Page 30 of Half-Hearted
We stared at each other for a few moments, my palm pressed against his lips. “Alright, fine,” I admitted, my chest rising and falling with weight. “Maybe… maybe I went about it the wrong way. But please, for the love of god, forget I ever said anything about you… about me thinking about you…” I couldn’t even get the words out. I was so mortified.
Joel huffed a warm chuckle against my hand as he watched me struggle. I flushed harder, peeling myself away.
“Not a chance in hell I’ll forget,” he said. “And had you not been torturing me, I’m pretty sure I’d have spent the last six weeks thinking about very little else.”
My heart thumped, sending a spark of heat over my skin. “And you have the audacity to tell me we’re friends.”
“Wearefriends.”
“I’m not having this conversation with you again,” I said, my throat swelling.
He wanted to argue, I could tell, but thankfully decided to leave it alone. For now. “Fine. But you still haven’t given me an answer. Was it more than just sex for you, then?”
I couldn’t believe it was even a question. “You know it was,” I mumbled uncomfortably. “You know how I’ve always felt about you.” It had never been a secret. Or a well-kept one, at least.
He shook his head, refusing to release my gaze. “No. No, I really fucking don’t. What I know is that growing up, you had a childhood crush on me. What Iknowis that while I’ve been losing my mind over the last month and a half, trying to figure out how to get you to spare me five minutes, you’ve been busy with some other guy who’s—” He cut off really abruptly, mouth pinching into a thin line. It was at least an entire minute before he decided to speak again. “What I know is that I’ve spent the last six weeks in absolute hell.”
I was clinging onto my breath, watching his features struggle against a pained blend of emotions.
“How can you stand it?” he asked again, eyes rimmed red. “How is this so easy for you?”
Easy? He thought this had beeneasyfor me? Which part?
The part where I hadn’t been able to so much as get out of bed for the first week or the one where it felt like there was a giant, painful void in my chest I didn’t think would ever be filled again?
Which part of the last seventeen fucking years of waiting and wishing and constant heartbreak did he imagine had been soeasyfor me?
But I kept my mouth shut.
“I miss you,” he said, and my throat constricted with such intensity that it snatched my breath and stung my eyes. I blinked a few times, pushing the tears back. I wasn’t going to cry in front of him. I’d promised myself that much. “So much, Lex. I’ve never… I don’t know what to do. I can’t eat or sleep or fuckingthinkanymore. I’m losing my goddamn mind over how much I miss you. I miss talking to you every day, I miss seeing you, I miss your laugh. And I—I can’t even listen to music anymore because I miss hearing you hum along to every single song I put on, whether you’ve heard it before or not. You’re always off-key and almost always miss a beat or two. It’s horrible, and I fucking miss it.”
I wasn’t going to cry.
I wasn’t.
“It’s been hell. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. And I had a plan for today—I was going to fix things with you no matter what, but then you walked in with Raj, and it…” Joel trailed off, seemingly struggling with finishing his sentence. “Why him?” he eventually asked. “Is it… I know he has money—a trust fund, probably, and—” He stopped. Likely because of the livid shock contorting my face.
“Money?” I shot up to my feet, taking backward steps, bumping into things. “You think I’m with Raj because of hismoney?”
“So you are with him.”
I almost smacked him with a throw pillow. “Joel!”
But instead of backtracking, he doubled right down. “Can you really blame me?”
“I beg your fucking pardon?”
He was standing too now, tight fists at his sides mirroring mine. I wasn’t the only one with bottled-up anger, apparently. “Think about it, Alexis. You’ve dated four men in the last three years that you’ve introduced me to. Can you guess what they all had in common?”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this much frustration flare through my body at once. I was vibrating.
And then he started listing shit. “Ben, management consulting, parents owned a big pharmaceutical company. Luca, tech startup, funded by his dad, who owned a national hockey team. Bastien, corporate lawyer, mother was a judge, father was an investment banker.” He stopped, chest rising and falling with just as much excess weight as mine. “And nowRaj, gynecologist, parents’ occupations unknown, but it’s pretty safe to assume we’re following the same pattern with him, given that he’s barely out of residency, went to an Ivy League school, and has still somehow managed to already purchase his third property in the most expensive province in the country.”
I didn’t say anything, too furious to pry my jaw open.
“So, yeah, Lex. I think you have a type. I think you have a… lifestyle that you’ve grown used to, and it requires a certain level of income and social status that I’m realistically never going to attain.” And then he swallowed thickly, taking a tentative step forward. “Put yourself in my shoes for just a second. Looking at your track record and the night’s events, wouldn’t you think it wasn’t anything more than a drunken hookup that—”
I snapped. “For the last time, it wasn’t a drunken hookup!”
