I WAIT SEVEN days to text Rowan. Seven days to sort through my feelings and figure out what I’m going to say. On Saturday morning, we meet at IHOP. I’m sitting in a booth when she slides into the seat across from me. Her long blonde hair is up in a messy bun, her blue eyes shining with worry she’s doing her best to hide.
“I missed you,” I say, and she abruptly stands back up and slides in beside me, capturing me in a bone-crushing hug.
“I missed you too,” she says against my hair. “I’m sorry I was such a bitch.”
I shake my head against her cheek, holding her just as tightly as she’s holding me. “No, you were right.”
She loosens her hold around my neck, like she’s just realized she’s hugging a stranger, and when she pulls away, she looks at me like one.
I take a deep breath, intending to tell her that I’ve realized I love Joel, but the words get caught in my throat.
“Right about what?” she asks.
“About . . .” I rub the spot between my eyes. “God, this was so much easier when I practiced it in my head.”
Rowan studies me for a moment before realization lights her eyes and the corners of her mouth begin to tip up. I’m dreading her giddy reaction when I’m saved by the server who pops by to take our orders. Rowan slides back into her own seat, never taking her eyes off me or losing her full-faced smile. I order for both of us, hand back the menus, wait for the server to walk out of earshot, and scold my best friend. “Stop smiling at me like that.”
“I can’t help it,” she says, her smile growing even bigger. “Just say it.”
“You already know.”
“Pretend I don’t.”
God, she’s so excited, I really want to smack her. “Why are you doing this?” I groan, but her smile is indestructible.
“Because I love you.” She says it easily, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. And maybe it should be.
“I love you too,” I say, and she props her hand on her fist, still wearing that goofy grin.
“And who else?”
I inhale and exhale a deep breath. “And Joel.”
“All together now.”
“God I hate you.”
She starts laughing, and I close my eyes and just say it.
“I love Joel.”
When I peel my eyelids open, she looks like she wants to launch herself across the table to wrap me in another hug.
“Happy?” I ask, and her eyes start to well. The backs of mine begin to sting, and I say, “What the hell are you crying for?”
“You,” she says, running a knuckle over the corner of her eye.
“Stop,” I complain, turning my gaze to the ceiling. I blink rapidly to hold the tears at bay. “Seriously, is it so much to ask for just one day without ruining my mascara? Why the hell are we crying?”
“Because we’re girls,” she laughs. “This is what we do when we fall in love.”
“We get stupid?” She laughs even harder, and I find myself laughing too. “God, this is a mess.”
“When are you going to tell him?” she asks, and I finally turn my chin back down, losing myself in another kind of feeling.
The shadow of our server falls over the table, and she pours us both a cup of coffee. “Your pancakes will be right out,” she says with a smile.
“Thanks.” I force a smile back at her, and when I look back to Rowan, hers has fallen away.
“You are going to tell him, right?”
Scratching my pointer finger over a scuff on the table, I say, “Do you think I should?”
“Is that even a question?”
I let out a slow breath. “How’s he doing?”
When I turn my attention back to her, she’s frowning. “I haven’t seen him much. He promised not to go back to his mom’s, but he hasn’t been sticking around the apartment. I think he might be sleeping in his car.”
“Or in other girls’ beds,” I counter, and when she doesn’t deny it, I sigh. “Maybe it’s better he not know.”
“How is it better?”
“What happens if I tell him?” I stop scratching the table to tuck my hair behind my ear. “I know he told me he loved me, but I doubt he really thought it out. What happens after you tell someone you love them?” She waits for me to continue, but I just shake my head. “Joel and I don’t know how to be in a relationship, Ro. We’re not that kind of people.”
“You’ve had boyfriends,” she argues.
“Yeah, and look at what I did to them.” Guys have told me they’ve loved me before, but I never believed them. They’ve given me flowers and gifts and declarations I didn’t want, and all it did was make me run away even faster. I’ve made grown men cry, and all it ever did was make me lift an eyebrow and wonder why I dated them in the first place.
“But you love Joel.”
“And look at what I’ve already put him through.”
Rowan frowns at me for a moment before reaching across the table and taking my hands in hers. “Listen to me, okay?” I nod, and she says, “I know this is all really new, and I know it’s scary, but you’re going to keep loving Joel whether you tell him or not, and if you don’t tell him and see where it goes, it’s going to be a mistake that haunts you for the rest of your life.”
Our hands separate when the server drops our pancakes off. This time, Rowan thanks her since I’m still lost in the darkness of her words. “What if we end up breaking each others’ hearts?” I ask once we’re alone again.
“You’re already doing that,” she answers, her voice matching her solemn expression. “What do you have to lose?”
THAT EVENING, AFTER I finish zipping up a pair of sparkly stiletto ankle boots, I consider all the answers to Rowan’s question: my pride, my heart, my independence. But when I gave her those answers at breakfast, she asked me one more simple question: Are they more important than Joel?
I stand up, command my knees to stop shaking, and take one final look in my bedroom mirror. My purple wrap dress squeezes me in all the right places, flaunting my curves and complementing my dark chocolate curls. My makeup is flawless, my body is killer, and I feel like a fucking wreck.
Rowan told me that Joel is definitely going to be at Mayhem tonight. One of his favorite bands is playing, and all of the guys are going to go see them. The plan is just to go, be as hot as humanly possible, and say the words I should have said a long time ago.
“I love you,” I practice in the mirror, rolling my eyes at myself. I take a deep breath and stare at it again. “I love you. I love you, Joel.”
When someone knocks on my door, I nearly jump out of my skin.
After collecting myself, I let out a little chuckle and swing open the door to find Leti dressed in a dark purple button-down and dark-wash jeans. I smile when I realize we matched without even planning to. When he’s not wearing ridiculous T-shirts and bleach-stained jeans, the boy definitely knows how to dress.
“Happy to see me?” he asks.
“Took you long enough.”
“You do realize you’re the one with the car, right?”
Ignoring him, I do a twirl and say, “How do I look?”
“Like a hot little succubus,” he says with a grin. “What’s the occasion?”
I grab a light leather jacket from the coat closet and toss Leti my keys, leading him into the hall outside my front door. “Joel is going to be there.”
Leti locks up for me, pausing long enough to show that he’s weighing his words. “I thought you two were done?”
“Turns out, I love him.” When his jaw drops, I shrug and say, “Go figure.”
He bursts out laughing and throws his arm over my shoulder as we navigate the hallways of my apartment building. “So you’re going to tell him at Mayhem tonight?”
“I’m going to try.”
“Say it to me,” he prompts when we get to my car, opening the passenger-side door for me.
I put my hand on his shoulder and flutter my eyelashes up at him, saying in a 1960s-romance vixen voice, “Oh, Leti, you hot chunk of man, I love you.” His laugh makes me smile.
“I think I just went straight for a minute.”
“It was only a matter of time.” I wink at him and get in the car, rubbing my hands over my thighs when I realize I’m really, seriously about to do this.
“Don’t be nervous,” he says when he slides into the driver’s seat.
“I’m not,” I lie.
“Don’t be.”
“I’m not,” I say again, and he pats my knee.
“Good.”
By the time we get to Mayhem, the club is pulsing with music and swimming in a thick cocktail of perfume, cologne, and sweat. Layers of people are packed in front of the bar, but since that’s where I know Rowan will be, I grab Leti’s hand and start weaving. I’m the small end of our human wedge, tugging him through the open space people make for me and hearing him make apologies for his wide shoulders the whole way.
“Hey,” I say to Rowan when we finally get to her and Adam. I release Leti’s hand and we both wipe hand-cooties onto our clothes.
Rowan hands me her full drink, and I gladly suck it down. “That dress is killer,” she says.
I glance down at myself, getting an eyeful of cleavage. “I may or may not have caused a few heart attacks on my walk over here.”
“That tends to happen when you torpedo through a crowd towing a big purple chunk of man behind you,” Leti quips, and I crack a smile.
“Chunk of man?” Rowan asks with a lifted eyebrow.
“Her words, not mine,” he says with a thumb in my direction. I smile and shrug while I finish off Rowan’s drink and covertly scan the bar for Joel.
“Alright, who’s dancing with me?” I ask, and Adam takes that as his cue to go outside for a smoke break. Rowan and Leti both follow me toward the dance floor, and I get swallowed by the crowd with my two best friends.
“He’s not here yet,” Rowan says as soon as we’re far enough away from Adam.
“Are we sure he’s coming?” Leti asks. He’s at my back, and Rowan is at my front. I rest my hands on her shoulders and try to pretend my heart isn’t balanced on a tightrope waiting for her answer.
“Yeah. Adam texted him to make sure.”
“Adam knows?” I ask, my cheeks flushing.
“Of course not,” Rowan scoffs before I send myself into a tailspin. “What kind of a best friend do you think I am? I just told him I was worried about Joel and thought he could use a fun night out and to make sure he was coming.”
“And he bought it?”
Rowan nods. “It was true, so yeah.”
With Leti at my back, I mouth to Rowan, I’m nervous.
She smiles and shouts over my shoulder to Leti. “Leti, do you know what I love best about Dee?”
“Her wardrobe?” he shouts back.
“Her heart!”
“Not her butt?”
Rowan and I both laugh, and she says, “Her attitude!”
“Her boobs!”
I completely lose it, laughing so hard I have to stop dancing and grip Rowan’s shoulders to stay upright. By the time I collect myself, I have an unshakeable smile on my face, mirrored by Rowan’s bright blue eyes and rosy pink cheeks.
I dance until my thighs are burning and my hair is sticking to the back of my neck. “Drinks?” I ask during a lapse between songs, and we make our way back to the bar.
My heart teeters precariously on the wire while I scan the bar for Joel, and it nearly falls when I realize he’s still not here. Before, I couldn’t bear the thought of telling him how I feel. Now, every second that he doesn’t know feels like a second we’re drifting further apart.
I miss him. I miss him so much that I can’t even think about it without tears threatening to form. It’s been a full week since I’ve seen him, two weeks since he could stand to look at me.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I tell Rowan and Leti before we get to where Adam, Mike, and Shawn are sitting at the bar.
“Want me to come with?” Rowan asks, but I shake my head. I need a minute to myself to pull my game face back on.
“Nah, I’ll be right back.”
I turn on my heel before she can argue, weaving through clusters of people to get back toward the front of the building where the cleanest bathrooms are. When I get there, the women’s bathroom is taped off with a sign that deems it “Out of Order,” but I push open the door anyway and duck under the yellow tape. The other bathrooms are at the other side of the building, and I need the alone time too much to wait. In front of the wall-width mirror above the sinks, I take a deep breath and begin freshening my makeup, mentally rehearsing what I’m going to say to Joel.
I love you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I want to be with you.
In my head, he furrows his brow at me. You broke my heart, and now I’m supposed to take you back?
I brace my hands on the sink and close my eyes, telling myself over and over again that it’s only been two weeks. You can’t stop loving someone in two weeks—not if you ever really loved them at all.
When I leave the bathroom, I’m telling myself not to worry, that everything will be fine, that he’ll want me and we’ll have each other. But when I get close to the bar, I see him, and my heart slips off the wire.
He’s walking toward where Rowan and the guys are gathered, his arm around a girl with long blonde hair and a dress even shorter than mine. He’s smiling, he’s laughing. His blue-eyed gaze is traveling around the room, and my heart is breaking.
When his eyes land on me, his smile falls away. Tears flood my vision, and I turn on my heel to race back toward the bathroom, turning this way and that to melt through the crowd. I push through the press of bodies and duck under the yellow tape, slamming into the bathroom door and stumbling inside.
He was happy. It’s only been two weeks, and he’s happy without me. Two weeks, and he’s happy with someone else.
Ugly tears are dripping onto the floor when the bathroom door pushes open and Joel ducks under the tape. He stops and looks at me, and all I do is stare back at him while letting the tears fall. There’s no use trying to hide them.
“No,” he says, his long stride eating the distance between us. He takes my face between his hands and stares down at me. “No. You don’t get to do this.”
A tiny sob sounds from inside me. Even though my heart is breaking, it feels so right having his hands on me. I want to press them tighter against my cheeks. I want him to hold me.
“You don’t get to do this, Dee,” he says again, his voice cracking. He brushes his thumbs over my wet cheeks and presses his forehead against mine. “Stop crying,” he says in a voice so soft and sad, it breaks my already crushed heart. “You don’t get to cry.”
I want to tell him I love him. But what would be the point? I thought he would be better without me—now I know I was right.
Joel’s lips brush over mine, his blue eyes closing. “You don’t get to do this anymore.” He kisses me again, and my fists bunch in his shirt as I kiss him back. Tears are pouring down my cheeks when he says, “You don’t want me.” He says it between kisses growing increasingly more insistent, and when he backs me up against the wall, he kisses me so deeply that the sound that comes from my lips is more moan than sob. In the next instant, he’s lifting me into the air and I’m pushing my hands under his shirt, needing to feel his skin on my skin and his lips on my lips.
A spark flares between us, and we’re lost. Our kisses are bruising and frantic. My dress is being pushed up, his pants are being unzipped, and my panties are being yanked to the side.
When he sinks inside me, my fingernails dig into his back and a low moan crashes between us. His. Mine. Tears are still dripping down my cheeks, and when I open my eyes, his eyes are glassy too. I hold his face between my hands and kiss him desperately as he thrusts inside me over and over again. We breathe each other as he takes me, kissing and pulling and never getting close enough. I want to tell him I love him, but when I remember the girl waiting for him back inside the club, the way he laughed with her, I can’t. Instead, I kiss his mouth, his jaw, his neck, his ears.
Joel shudders against me, his fingers gripping tighter around my thighs and his hard body pinning me to the wall. I kiss away the sounds coming from his parted lips while he empties inside me, and afterward, his head drops to my shoulder and he slowly sets my heels back to the tile. My arms are still around him, and I don’t want to let him go, but then he lifts his head and stares into me with bloodshot eyes and tear-stained cheeks. His voice is raw with an emotion I feel in my own bones. “I can’t do this anymore.”
When his blurred form turns away from me, I don’t stop him.
When he walks out the door, he doesn’t look back.