Page 2 of Finally Loved

She hated that word. She’d spent so much time trying to get away from that word, trying not to think it about herself. She didn’t think it about anyone else, so why about herself?

Because everyone else, it seemed, knew what was expected of them and they just got on with it. And she couldn’t. She couldn’t bring herself to want sex. She couldn’t change her sexuality, no matter how hard she tried, and now it was costing her another relationship.

She’d thought this one was different. She’d thought Roxanne understood. She’d said she did. She’d said she got it, what with her family being the way they were. It wasn’t the same, but she understood.

Now, though, she stood there, looking oddly serene as she broke up with Neve and repeated those words.

Neve was supposed to know why it would never work. Neve was supposed to understand thatnobody could be expected to put up without sex like that…

Roxanne turned, strolling casually down the aisle. “It’s not like we’re really in each other’s lives, is it? Not really. I’ve got my stuff, you’ve got yours. We’ve had a nice run, but it was never going to last.”

Neve felt certain that the minute she attempted to follow, she was going to fall down, her body entirely incapable offunctioning. But, the alternative was letting Roxanne talk louder and louder the further away she got, and this was already humiliating enough. The last thing Neve needed was other people listening in on her being dumped.

She followed slowly, feeling unsteady. Her brain couldn’t think of a single thing to say. They weren’t truly in each other’s lives because of Roxanne, because she’d wanted to keep thingssafe. But they’d still had nine months together. That was long enough to declare their love, long enough to be invested. It was long enough to grow a whole human. Neither of them had done that, but nine months was plenty of time to make permanent decisions. Roxanne had never done a single thing that suggested they were in it for a good time, not a long time—other than keeping Neve a secret, but she’d had her reasons, she’d promised it was temporary…

Neve’s insides burned. Nine months was also plenty of time to realize that you needed sex in your relationship, too.

She tried, she really did. But Roxanne had wanted things from her she just couldn’t do. Or, she could do them, but her heart wasn’t in them, no matter how hard she tried. And every time, her mind was filled with a parade of all the other times she’d tried—with Roxanne and others—and all the other times she’d felt itchy and uncomfortable, unenthusiastic and unsafe. And Roxanne would huff and tell her to stop, and then they wouldn’t talk for days, not until Roxanne was ready to forgive her for, once again, disappointing, upsetting, and inadvertently rejecting her.

Neve had never been trying to reject her. She loved Roxanne. She just couldn’t feel love that way. And she couldn’t pretend to feel safe when she didn’t.

She stared at the back of Roxanne’s head and knew she should have tried harder.

Nine months was a long time feeling rejected by your partner. Of course Roxanne wasn’t going to stick around for all that.

Roxanne reached the end of the aisle, pausing as she toyed with a hanging display. It took longer than Neve would have liked to register that they were brightly colored, wired earphones.

She looked up at Roxanne, her eyes and her throat burning. “I’m sorry…”

Roxanne smiled softly, the way she’d done a million times before, but it had always seemed warmer. “We’d never be able to tell my family, so it’s not like it could ever have gone anywhere.”

Was that her reasoning? Neve wasn’t convinced. That was the excuse. Roxanne wasn’t a bad person. For nine months, she’d been a lovely person—warm, loving, engaging. She’d probably realized what she’d said, and what it meant to Neve, and now she was walking it back. She’d probably come into this always planning on using her family as an excuse, wanting to save Neve from the truth of the fact that she was never going to be enough, and the truth had just slipped out. That phrase that was in everyone’s mind just bursting from her unbidden.

They both knew the truth, though. Roxanne wanted something Neve could never give her. And that was okay.

Neve sucked in a breath. “You deserve all the things you want in a relationship. I’m sorry I couldn’t—”

“Thank you,” Roxanne said, her gaze jumping from Neve’s face to something over her shoulder. “Oh my god, Clarey! What are you doing here?”

Neve moved but wasn’t fast enough. Roxanne jostled her as she dashed back down the aisle and practically jumped into the arms of a waiting blonde woman. Nothing about her actions suggested she was in the middle of a breakup. Nothing about her actions implied she even realized she’d jostled Neve.

Nothing about her actions implied Neve even mattered.

Clare—orClarey, as Roxanne apparently referred to her to her face—was a woman Neve had never met, and now, never would.

She felt like she might throw up. Suddenly, it didn’t matter that she had no way of getting home. It didn’t matter that she had a bag of her things in Roxanne’s car. It didn’t matter that she had no way to get them back without Roxanne—she could buy new things.

All that mattered was her need to escape. She couldn’t be here when Roxanne remembered she existed and tried to play her off like a random friend who was having a bad day—for how else would she explain Neve’s heartbreak?

She couldn’t be here if Clare realized someone was staring at them, on the brink of tears, before Roxanne even remembered Neve existed. She couldn’t be here as she fell apart.

Even if Roxanne and Clare left her all alone, sobbing on the floor beside a display of multicolored earphones was not how she wanted to spend her Saturday. Of course, none of this was how she wanted to spend her Saturday, but especially not that.

She couldn’t even remember Roxanne saying she needed anything electrical. Had she specifically brought Neve here to break up with her? Had she presumed they wouldn’t run into anyone they knew here? Had she not thought breaking up in or outside Neve’s apartment would have been kinder? Had she not considered doing it over the phone, even?

A million answers Neve would never get to a million questions she should never ask.

She turned away, almost swaying over into the display, and, despite feeling like she was on a boat, out at sea, she headed for the exit. Her stomach churned and her head spun. Her eyes burned, and the lump in her throat was almost unbearable. Through it all, she could barely even rememberwhere they’d come in. She paused, searching desperately for the exit. Everything was swimming, everything felt wrong. She could barely breathe, the whole store felt stifling.

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