Page 33 of If You Say So

“I came down here to…” My voice trails off.God.I hate that my emotions are trying to claw their way out of me, that I want nothing more than to cross this space and pull him into my arms, crush my mouth to his.

His stupid fuckingtraitorousmouth.

His auburn hair is a mess on his head, lips swollen from I don’t even know what, and I stare at them.

I hate them. I hatehim.

Liar.

I love them, and I still fucking love him.

The thought that I’ll never be able to get back to normal, get back to me, because he is my normal and he is a huge part of me—it really hits home, and the urge to cry washes over me.

Suddenly I can’t even stand the sight of him, so angry that he’s messed this up so badly. I was the original fuckup, but he drove that shit home.

I hate that things have turned out this way. He’s my best friend, and I can’t even be in the same room as him without wanting to burst into tears because we were stupid enough to take our friendship and try to turn it into more.

I feel like I wasted two years dating him and a lifetime loving him, especially when it’s turned into this.

“I can’t do this anymore, Nate.”

“Can’t do what?”

“Us.”

“There is no us,” he throws back.

“And that’s just the problem. We were friends—bestfucking friends. Now all we do is tiptoe around each other, around our past, around New Year’s. I fucked up, you fucked up, but we can’t admit that, can’t move past it. We can’t go back to how things were before.”

He crosses his arms over his chest and dips his chin, staring at the ground.

We don’t speak for a long time, and I almost wonder if someone is going to come looking for us.

“You hurt me, you know.” The words are whispered, so soft I’m not even sure I’ve heard him correctly. “When you told me I was too much, that we were too much, and you needed a break—it fuckinghurt, Blake. It tore right into me because I realized then that we lost something a long time ago and somewhere along the line, I stopped being your best friend. I was your boyfriend, but I wasn’t your friend anymore. The fact that you could just toss me aside in every way hurt so damn bad.”

He’s not even finished talking and I’m already shaking my head.

“No, you weren’t listening, Nate. I told you I neededtime, that I needed to sort some shit out, that I needed space. I neededyou, but in a different way.” Frustrated, I scrub at my hair and let out a string of muttered curse words. “I was trying to get that back, to get the friendship back, and if I was going to make that happen, you had to step back from the boyfriend role.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, the memories of the explosive fight filtering through my mind.

“But you wouldn’t listen. You gotso…mad, and you walked away.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “And then…well, you know the rest.”

“New Year’s.”

I nod. “And that’s what sealed our fate.”

“A miscommunication.”

Another nod. “Which really says a lot about how complacent we’d grown with one another. We didn’t listen. We didn’t care. We got lazy. We gotcomfortable.”

“I always thought that was something to aspire to in a relationship, feeling comfortable with someone. I didn’t realize being too comfortable could tear two people apart.”

“It’s that moment when you stop thinking of you asyou, when you move in this pattern ofusand you forget that you need to come first—always. I did that, Nate. I forgot about me.”

His eyes trace over me as he listens to what I say, as he understands it. “I was too scared of losing you to realize that.”

I give him a sad smile. “Yeah.”

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