I close my eyes.

Take in a deep breath through my nose, counting to five.

I exhale.

Open my eyes.

Look into the camera.

Smile.

“Hi there,” I say in my most polished voice, “my name is Marina Owens and this is Palm Tree and Honey Bees beekeeping 101. I hope to teach you over the next two hours the beginning basics of starting your own hive, whether for honey production, positive environmental impacts, or just pure love for honey bees.”

I smile until my smile starts to shake a bit and I feel crazy and then my eyes dart up to look at Laz behind the camera. “That’s it, right?”

He nods, brows furrowed. “I think we got it.”

I sigh and adjust the collar of my bee suit. The hives are behind me in the background and the girls are paying me no attention but Laz thought being in the suit would make me look more professional.

He’s also the one who, a couple of weeks ago, thought that if I was going to start filming my own online classes, that I should actually be in the video. That wasn’t part of my original plan—it’s supposed to be about the bees, not me. I was just going to film everything myself and do a bunch of voice over work, maybe some shots of me in action, but I would be totally suited up, you wouldn’t be able to see me.

But Laz was insistent that I show myself off since I’m “bloody hot” (his words, not mine) and it might attract more people, especially men. I’m not sure I like the whole idea of men being interested in learning about bees because of me—especially as my Instagram always receives a slew of sexist and misogynistic comments from guys every time I post a picture of myself or remind them that I am, in fact, a female beekeeper.

But I do need the extra income and as long as I’m not trying to be sexy and wearing a bikini or something, it’s something I’ll have to be okay with.

Plans change.

Now, though, I’m feeling that more than ever.

Like I said, it was weeks ago when Laz said he would help film me.

But the Laz from then isn’t the same Laz as now.

I don’t know what the hell happened.

Actually, I have some idea.

It was the moment I told him I loved him.

I swear something inside him changed.

Something between us changed.

I recognized fear in his eyes after we had sex in that bathroom at the show, after we had our first fight. At first, I thought it was just for the magnitude of what we were to each other, the fact that love is scary. Of course it is. It’s this force of nature, bigger, more powerful than anything, greater and stronger than hate. At the same time, it’s not tangible. You can’t hold it in your hand. What else is there in the world that is worth so much but you can’t save or store or sell? Love is the currency of the heart. It exists only in us, powered with every single beat.

What I think I’m learning is that love is something you can give but it comes at a cost. Someone may not want the love you’re giving and the cost is greater than you could imagine. When I love Laz, when I look at him and think about how much this man means to me, how deep he’s carved himself in my heart, I know there’s a point where the love I give will start to deplete me. Maybe love is only limitless if someone takes it from you. It’s when they send it back that it starts to fade.

I know I’m thinking about this while staring at Laz as he fiddles with the camera. He’s not looking at me. I have a feeling there’s nothing interesting about the camera either, that he’s reviewing the footage as something to do, not because he has to.

He doesn’t want to look at me.

The last two days, he’s barely even touched me.

We haven’t had sex.

It bothers me.

Not in some greedy way, like I’m some horny teenager who pouts because she can’t get her fill (though, yeah there’s some of that, hey I just started having sex for the first time, in some ways I’m closer to a teenager than I would like to admit). It bothers me because he’s pulling away.

Right now, I’m standing in front of him and the only time he’ll look at me is when he’s looking through the lens. It gives him distance.

“Laz,” I say softly, swallowing hard, not wanting to bring anything up, wanting to keep pretending. I’ve asked him a few times “what’s wrong, is anything wrong?” and every time he tells me he’s fine and then he clams up. If I really push it, he snaps at me. Makes me feel like I’m being a psycho girlfriend again. Makes me feel like I’m one of his exes, the ones that would push and push and push at him to get something out of him.

I don’t want to be them but I can completely see their point.

“Laz,” I say again, louder, and come over to him, placing my hand on top of the camera. “Talk to me.”

He glances up, meets my eyes for a moment and I’m surprised to see there’s a new version of him, like someone else is operating his body. I can’t see his soul anymore.

Maybe you never could. Maybe you saw what you wanted to see.

“Yeah, it all looks great,” he says absently.

“Not what I meant and you know it.” I fold my arms across my chest. “You need to cut this bullshit.”

His head snaps up. Now I have his attention. “I beg your pardon?”

I almost laugh at how British he sounds right now. When he’s annoyed or when he’s fucking me, his accent thickens like mad.

“Bullshit. This is bullshit.”

He raises a brow, straightening up. His eyes are hard, jaw firm. “Bullshit? What are you going on about?”

“Us,” I tell him, throwing my arms out. “This. What happened to us? Weeks ago we were fine and now…now, it’s like I don’t even know you anymore. We don’t even have sex anymore. You barely touch me anymore.”

He clears his throat, looks off toward the hills. “I’m going through some things.”

“If you’re going through some things then you need to talk to me about it. You need to communicate with me. This is what couples do Laz, this is what healthy couples do.”

He doesn’t say anything. His fists ball up and then release.

What the fuck is going on with him?

“Lazarus,” I say with deliberation. “You need to talk to me. You can’t do with me what you did with all your other girlfriends. They didn’t deserve it and I certainly don’t either.”

“You’re right,” he says quietly, eyes still avoiding mine. “You don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve any of this.”

“Then talk to me!” I cry out, smacking his arm. “Say something! Tell me what’s on your mind. If we can’t talk to each other about everything, we have nothing. Do you understand? We have nothing.”

“Then we have nothing,” he says.

“What?”

Everything that’s warm and bright inside me comes to fade.

He finally brings his dark eyes around to meet mine and I swear to god they’re watering with emotion.

Oh my god.

Oh my god.

My stomach sinks.

“Laz…” I whisper.

“You want me to talk to you about what I’m thinking, how I’m feeling?” he says. “The thing I’m going through?”

I gulp, hesitating before I nod because now I’m not so sure.

“Oh fuck,” he says, shaking his head, pressing the tips of his fingers into his forehead. “I can’t believe this…I can’t.”

The way his voice breaks tells me everything I don’t want to hear. A warm rush of tears races to my eyes, threatening to spill over. I want to touch him and console him but at the same time, I’m afraid. I’m afraid if I touch him, I’ll break.

“Please tell me,” I whisper anxiously. “Please.”

“Marina,” he says glancing at me with so much pain and heartbreak in his eyes that I nearly fall backward. “I am so, so sorry. You deserve so much more than this, than…than someone like me. I don’t want to have to do this, I don’t.”

I’m starting to choke up.

My heart is balanced on the edge of a cliff, wind battering it, ready for the fall.

“Do what?” I manage to say. “Do what?”

My fingers clench at the front of my suit, needing to hold onto something.

“This,” he says, wiping his eyes. “Us.”

No. No, no, no, no, no.

“Laz,” I say, desperation reaching up from inside me like bony hands. I grab onto his arm, his beautiful, wonderful arm, because if I hold onto him like this, he won’t do what he’s trying to do. He can’t. He can’t.

I suck in a deep breath, trying not to shake. “Laz, every couple has their ups and downs, every relationship gets hard. It’s work. It gets scary sometimes but you just power through it.” I try to sound strong and brave and confident, like I can convince him if I try hard enough. “Jane…Jane said sometimes you just need someone else as complicated and fucked up as you are to make love work. And that’s what we are, Laz. We are fucked up and complicated and we’re equals.”

“No, we aren’t,” he says, voice gruff. “You’re wrong, Marina. I’m fucked up. I’m complicated. And I’m completely undeserving of your love. I am not your equal. You are beautiful,” he trails off, pinching his eyes shut, looking away and I can hear his pain, feel his pain, but it’s still eclipsed by my own. “You’re beautiful and you’re smart and you’re so good and so pure and so giving and you need someone who is your equal, who can give what you give. That someone isn’t me.”

Everything hurts, everything. I can’t let this be the end, I can’t let him do this.

“Don’t do this,” I warn him, my voice quivering. “Don’t you dare do this. Don’t do this with me. Okay? You don’t get to decide if I’m deserving or not. You just don’t.”

“But I am deciding it,” he says. “This can’t work.”

“It does work!” I snap at him, trying so hard to keep the waterworks at bay, to not break down, to not lose my mind, to not go crazy. “It is working. This is just your insecurities. This is what you always do and it’s a habit and you’re not going to do this, not today. We are going to work together because I love you and that’s what happens when couples in love fight. They work it through. They talk. They don’t run. They don’t bail when it gets hard. They don’t give up. Okay, you aren’t giving up on us.”

“I’m so sorry,” he says again. “I don’t have a choice.”

He turns around, head low, his back to me.

I’m speechless, dumbfounded.

How dare he?

How dare he turn his back on me, on this?

To not even want to fight…

“It can work if you just put in the effort for once,” I tell him, my breath shallow now, like I’m losing air, drowning, a slow leak. “It can work if you want it to.”

“Maybe I don’t want it to. Maybe I don’t love you. I don’t love you like you love me.”

Oh.

I…

The world begins to spin.

I am dead on my feet.

“You…” I start to say but I can’t go on. I can’t, my heart is breaking, sharp shards that obliterate the rest of my body. I’m empty and cold and hollow in seconds. Drained.

“I’m sorry,” he says, sniffing. I still can’t see his face. It’s better that way. “I love you as a friend. But I know that’s not what you want from me right now.”

“A friend?” I manage to say. “You love me as…a friend? Just a friend? After we’ve been fucking each other for a month, you love me still as a friend? That’s all I am to you?” My voice is getting higher, shriller, with each note. “You’re a liar!”

He glances at me with bloodshot eyes, swallowing hard, and shakes his head. “No. Marina, please. Don’t make me hurt you.”

“Don’t make me hurt you?” I yell, grabbing the sides of my head as if that will contain the rage, the hurt. “You’re telling me you don’t love me! You’re…you’re breaking up with me. Right? Right, this is what this is, you dumping yet another girlfriend of yours because that’s what you fucking do, you fucking coward!”

“Hey,” he snaps at me, eyes wild. “This hurts me as much as it hurts you.”

“Oh my god! Oh my god, did you seriously just say that to me? How fucking dare you? This hurts you Laz? Then don’t do it!”

“I don’t have a choice. I don’t fucking love you!”

Dying.

I am dead on my feet, dying inside.

His words have acted like a knife, straight to my heart, and now the serrated edges are slicing down, ripping and tearing and shredding everything good inside me.

The pain is…

indescribable.

I want to fall to my knees, curl up into a ball and shove something deep inside my chest, reach into the cave it’s become, wrap a tourniquet around the wound until I feel whole again.

“Marina,” Laz says quietly.

I can only stare at him, the tears flowing down my cheeks in rivers.

I’m flayed in front of him.

He reaches out to touch me.

I stumble backward. “No,” I whisper. “Don’t…”

“I didn’t want this to happen. I tried…”

“You did NOT try!” I am seething. I am both indigo pain and white-hot anger. “You didn’t try Laz and you know it. You got scared. You got scared and you ran because that’s what you do.” My throat starts to close up but I manage to get the words out. “You’re right in that you don’t deserve my love. The man who deserves my love is someone who gives as much as he takes. Who faces the fears head on and moves past them. Who has hope. Who tries. You, Laz, you’re stuck in the past. Stuck with what’s easy, what’s shallow. You sing songs that don’t belong to you, you pen poems that you don’t let yourself feel. You’re a fraud, even to yourself. You don’t even know who you are.”

I’ve hurt him. I can tell, see it in his eyes. My words are weapons and he’s feeling them, he’s feeling them.

Good.

It’s about time he fucking wakes up.

“Now, if this is it, if this is what you want, to break up with me, to leave me, then go.” I point to the gate. “Get the fuck out and go.”

He stares at me.

“If you don’t love me, if you don’t even want to try, then go! You are nothing to me anymore, you got it? Not your lover, not your girlfriend, and definitely not your friend. Never your friend. Friends don’t play with each other’s hearts but that’s exactly what you just did.”

His mouth opens to say something.

I don’t care anymore.

“GO!” I scream, the word ripping out of me.

His eyes widen.

He turns.

Storms off around the pool, through the gate, and then he’s gone.

Laz is gone.

He’s gone.

My heart has gone with him.

I fall to my knees, crying, then to all fours, then to the grass below.

I cry and I sob and I scream and I don’t care about anything else right now except the pain inside me. This horrible, sickening pain that eats away at me like I’ve been doused in acid, burning from the inside.

I don’t know how long I cry like that, in my bee suit, on the lawn, the hum of bees occasionally going past.

I think about Laz. I think about my mother. I think about my father. I think about pain.

I’ve lost my best friend.

How will I ever be whole again? How will I ever be me again?

The emptiness inside me expands. Sobs shake my body to the blackened core.

Pickles, my father’s cat, my new cat, comes over to me, rubbing up along my shoulders.

Then a shadow looms over me from up above and for one painless second I think it’s Laz. It’s Laz and he’s come back to tell me that he was wrong. That he loves me and was too stupid to realize it.

“No man is worth this kind of sorrow, sweetheart,” Barbara’s croaky voice says.

I glance up to see her standing in a black silk pajama suit. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen her outside in the sunshine like this. It’s like she lives in a black and white world.

“Come on,” she says, offering a bony hand covered in shining rhinestones and costume jewelry rings. “Get to your feet. Act like a lady.”

Barbara is thin and ancient but she’s stronger than she looks. She helps me to my feet and then looks over me with what seems like disdain. Her penciled brow is raised, her red painted mouth pursed, her gaunt face layered with pale foundation. Her ash blonde hair is pulled back, covered by a red, silk head wrap.

“Sometimes there’s nothing a good cup of tea won’t fix,” she says eventually. She pats me on the cheek then grabs me by the arm and leads me off to her house.

But tea won’t fix this. Nothing will.

Time has a funny relationship with the heart.

After my mother died, there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think about her, didn’t miss her. Not just missing her but aching for her. The love she gave, the space she filled in my life. My mother was everything to me and she continued to be everything afterward, even though she was no longer with us. My heart bled and burned with the same kind of intensity as it loved.

I honestly never thought I would move past it. I didn’t think there would be a day where I wasn’t crying, where I wasn’t praying for her to come back, calling for her in the middle of the night. I didn’t think my future had any peace, any places for my heart to finally be at rest.

But slowly, little by little, things changed. The heart adapted. I never got used to the actual pain of losing her but I got used to the fact that it was a part of my life. It lived with me, became not quite a friend, but a companion. It was dependable. And as time went on, I learned to manage it.

It still hasn’t gone away, that pain. There’s still a place inside me that’s carved out and hollow, the space she filled when she was alive. That companion of mine, the pain of loss, lives there, dependable as always. Some days I pay attention to it, some days I don’t but it’s always there. I guess that’s what people mean when they say the ones you love and lose are always with you because they are. If not their spirit and soul, then it’s the constant reminder that you aren’t quite whole.

But while I learned to live with that, learned to adapt and cope and somehow come out the other side as a functioning human being, I’m not sure how to deal with the blow Laz has dealt me.

I’ve lost my best friend.

And the more that time goes by, the more my heart hurts.

The more it weeps for him.

The more I feel like this is something I will never get used to, never learn to live with, never look at as a companion.

I am angry.

I am so fucking angry.

I am hurt. I am in pain. I am made of emptiness and sharp objects.

I have been swallowed up by an endless void.

What makes this loss so different is that Laz isn’t dead.

He’s still out there. He’s still alive. He’s a life force that’s moving along with the time and the longer time stretches, the further apart we become.

Most of all, I’m angry at myself. Because I knew this about Laz. I knew that he was like this, I had seen it with my own eyes over the years. I knew he ran when things got too deep and things got way too fucking deep, way too fast.

I forgot that just because I was feeling something, it didn’t mean he was. I assumed—never fucking assume—that when you loved someone like a friend, and then you threw in sexual attraction, that it equaled romantic love. I thought it would be as easy for him to fall in love as it was for me, because all the basics were already there.

Friendship plus sex equals love.

But my equation was all wrong.

It only added up for me.

And I made the biggest mistake by thinking it added up for him.

So in a way, I pushed him away.

I scared the ever-living shit out of him.

I blindly, boldly, told him I loved him because I thought that’s what he wanted, needed to hear.

It wasn’t.

He ran.

I made something fun and easy become something else.

It’s just…

I love him.

I love him so fucking much that at times it felt like my heart was big enough for the whole world to live in. I thought that love could save me, save him. I thought that love was the biggest most badass force in this universe, capable of doing the impossible.

I believed in love.

I believed in the impossible.

And most of all, I believed in him.

So I’m angry at myself because I messed everything up. I came on too strong. I should have kept my feelings to myself, because really, it was selfish on my behalf anyway. I told him I loved him because it made me feel better.

And now…I’ve never felt worse.

The pain has had me locked in my bedroom for days, sleeping and crying and screaming. I’ve been through a million boxes of tissue, their crumpled, soggy corpses littering the ground. My voice and chest are raw from bawling.

Sometimes Barbara will make the trek across the backyard and come get me or bring me tea.

Most times I’m alone.

It’s been a week since Laz left me with my shredded heart in my hands and I haven’t even told my dad or Margaret. I’m too ashamed. It’s embarrassing to tell someone you were dumped, even if it’s your family.

I did tell Naomi. But only yesterday.

Today, she’s sitting across from me at a café in Santa Monica and staring at me over her cup of coffee. She doesn’t look pleased.

This is why I waited so long to tell her. Because she saw this coming. She was right. And I should have listened to her instead of acting like a lovestruck teenager.

“Again,” I say slowly, taking out a jar of my own honey from my purse and spooning it out into my matcha latte, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.”

She watches my honey operation, brows raised, and then says, “I’m your friend, your best friend. Especially now as Laz has been ousted from that spot. I know I say things you don’t want to hear, I know I’ve been miserable lately. But believe me, I want to know when these things happen. I want to be that first person you call. I call you. You’re my person, I should be yours.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re forgiven. Lord knows I was doing crazy shit when Robert…well, anyway. But Laz isn’t Robert.”

“No, he’s not.”

“And honestly, even though I gave you shit over him, I am still surprised this happened.”

I look up at her. “Really?”

“Marina…I don’t care what Laz told you but that boy, he loves you.”

“As a friend,” I say quietly.

“No. Not as a friend. He is in love with you.”

Please don’t say shit like that, not now. Please don’t give me hope.

“Naomi,” I say, my voice measured as I look her dead in the eye. “He told me he didn’t love me like I love him.”

“Well,” she says thoughtfully, “maybe that’s true. Maybe your love scares him because it’s so big and joyful. He’s not like you, Marina. You guys are very much opposites in some ways. He’s dark and moody. You’re bright and sunshine. Yes, you have darkness and yes he can be a goofball sometimes. But it’s not hard to reason that you might approach love differently.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I just said. You threw yourself at Laz. You slept with him, lost your god damn virginity, finally, and you launched yourself in that relationship. Heart open, not caring or even considering that you could get hurt. You wanted to love him freely because that’s how you do. You’re giving and you’re generous, so why would falling in love be any different for you.”

I chew on my lip, mulling it over. She’s right. There was nothing holding me back. Even when I was scared, I was at the mercy of my heart and my heart wanted him. Every single part of him.

I was a greedy girl after all.

“But Laz,” she goes on. “Laz keeps his cards close to his chest. He doesn’t let people in, even his friends, even his best friends. He’s guarded and I’m sure with good reason. He loves you, Marina, he’s in love with you. It’s plain to see on his face, the way he fucking adores you. Even Robert never looked at me that way but I looked that way at Robert and that’s how I recognize it. But Laz loves you the way that Laz loves you. Tentative. Scared. Unsure. It’s not going to be revealed all at once, it’s not going to hit him all at once. He’ll come around.” She pauses and gives me a leveling look. “The question is, will you be there when he does?”

I shake my head. “I don’t even want to think about this. When someone tells you, several times, they don’t love you. And they won’t even try. Someone with his track record on top of it, then I’m sorry, but I’m going to take their word. Even if he is in love with me and doesn’t recognize the feeling, let’s say, he still told me he wasn’t. He said the words when he didn’t have to. That’s a big thing. It’s a horrible thing. He knew it would crush me. Now I’m so far smashed into the ground, I’m not even sure if I’ll ever pick myself up.”

She sighs. “You’re right. I don’t know why he had to tell you that. And he did. So we can chalk it up to him being extremely immature for his age, for not knowing how to deal with relationships, with feelings. We can chalk it up to a lot of things. But the most important thing is that you will pick yourself up again. It just takes time. Let yourself feel this blow. It’s going to hurt whether you run from it or not so just accept that for the next while, you are going to cry randomly throughout the day and want to put holes in the wall. It sucks but you will get through it.”

I know Naomi is right and that she’s just gone through it herself.

But still…I don’t know how to survive.

So many times I’ve wanted to pick up the phone and call Laz.

Text him.

Spy on him on Instagram.

I haven’t done any of that.

And I haven’t heard a word from him.

When he left…he really left. Like he was fleeing the scene of an accident and I was the flaming wreckage he had to escape. Didn’t look back once.

“He doesn’t even care,” I say bitterly. “He told me he didn’t love me, broke up with me and then moved on.”

“You don’t know that.”

“He hasn’t even called.”

“Would you want him to call?” she asks. “If he called you right now, would you even answer it?”

I shake my head. “No. There’s nothing to say to him.”

“Then I’m going to guess he knows that.”

“He could try…”

“He doesn’t even know what he wants. He might be too afraid to try. Maybe he’s trying to figure himself out first. Have you tried looking on his Instagram.”

“No,” I say quickly. “And I unfollowed him on Facebook.”

“I unfollowed him a long time ago,” she says with a wry smile.

“Naomi!”

She shrugs. “He was posting too many Bukowski quotes. I fucking hate Bukowski.”

“Yeah, Laz loves him,” I say, almost dreamily and for a split second I’m back in time. I’m thinking of us as still together.

The reality…

Tears fall from my eyes.

“Oh no,” Naomi says, getting out of her seat and putting her arms around my shoulders. “I didn’t think you were a Bukowski fan.”

“It’s not Bukowski,” I sob. “It’s Laz. I love him, Naomi, I really do. I still do. I miss him. I want him back…but I need him to love me first. I need him to want to love me.”

“Oh honey,” she says, reaching for a napkin and handing it to me so I can wipe my nose, dab beneath my eyes. I haven’t worn makeup in forever for this exact reason. “I know, I know. I wanted Robert to want to make it work. I wanted him to want to stop cheating. He never did.”

I’m full on sobbing now, tears falling onto her arms. People in the café are staring at me and I have half a mind to get up and demonstrate the waggle dance for them, just like I did on that date with David when I started choking on linguine.

Oh god. That’s what I have to look forward to now.

I’m going to have to go on dates again.

Dates with men that aren’t Laz.

How do I go on, how do I live knowing I can’t have him, won’t have him, that no other man will ever measure up?

I won’t.

I will just become an even crazier bee lady. A spinster. I’ll revirginize myself. Maybe Barbara and Naomi and I can all live together and have an even more bitter version of the Golden Girls.

For some reason, that makes me cry even more.

“We should get going,” I finally say, looking around the café.

“Why? Because you’re crying in front of these strangers? You’re human, Marina. People should know by now that life is hard.” She turns around and yells at everyone in the shop. “Life is hard!”

“Damn right!” someone yells back.

“Naomi,” I whisper, pulling her back around. “It’s okay.” I grab another napkin and blow my nose.

But it’s not okay.

And I don’t think I ever will be.