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“Are you sure?” I press. “You said it the other day… you think their engagement is a huge mistake. Do you still believe that? Even though you’re walking away from her?”
“That’s different.” He reaches for my hands across the table, but I hold them out of reach. “I don’t think she’s making a mistake because she should be with me. How I feel for her has nothing to do with that.” Present tense. How he feels, not how he felt. This is part of the problem. If this continues for much longer, he’s going to turn me into a jealous, paranoid fool. I’ll lose him, and I won’t be surprised by it.
“How can you be sure?” I ask him. “That your feelings for her aren’t clouding your judgment? I mean, isn’t she the reason you and Ben hate each other now?”
He lets out a frustrated breath. “She’s only part of the reason, but she’s not the reason. Ben is the reason. If he wasn’t such a jackass, maybe we wouldn’t be fighting for as long as we have.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything!” I don’t mean for it to come out as a yell, and he startles at my tone. “You’ve been in love with her for your entire life and your own brother stole her away from you. Of course you think he’s a jackass. How is Alice only part of the problem when to me, it’s clear that she’s the source?”
I can’t be his second choice. I refuse to be anyone’s second choice ever again. Maybe I’d feel different if he were over Alice, but I can’t expect him to have changed his mind that quickly. Even if mine did about Ben.
He blows out a breath, looking away from me. Then he says, “You’re right. I’m an idiot to ask you for anything. But you should know that there’s more than just Alice that came between me and my brother.”
“What else is there?”
His mouth opens and closes, until the moment passes, and he hasn’t uttered a single word. I’m not sure I believe him, that there’s anything other than Alice.
“But don’t you see where I’m coming from?” I ask him instead. “There’s too much baggage between the two of us to give this a fair shot. Because—”
Because even though you might hate him, Ben is your brother and he’s not going anywhere, and I don’t trust myself not to fall into old patterns.
Because I don’t trust you not to fall into old patterns, either.
Because you almost walked away from this once, and I don’t trust you not to try to again.
But it isn’t fair of me to put that on him. Any of it. I knew what this was when we started. We both did. Maybe the issue is we weren’t supposed to last this long. It was only meant to be temporary, and our rebound is long overdue to end.
“Because what, Marcela?” His voice is soft, coaxing in a way that makes me want to dig deeper. Get to the root of all my fears and lay them bare for him to parse through. Unburden myself by burdening him. But I don’t want him to change my mind. And maybe a small part of me isn’t ready for his mind to change, either.
Instead, I don’t say a thing. Because I’m good at that.
“How do we know if we don’t try? Marcela—” He bursts up from his seat, coming around the table to kneel beside me. “Forget about Ben and Alice for a second. Pretend they don’t exist,” he implores me. “How do you feel about me?”
My eyes shut. If I meet his eyes now, he just might convince me, and that’s the last thing I want. “Theo, I can’t just forget—”
“Answer the question, please.” He cups my cheeks with his big hands. “Marcela, look at me. How do you feel?”
“I care about you.” The words come automatically, despite the voice in my head screaming at me to run. “Of course I care about you. How could I not? How could I not have fallen for you after—” I cut myself off, mash my lips together to keep from telling him everything.
I have to shut my eyes at his joyous expression, because he won’t be feeling that way for very long. We can’t do this.
“I promised to be honest with you, but I don’t think you want me to be this honest.” I shake my head, at him, at myself, at this wildly romantic date I’m about to burn to the ground.
His hands fall to mine, intertwining our fingers. “Tell me.” His voice is low, bracing. “Tell me everything you’re feeling, Marce. Please.”
I suck in a deep breath. He’s going to hate me for this.
“I meant it when I said it was probably a stupid idea for us to trust each other. We’ve openly admitted to being in love with other people and using each other to get over them. There are no expectations between us, not really. Real relationships don’t work like this.”
Not that either of us would know. But what I do know is the second we put a different set of expectations on our shoulders, the more likely we are to disappoint each other. To hurt each other in even worse ways.
“No expectations. That’s why I could agree to a physical relationship with you when I knew how you felt about Alice. It’s why I could justify hiding my feelings for Ben from you, and it’s why you didn’t feel the need to tell me Ben and Alice already knew about yours. It’s why I held back my anger at you for disappearing without a trace. We leaned on each other the way friends do, lost ourselves in each other to forget about the people we had no business loving. But we don’t have any business thinking we can love each other instead. That’s not how this works.”
“No expectations,” he repeats, his voice as hard and derisive as I’ve ever heard it. “Is that really what we’ve been to you this entire time?”
“What else could we have been?” I counter instead. “These were your terms from the very beginning. Casual. Nothing more.”
“Maybe I changed my mind. Are you telling me you haven’t? That you never once considered the possibility of something more with me?”
