Page 101 of Winging It with You

Hurt. Sullen, even.

Broken.

“I don’t know, Asher. Maybe I don’t think anything anymore.” There’s an indifference in his tone that stills the blood coursing through my veins. He hasn’t moved, but I can see the tension building in his shoulders, like a teakettle just moments away from piercing the silence with its whistle.

“Please, Theo. Look at me—”

He turns, shaking his head, and when our eyes finally meet, my heart shatters into a million pieces. He’s blinking back tears. “What are you doing here, Ash? Truly. What do you want?” He’s staring at me so intensely, the hurt and confusion behind his eyes is impossible to ignore.

I want you.

It sounds too simple of a statement, but it’s the truth. I want him and us and everything that comes with that.

“You have to understand—” I say, my voice breaking, my own tears now streaming down my face.

“But that’s the problem,” he says, cutting me off. “Idon’tunderstand. I don’t know that I ever will. You said it yourself…after everything we’ve been through.La Tomatina. The ice cream, the stupid seaweed, and the elephants. Fuck, Asher.The elephants.” His voice cracks. “Even after all that, you just stood there.”

“What was I supposed to do, Theo?” I feel my own bubble of frustration rising from my throat. “I didn’t know allthatwas going to happen. There was no way in hell I could have predicted anything like that ever happening to me. And my family?” The fury I felt when Dalton and Clint videoconferenced them comes raging to the surface.

“You told me this was real for you,” he says after a moment. “You made mefeellike this was real and not just some detour in your life. I’m a human being, Asher. Fuck, I’m not just somelayover you get to take when you’re figuring everything in your life out.”

“Theo, of course I know—” I start, but he cuts me off.

“And when you just stood there, it was clear as day thatthis,” he says, waving his arms between us, “isn’t real for you like it is for me.” His shoulders slump, and his eyes are pooling with tears. “And maybe that’s okay. Maybe months down the line, I’ll be able to see all this—you, me, the show—for what it was. A nice little chapter in our lives. You and I don’t get the happy ending, and I’ll just forever be remembered as that stranger you met in the airport bar.”

Panic floods my system. “I hope that’s not how you really feel.”

“That’s the thing, Ash,” he says, his voice flatlining. “I don’t know how to feel. Not anymore. For as long as I can remember, I’ve tried to not feel. To not get too close, so I don’t get hurt again. But somewhere between mozzarella sticks and here, something changed.Youmade me feel. You reminded me how beautiful it is to be seen by someone and to see them for who they really are. You reached for my hand each night and pulled me close and made me feel safe and whole again. Like I was depended on and needed.”

“You are all of those things,” I yell, praying he believes me.

“You did all that and it is really unfair and shitty if you didn’t mean it.” The tears are really falling now. “What about what I want? Because I played the role and did everything you asked and despite you reminding me this wasn’t real, I still fell in lo—” He stops himself, choking back the words I’ve been waiting all this time to hear him say. But not like this.

Don’t say those three life-changing words.

Not filled with this much frustration.

“I’mhere. I’m here and of course I meant all those things,” I say, taking a small step toward him. My voice cracks just like my heart has. I take in Theo, standing at the edge of the dock, his arms crossed and eyes wide and red. I need him to realize there was never a choice to make. I had already decided what I didn’t want for my life the moment I left Clint standing alone at the airport.

And I decided what Ididwant while sitting with him somewhere over the Atlantic.

And the journey to that decision—everything with him and us and how he’s made me feel—was worth it.

He was more than worth it.

“Being here with you,” I say, taking another step into the warmth I’d missed so much. “Theo…there’s nowhere else in this whole world I’d rather be. When Clint showed up, I think I hesitated because from one moment to the next, I was suffocated by years’ worth of anger that all came rushing to the surface. Years’ worth of biting my tongue and always trying to say and do the right thing. I think my brain and my body just shut down because of all the things I wanted to say to him…all the horrible ways he’s made me feel these past years…and that all I could think about was you.”

He lifts his gaze to mine.

“You are the exact opposite of him, Theo. And what we have is so special and so uniquely ours and from the bottom of my heart, baby—I am so sorry that my hesitation or my moment of internal panic led you to believe otherwise.”

Theo drops his arms, either in exhausted surrender or wary acceptance. Or maybe on some small level, he acknowledges the sincerity that I’ve been praying is coming across.

“Because when push comes to shove,” I say, taking anothercalculated step forward, “the person I want in my life is the person who makes me feel most like myself. The real and flawed and anxious version of me that probably comes with a lot of baggage and whole lot of questions. That’s you, Theo. I’ve spent every single second since you came into my life overanalyzing every moment of every interaction, trying to understand what it is about you that makes me feel the way that I do.” Another step forward. “It’s the kindness in your heart. The genuine warmth of your beautiful smile. The way you treat everyone around you like they’re the most special person in the damn room.”

Another step. “So yes, I hesitated, but in that moment, I think there was a part of me that was scared of just how immensely you’ve changed my life. Of how much I need you.”

“Asher, I meant it when I told you I don’t want to pretend anymore. I can’t,” he says, taking his own step toward me, a small one, but a step in the right direction nonetheless. All I want to do is launch myself at him.

---