Page 89 of Love You, Mean It

“I don’thaveto do anything. Not for someone who lied to my face over and over. Now. If you’ll excuse me.”

With that, she strode back inside, fury straightening her spine.

When Bella had talked me through the worst case, she really hadn’t laid out the details clearly enough.

I dragged my way through the day at the deli, checking my phone compulsively, knowing the texts giving me an opening—or better yet, forgiveness—were never going to come in, but unable to stop myself from looking for them over, and over, and over.

By the time I got home, I felt like a wrung-out rag physically, but the overflow of anxiety made the idea of sleep frankly ludicrous. Even garbage reality TV wasn’t enough to turn off the minor-key chorus at the back of my mind,You fucked it up, you fucked it all up, you were cruel and stupid and you fucked it all up.

Desperate, I turned to the dress pattern on the sewing table, letting the familiar rhythms soothe me: ironing, measuring, cutting, changing the seaming here, reshaping an opening there, tacking on scraps of fabric that would stand in for the flowers in the areas I was envisioning them to get a sense of how it would look completed. The focus it required was just enough to blunt the edge of shame and pain I was feeling.

It took me four nights to finish the dress in real fabrics—I’d let myself get rusty over the last few years, but my muscle memory hadn’t entirely disappeared. I still hadn’t heard anything from Theo or Sam, so I went with my old standby and texted a picture to Bella.

FROM: Bella

Wow, that’s GORGEOUS Ellie

You should wear it on your date

With who?

I didn’t hallucinate the part where I told you what happened with Theo, did I?

With whoever I find for you on Bumble

And don’t argue, after all the Theo stuff, you know I’m right, you need to get out there

I sucked my lips between my teeth, searching for an excuse she would accept…but there weren’t any. If I’d been even atinybit more self-aware, none of this—or at least the worst of it, where I eviscerated the first guy I had real feelings for in pretty much ever, which led directly to the end of the deli—wouldn’t have happened. Even making the deal with Sam (peak denial, in hindsight) I could have probably come back from if I’d just been honest about what I was feeling. Sam had given me multiple chances to back out, and Theo and I probably could have sorted out the Mangia stuff without her; even if she hadn’t thrown her weight behind us, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t have tried to salt things.

The idea of a bunch of awkward drinks dates with strangers made my skin crawl a little, but Bella was right: I needed to actually put myself out there. And more important, Theo was right. My life here wasn’t temporary, I didn’t evenwantit to be. It was beyond time to be honest with myself about that.

Plus, I was going to need something to distract me when my entire professional life disappeared.

Fine, sign me up

…BUT I get veto power over anyone I don’t like

I’ll agree to 5 no-explanations-necessary vetoes

10

I accept your counteroffer

I’ll come out Saturday and we can set up your account

I put down the phone, feeling the tiniest bit better…but only the tiniest bit. I was coming to the painful conclusion that there was probably no world in which Theo and I could repair things. Still, I had to let him know why I said it, and how sorry I was.

Which would mean telling him the truth. Thewholetruth. Not just the bit about trying to help Sam that I’d been planning to divulge that morning at the Taylor’s building, the part where I was falling for him, and it scared me shitless, and so I had done the only thing I could think of: I attacked.

It wouldn’t fix things between us, but at least I’d have shown him something honest for once. And eventually, he’d just be an important lesson I learned, someone I could look back on wistfully, but gratefully.

Keep telling yourself that, Greco.

I bellied up to the bar at Major MacLeod’s, drumming my fingers anxiously on its worn surface. Mimi had banished me from my own apartment the fifth time I’d taken the top off the simmering sauce to check how it was coming along,Get out of here before you ruin the flavor with all your worrying,so I’d opted to kill my nerves—or at least fifteen minutes—with a quick drink. My phone pinged as I waited for Kerry to pour the drink. But instead of the “All hope for this lasagna is lost” message I’d expected from Mimi, it was Bella.

FROM: Bella

Okay, I think I have a real contender

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