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"Your ability to have these little things called feelings."
I sigh, because hell no, I am not still in denial about that. But still, I don't say it to them, that I've realized I love them. That I'm done running from my feelings. That I am wholly theirs. It feels weird to proclaim love though, when they still see me as the woman who has avoided it like the plague all my life. Maybe it will be easier if I begin by explaining to them why I never wanted feelings in the first place.
"I was never in denial," I begin, hedging into it. "More like I...just never wanted to end up in the situation that I felt loving someone put you in."
"Which is?" Ezekiel inquires.
"Love has always seemed to me—"Seemedbecause it very much does not anymore. “—that love was a shackle. A word people said to make you easily comply with their shaping you into what they wanted you to be. To make you blind to the fact they were constricting you, making you smaller and lesser until you fit into their perfect little box. On the other end, I've watched people use love as their excuse for losing themselves to become what the other person needed, sacrificing piece after piece of who they are until they don't even notice who's staring back at them in the mirror."
"You watched?" Jeremiah asks. "Who have you watched?"
I sigh. "My mother. Time and time again, falling into whatever she considers to be love, falling into whomever she thought might love her. She changed the way she dressed, the way she spoke, what she liked and disliked, everything, each time, for the newest love of her life. With one man, she loved basketball, and the next it was football. With one, her favorite kind of food was Italian, the next, French. On and on, while I just watched the newest version of my mother evolve each time. As I watchedthese men let her mold herself into their perfect woman, all the while, knowing they weren't going to stay. That they would leave me to pick up the broken pieces. Because it was always me that she cried to, that she confided in, that brought her tissues and cleaned up when she spent the next few weeks in bed, mourning love lost. So yeah, it wasn't denial that I could one day have feelings, it was rebuking them because I never wanted to end up that way. Either being the person who changed every single thing about themselves for someone else and wound up broken hearted in the end, nor the one who allowed someone to change themselves so completely for me, only to break their heart in the end. If that was love, I wanted no part of it."
"That's just it, though," Ezekiel says. "That wasn't love. Not real love. Real love would never want you to change all of who you are, but they'd be telling you that who you are is already enough. Real love wouldn't point out all the ways that you're not worthy, but instead, be letting you know how perfect you are. Real love wouldn't make you doubt, or make you feel less than."
"You said all of this in the past tense though," Jeremiah points out, making me swallow with my nerves at him noticing as much. "So, do you no longer feel the same way? Have you changed your mind on what love looks like and means?"
I lick my lips and release a breath filled with anxiety. "I have."
Ezekiel looks at me over his shoulder, giving me a smile, so I ask him something I've been wondering, especially a lot during last night and the way he seemed to be much more comfortable being with me and Jeremiah by the time we left the restaurant.
"And you, have you decided to trust again?"
That smile fades in an instant and his eyes cut to Jeremiah, narrowing. "What did you tell her?"
I go still. I had assumed Jeremiah told him about the talk we'd had since he'd certainly told him about us being together in the shower after. Clearly, I was wrong. Jeremiah's hands tighten on the steering wheel while Ezekiel stares daggers into him.
"She deserved to know," Jeremiah defends himself.
"Know what?" Ezekiel snaps.
"Why you're distant sometimes. Why you both pull her in then push her away. She needed to know it wasn't her fault."
"So, you decided you should have a conversation, about me, without me being included in it?"
"I asked," I try to intervene, but neither of them seems to hear me.
"You had no fucking right," Ezekiel growls out.
"I had every right. We're all in this relationship."
"What relationship?" Ezekiel barks and I wince at his voice rising just as much as the pain his words strike in me.
What relationship?
My heart feels like it's sinking right now, wondering if I fell in love after all this time only to end up right where I never wanted to be, anyway. My mind feels like it's mocking me, asking if I truly thought what I felt would last. And my body is beginning to tremble with the onslaught from both.
"There's me, you, and her, doing exactly what we said we were gonna do from the moment this all started," Ezekiel continues, each word like a shard of glass cutting me.
"Are you really gonna sit there and act like you're not just as invested in this as we are?"
Ezekiel shakes his head and turns to look out the window. I watch his reflection in the window, trying to convince myself hedoesn't mean any of it. That it's just the pain talking, but that falls short when I'm in pain as well right now. I'm in pain, and I couldn't imagine hurling the words at Ezekiel that he has thrown at me just now. Then, his reflection becomes obscured with the raindrops that begin falling. It feels fitting, for it to begin raining right now, for the sound of the rain falling on the top of the car to break up the strained silence filling the car.
"She's not...her. It's not fair for you to treat her like she is," Jeremiah says.
"Yeah, well, I didn't think our ex was the way she was either. And look how that turned out."
Jeremiah's eyes come to me in the rearview mirror, but I look away.
