I find myself asking. “That early on, I mean.”
“It’s hard to explain. Almost like the world stopped for a few brief moments and all that existed was him. In that moment, he was everything. My sun. My sky. The very earth beneath my feet. The air in my lungs. The blood in my veins. It took my brain a while to catch up, but my heart knew the significance of that moment right away.”
“I can’t say I’ve ever been that sure of anything in my life,” I admit.
“I wasn’t either. I mean, I knew something had changed in me that day, but like I said, it took my brain a while to catch up.”
I think on her words for a long moment, realizing she’s just perfectly described how I feel about the day I met Remi. I knew the instant I looked into those incredible green eyes of his that something inside me changed. I just didn’t understand in the moment what that was. Now, I think maybe I’m starting to.
“Did you always know you’d end up together?” I lean back in my chair, crossing my feet at the ankles.
“My thirteen-year-old self sure hoped we would, but no. In fact, I spent many years certain that we wouldn’t.”
“What changed?”
“I can’t say I honestly know. It all happened so fast.”
