Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 103030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
“Yes,” I say, trying not to focus on her being at a bar all evening.
“Good. Talk to you then.”
“Talk to you then. Love you.”
My head jerks up at the same time she whirls around. Her eyes are wide—maybe wider than mine.
I drop the wet wipe in the trash and slowly refasten my pants.
Love you? What the fuck?
I don’t know what to say because I didn’t mean to say that. Do I mean it? Do I tell her it was a joke? Do I admit it was a mistake?
My brain flips into overdrive in its attempt to fix this monster of a fuckup.
“You’re funny,” she says, flashing me a nervous smile. “I’ll talk to you tonight.”
She flees from the scene of my crime.
But is it a crime?
I’m not sure what makes me feel worse—that I put her on the spot? Or that she didn’t say it back?
Twenty-Eight
Shaye
“He said I love you.”
I look at the picture of an old lady sitting at a table praying. I found the picture at a flea market the first year I moved out of my mom’s house. There was nothing particularly captivating about the white-haired lady with a bowed head over a bowl of porridge, but it spoke to me. It gave me a sense of hope, of family.
It’s failed me throughout my life, but I can’t part with it.
Lisbeth gasps. “He did what?”
I shrug even though she can’t see me.
“Wow, Shaye. How do you feel about that?”
“I have no idea.” I take in each stroke of the woman’s hair and the way the paint looks white but has gray and a yellow tone to it too. “I don’t know how I feel about it.”
“Well, I love it.”
“I’m sure you do.”
Lisbeth rattles on about how she knew it—that she called it. That she had a feeling in her stomach since the night I hit his car with mine that something big, something grand, would come of it.
I want to believe her. I do. But he loves me?
That word—love—is loaded. What is love, anyway? Sure, I love a frozen Snickers bar—that I’m positive. But loving a cold chocolate candy bar and loving another human are two decidedly different things.
I love Lisbeth. I love Nate. I have love in my heart for Joe and his toothless grin. But none of those things are what I think I love you means if you say it to someone you love like that.
Like I hope Oliver would say it to me.
Boone said he loved me. He doesn’t love me. It was a friendly knee-jerk reflex.
Is that what it was for Oliver too?
“Did you say it back?” Lisbeth asks. “I’m not going to judge you either way. I’m just curious.”
“No.”
“Shaye!”
“You said you wouldn’t judge me!” I pick up a stack of mail and sort through it as a distraction. “What a friend you are.”
“I’m not judg—I’m totally judging you.” She reconsiders. “No, I’m not. I’m disappointed that you aren’t being honest with yourself.”
“Oh, please.” I toss the envelopes back on the table. The top one is a letter from the loan company regarding Luca’s loan. I flip it over. Screw them. “I am being honest with myself. He probably just said it like you say it to me when you hang up the phone.”
“That’s not what I meant when I said that you weren’t being honest with yourself.”
I groan.
She’s not going to let this go.
“You have feelings for Oliver,” Lisbeth says.
“I do. I admit that. Happy now?”
“Then why are you being so awkward about his profession of love?”
“Because it’s probably not real.”
“Why? Because he said it to you? Would you think it was more realistic if he said it to me? To one of the girls at the gala? If he said it to the girl at work that answers the phones?”
My spirits sink.
The answer is that, yes, I probably would think it was more realistic.
I hate this about myself. I hate that my immediate thought is that it will go wrong or that it’s not meant to be. I do it all the time.
“Someone sent me flowers, and I didn’t tell him,” I tell Lisbeth.
“Someone like who?”
“A guy from the gala.”
“Shaye.”
I groan again. “I know. I know that I should’ve told him, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to rock the boat.”
“Because he obviously would’ve blamed you, right?” She scoffs. “He’s not Luca, Shaye.”
A load of guilt creeps on my shoulders. She’s right. I do place Luca’s sins on Oliver’s shoulders. I let Oliver pay the price for the things Luca has done, and that’s not fair—to either of us. Which is why I debated that at The Gold Room.
Today has thrown me, though.
I pace around the kitchen and feel the fog that sits in my head roll slowly away. If I acknowledge that some of my actions, some of my fears, are Luca-induced, it makes it easier to get to the truth about how I feel and what I want.