Four manuscripts to go through this weekend.

Four authors waiting to hear back from me.

I doubt I’ll be able to focus enough to comprehend a full page. I’ve been reading this paragraph over and over and not a damn sentence is staying with me.

It doesn’t matter though. None of this really does.

I’ll stay in this room for as long as Evan’s here. He’s like a ghost in this house. A ghost of his former self.

So I’ll do what I always do, I’ll bury myself in work. That was the plan anyway, but I can’t focus on anything but the sounds of him moving through the house.

He keeps walking by the door and I know he wants to open it, he wants me to talk to him, but all I can hear is him saying it’d be better if I didn’t know. Fuck that and fuck him.

I’m not going to give him all of me when he can’t be bothered to do the same.

So we’re at a standstill, him refusing to leave and me refusing to forgive.

His voice plays in my head over and over again, telling me it’s only ever been me. I want to believe it. It’s everything I’ve been praying for him to say.

But then what is he hiding?

My eyes flicker to the screen as my nails tap on the ceramic mug next to my laptop. Tick, tick, tick. I read the line over and over.

Love is a stubborn heart.

Magdalene, the editor, highlighted the line. She thinks it’s beautiful and wants repetition of the analogy throughout the book.

Love is a stubborn heart.

Is it though? My forehead scrunches as I think back to the story in the manuscript. The tale about a modern-day Romeo and Juliet. Two families who hated each other and their children who wanted nothing more than to run away together. It’s not a tragedy though, and it doesn’t have a happily ever after either. It’s too realistic.

If love really was that stubborn, wouldn’t they have been together in the end?

Or maybe it wasn’t really love. Or maybe love just wasn’t enough.

I don’t know that I agree that love is stubborn. I suppose it is, but more than that, it’s stealthy and lethal. I nod my head at the thought.

Love is deadly.

I don’t know the very moment I fell in love with Evan. It felt like I was counting the days until it would be over, and then one day, I simply decided on forever. Just like that. Slow, so slow and resistant, and then in an instant, I was his and he was mine. And that’s how it was going to be forever.

I smile at the thought and try to focus on the lines on the computer. I try to read the words, but I keep glancing at the wall behind me. At a photo of the first night he took me to meet his parents.

I’d never felt that kind of fear before. The fear of rejection. Not like that, because I’d never put my heart out there for anyone to take. And I was very much aware that Evan had every piece of me. Unless he didn’t want me. In which case, I’d be broken and I didn’t know how I’d recover.

The thought consumed me the night he brought me to his family home. I was sure his family wouldn’t like me. It’d been so long since I’d been with a family for dinner. I used to go to my friend Marissa’s when I was in high school. But it was just better not to.

When you lose your parents at fifteen, people tend to look at you as though they’ve never seen anything sadder. I’d rather be alone than deal with that.

And so I was, until Evan. And he didn’t come on his own, he had a family that “had to meet me.”

My back rests against the desk chair as I take in the photograph. I had it printed in black and white. It’s the four of us on the sofa in his family home’s living room. It’s funny how I can see the colors of the sofa so clearly, the faded plaid, even though there isn’t any color in the picture that hangs on my wall.

All four of us smiling. His mother insisted on taking the photo. Just as she’d insisted he bring me that night.

It’s only now that I can remember how Evan’s father looked at her. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but that’s because they hadn’t told us that she was sick.

I guess in some ways it was the last photograph. If that isn’t accepting someone into your family, I don’t know what is.

I have to sniffle as I think of her. I only met Marie twice. The first time was that night. The second was after she’d told Evan; she didn’t have a choice, seeing as how she had to be hospitalized. The third time I saw her was at the funeral.

I may not know when I fell in love with him, but I think I know the moment he fell in love with me. The moment a part of his heart died and he needed something, or someone, to fill it. Maybe I got lucky that it was me. Or maybe it was a curse.

I roll my eyes as they water, hating that I’m stuck in the past because I can’t move ahead with the future.

Maybe we weren’t really meant to be. Maybe it was never the type of love that’s meant to keep people together. Just the type of love when you feel compelled to give someone compassion.

Are there types of love? I find myself typing the question into the editor’s suggestion box and then deleting it.

If there are, then maybe Evan’s love is the stubborn kind. He’s not so stubborn that he’ll stay this weekend though. Come Friday he’ll be gone again. Maybe it’s a different love then …

It’s only when I hear the bedroom door shut that I finally look back at the manuscript and email the editor back. I need more time before I can give feedback on any of these to the author and I’m ready to fall asleep in the corner chair, or anywhere I can where Evan will leave me alone.

I need more time for so much more. I need time and a clear head to move forward with my own life. I need someone to tell me I’m not walking away from the only man who will ever love me, but there’s no email I can write for that unfortunate request.