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Seriously?
“I want to thank everyone for coming to celebrate Noa’s twenty-seventh birthday.” He picked up his glass, and I looked around at everyone before lifting my water to sip. “And to Noa, the spirited woman who brought vibrancy back into my life.”
I set my water down and looked up at him curiously as he continued.
“I felt it was best to do this with all our friends here.”
Our friends?
He didn’t bother to know Miranda, and his friends were boring old farts. I pressed my lips together to keep myself from pointing these facts out, something the old Noa would’ve gladly done.
“Do what, Theo?” I asked after a moment.
He set his glass down and pulled something from his pocket. A small box.
The kind you’d find a ring in.
Oh fuck.
Oh.
Fuck.
I expected him to get down on one knee, but he didn’t.
He stepped closer, only crouching a little so he could look into the eyes I’d tried to hide from him. “Marry me. Please.”
He was crowding me, trying to keep my eyes on his. My eyes that would look up, just past his shoulder. I was looking for those blue eyes and he knew it, but as he bent farther to kiss my hands, I saw Dexter anyway. He was making his way through the restaurant, toward us. There was that blue—the shade that both steadied me and rocked my foundation.
I never noticed how important it was to look at the people you loved when you made the biggest decisions of your life. If you took a moment before taking the leap, the ones who knew you best would wordlessly tell you what you needed to know. Both sets of eyes that’d seen me at my worst looked the same. They were panicky and wide, matching mine.
One word was on the tip of each of our tongues.
No.
But when I tried to say it, nothing came out. I was stuck, and Dexter was coming closer and closer. It was so hard to breathe.
“Yes,” I said, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Dexter stopped. I inhaled. Theo squeezed my hand so I would focus on him again, but I could still see Dexter’s eyes—the same ones I’d looked for mere moments ago. Only now, they grabbed the remains of me and twisted, wringing what I might’ve had left of my heart. They still clouded my vision. Even when I was sure he’d left, they were still there, staring at me with the greatest sadness I’d ever witnessed.
And when Theo slipped the diamond on my finger, I realized he was the only person in the room who had a right to be sad. After all, I’d just promised to ruin him for the rest of our lives. Like I had the habit of doing with anything good in my life.
I was finally starting to see what was so attractive about me. People loved my doom. They loved to love the broken pieces of me, as if they could put me back together. But that would never be the case because I’d always be a little bit ruined.
If they were lucky, they’d hear the click before the boom.
If they were lucky, they’d make it out of their love alive.
Noa
I registeredthe beep of the machine next to me and, through my tears, I saw the fluorescent lights above me. It had been hours since the moment Dexter walked away from me with his head hanging. As if he were hurt. I was the one hurting. Physically and emotionally.
I love you. I’ll never stop. And I’ll never forget you.
Those words should’ve killed me.
I’d told myself millions of times not to rely on him, not to love him, and not to pretend that I deserved him. But those things happened, regardless. Because Dexter hadn’t taken no for an answer. Instead, he made himself impossible to forget.
