Page 123 of Between Now & Heartbreak

“Beth, —” She turns around to face me. I blood runs cold.

Her eyes are completely shuttered. There is not a hint emotion in them. I take a step toward her and she puts a hand up, palm facing and I stop.

But it’s killing me.

Her shoulders are square, her back is ramrod straight, and her voice is tight with control.

The church is quiet, but I hear condemnation in the silence. A reproach for the way I defiled this place with what we just did.

WhatIjust did.

To a woman who…I shake my head hard to dislodge the thought. I can’t bring myself to say that word. To call her the same thing I call Nadia.

“I don’t know what any of this means.” Her voice is low and steady. “But I know we have to go our separate ways. I can’t ask you to forget what happened. But, I want you to forget me.”

I laugh darkly, scoffing at her impossibly calm command.

“You aren’t shocked by those results. You knew..” It’s an observation, not a question.

She shakes her head.

“You look alike.” For a brief moment, sadness cracks the stoic mask of indifference she’s wearing. I wish it hadn’t. It’s harder to see her heartbreak than it is to watch her pretend that she’s okay.

“I’m so sorry.” I say.

A single tear spills down her cheek and I want to wipe it away.

“I thought, that I’d found my forever in you. Instead, the truth of you, is my apocalypse.” She says in a voice whose calm belies the shitstorm we’ve found ourselves in.

I know exactly what’s she means because I feel the same way.

I nod.

“There’s no rescue, just…”

“Recovery.” She finishes for me.

I huff bitterly. For once, she got it wrong.

“I was going to say… there’s nothing.”

She frowns in disagreement.

“That’s not true. This happened for a reason. You live in New York. I live in the asscrack of nowhere. Our paths should never have crossed. But they did. In ways that made this moment unavoidable. Everything that’s happened since the moment we drew our first breaths until now, brought us here.”

She smiles and my gut twists. How can she smile? I feel like I’ll never know what it feels like to be happy again. She seems like she’s already over it all.

“You’re very Zen about all of this,” I accuse her.

She shakes her head.

“A year ago, I didn’t know how to be anything but exactly who I was. But I’ve spent the last year pretending to be someone else.” She runs a hand over her long blonde hair.

“I don’t evenlooklike myself and I hated it. But, now I’m grateful I have another person to be. The other me - I have to forget her. And you.”

“How can you say that?”

She presses her lips together.

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