Page 110 of Lost Love on 6th Street

Luke’s thumb skims the back of my hand. “Listen, I’m all kinds of fucked up right now.”

“I know,” I say.

He wraps my hand in both of his. Lifts it to his lips and kisses it. “Fuck,” he mutters.

“Luke, just talk to me, tell me how you’re feeling.”

“I can’t, Eleanor, I can’t. What am I supposed to do when the person I always admired turns out to be . . .”

“You aren’t your dad, Luke. That’s not how admiration works.”

Luke’s eyes remain on mine. His foot starts tapping, shaking his whole body.

He doesn’t believe me.

“Luke, I love you,” I say.

“And I don’t deserve it.” Luke puts my hand back down and grabs the edge of the table. “I need some time, okay?”

“Time to . . .?”

“To think,” he sighs. “To . . . figure myself out.”

Alarm bells ring in my brain. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“Not breaking up.”

But not not breaking up.

“I just need some space and some time to get my head clear.”

My face grows taut with concern, anger, and sorrow. I don’t know what I’m feeling. “I want to be there for you, baby.”

Luke manages a smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “I don’t deserve that. Not after what I did.”

“Luke—"

“You’re not winning this one, Eleanor.”

I didn’t know that I had to win the right to be in my boyfriend’s life. The right to support him through what might be one of the most dramatic things to happen to him in all his life. His dead father has secrets he can never uncover from the horse’s mouth. How is he going to wade through that without me?

Maybe I don’t mean as much to him as I thought.

Luke pulls out his phone. “I’m going to take a car home, okay?”

I droop further over my uneaten food. Now, I’m the opposite of hungry. I want to expel everything out of my system as if that will somehow purge these emotions too.

I say nothing as he orders an Uber. I say nothing while we wait.

It’s not until he gets up from the table and comes over to my side that I let myself look up.

Luke tips my chin up. “This isn’t your fault.”

I blink and a tear runs down my cheek. “I love you.”

He tries to smile.

But he doesn’t say it back.

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