Page 118 of The Great Dating Fake Off
His lips halt beneath my ear. “You didn’t invite me inside the other night.”
“Uh-uh. I was not the one acting weird.”
“We were both acting weird,” he argues, pulling back. “And we both know why, Nora. That fight with Enzo and Ro hit a little too close to home, didn’t it? I saw the look in your eye when Ro said all that stuff about pain now to avoid pain later. You turned skittish in an instant. It was written all over your face.”
My blood ices over. I’ve never needed his warmth more, but I lean back against the door, hugging myself.
“And all of that happened,” he continues, “right after I told you I’m never going to stop wanting you. Right after I realized you’re it for me. I thought I scared you. That’s why I was anxious in the car. But then you told me you felt the same, and then I got confused all over again, and for days I’ve just been thinking what the hell do we do now? You think I don’t know we’re out of time? Not one fucking minute goes by where I don’t think about it.”
I’m breathing like I just ran a 5K, panic gripping my body. You’re it for me would make me so deliriously happy if it wasn’t followed by a but. It’s the reality I want. But everything I’ve been avoiding, everything I’m afraid of, closes in on us in this dusty, claustrophobic room, and now I’m forced to face it.
I was never supposed to get this attached. I was never supposed to fall for him, knowing we couldn’t see it through. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I’ll say it: we’ve done a damn good job dancing around the fact that I’m leaving, but we can’t avoid it anymore.”
“We have, because this sucks. I try not to wish things were different because then you wouldn’t be doing what you love. I’m glad someone is trying to save this dumpster fire world one town and kid at a time. I would never ask you to give it up for me. But how am I supposed to—”
Let you go?
I can’t even say the words.
His gaze snaps to mine. “I wish things were different. That this career I’ve chosen wasn’t what I wanted. Do you know how much easier things would be?”
I smother that small flame of hope igniting deep inside my chest. “You don’t mean that. Your job is who you are.”
“I just wish it felt like enough,” he says quietly. “Enough to justify having no life of my own. Is this forever, Nora? When I’m fifty, sixty, seventy? Is this all I get?”
The words are on the tip of my tongue.
You can have me.
What if I come see you in Nebraska? What if we try?
But I can’t get them out. The idea stirs my nervous system into a frenzy. My life with him would be starting over forever on a loop. I’ve only just escaped that life. It was impossible to bear before. I can’t do it again.
It’s not fair to offer to try things with him if I know, deep down, I can’t see it through. Long distance won’t work. Living for stretches of time where we can be together, spending weekends together here and there, and saying hundreds of goodbyes a year is no way to live. We’ll grow apart. Worse, he’ll grow to resent me for not giving up the long-distance fight to move with him.
And it’s not fair to expect him to stay, as much as I want him to. He should be with someone less dysfunctional than me who will view his life as the adventure it is and stay beside him every step of the way. I’m just not built for it. And if this conversation feels hard now—like I’m being obliterated by a weapon of my own creation—then dragging out our relationship and postponing the inevitable failure will make it infinitely worse when it finally happens.
Pain now to avoid more pain later.
I do the impossible thing and say nothing, even as it kills me. Even as my brain screams make him some kind of promise.
We stare at each other, frustration fading into something softer.
“Nora.” He takes my hand and draws a circle on the back of my wrist, touching me like it’s second nature, like something he’d do while we both read books or watched a show side by side on a couch. I cling to the gesture, even as it brings tears to my eyes. “What are you thinking?”
I’m thinking about him. I’m never not thinking about him these days. I know all about firsts and new, but Sebastian’s presence is bone-deep familiar. Sometimes when he looks at me, I get the same feeling as when I open the hatbox I keep under my bed where I store the things I’ll never part with, the brittle paper coasters from rare restaurant visits, tarnished jewelry from quarter machines at the mall, and cracked old paperbacks from different seasons of my life.
But I don’t get to keep him.
“I’m thinking you can still have a full life that’s more than just your job,” I say, throat on fire from swallowing down swell after swell of emotion as the vision of our future I’ve constructed bit by bit slips through my fingers. “A damn good one. Look at your parents. They love the same thing, and they’re doing it together.”
The unspoken is louder than my words: I’m not that person for him.
His gaze is probing. “And what does it say about me that right now, I can’t see myself caring about my job a fraction as much as I care about you? If it’s down to a choice, what if you win?”
My heart plummets so hard I swear I hear it hit the ground and shatter. “I don’t want it to be an either/or scenario. I don’t ever want you to feel like you have to choose between me and the thing that’s most important to you. I couldn’t live with myself.”
