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His eyes find mine, and there’s so much to read there. Sadness, regret, pain. “Because I need your friendship, Lucy. I need it.” He stabs a finger to his chest. “I don’t want to lose it.”
“I need you too,” I tell him, honestly. “I want you, Graham.”
It’s bold and maybe the bravest thing I’ve ever told another human being. But it’s the truth. I want Graham. I don’t care about his past, or my brother’s warnings, or whatever. I just ... want him. I want the laughter and the comfort and all the things that I’ve been feeling for him over this past month. I want it all and more.
He runs a hand down his face again, his expression pained. “You know I’m in therapy.”
I nod, not sure where he’s going with this.
“Gloria, my therapist, wanted me to try to make a female friend ... just a friend with no strings attached, no ulterior motives. I had no idea how to do that because I’ve never done it before. And then you were there, with this challenge ...” He pauses, and his eyes look upward as he shakes his head back and forth. “And it was so easy. I’ve never had a friendship with anyone that was this easy.”
I instinctively move back from him, just a little. My hand holding on to the edge of the pool to keep me steady, my body moving up and down with the current.
“What?” I’m so confused right now. “So this,” I say, pointing to him and then to myself, “was an assignment?”
He stares at me. “Only at first. You have to understand that I’ve spent my whole life not knowing what a true friendship is, not ever having a real meaningful relationship with anyone. Even Kyle,” he says. “That was until I started spending time with you. Before that, I didn’t think I was even capable of it.”
“But that’s why you wanted to spend time with me? Why you wanted to do the stupid challenge?”
“Lucy—” He reaches for me, his eyes pleading, but I move back farther. “It may have started that way, but you have truly become one of the most important people in my life.”
His words should mean something to me. They should ease some of the pain I’m feeling right now. But they don’t. I feel like an idiot. An inexperienced fool. Here I was thinking the way things started with Graham and me was fate. We’d known each other pretty much our whole lives, we reconnected, we did all these stupid challenges ... things felt like they were growing. And it turns out it was just an assignment?
“Lucy, please,” he says, reaching out to grasp me, but I move even farther away.
“Don’t,” I say, holding out a hand. I need to think. I need to process this. I can’t have him near me or touching me.
“You’re my friend, Lucy. I don’t want to lose that.”
“But ... but we kissed. That kiss didn’t feel like just friendship,” I say, trying to make sense of it all.
His face falls. “I messed up. I shouldn’t have let that happen.”
“You shouldn’t have let that happen? I was there too, you know. Hell, I initiated it.”
“I’ve come a long way here, Lucy. But I still make mistakes.”
That comment hits me like a punch in the gut. Mistake. He thinks it was a mistake.
“So, you just, what? Want to forget about that and go back to being friends?”
“Yes, Lucy, please. Can we just go back?”
“Back to your assignment?”
“That’s not what you are to me, Lucy. You have to know that.”
“You could have told me, you know,” I say, feeling the hurt push outside my body as tears well up and flow down my cheeks. “You could have said I was just some freaking therapy assignment. Then I would have known my place. And I wouldn’t have ...” I stop, letting out a shaky breath.
I leave the words unsaid, because I don’t know what I want to say. I wouldn’t have fallen for him? I wouldn’t have kissed him? I wouldn’t have done any of it in the first place?
But he kissed me too. He kissed me like I’ve never been kissed before. Not that there’s much to compare it to. But it felt like he wanted it. He held me like he wanted it too. Or is that just something Graham does, the reason he’s been seeing a therapist in the first place?
Mistake. He said it was a mistake. The word keeps repeating itself in my head, like it’s stuck there.
“I feel like you used me,” I say, the tears coming down harder now.
His brows pull together. “What? No, Lucy. I swear that isn’t it.”
