Page 136 of Fifty First Times (Sharing You 0.40)
I sink down next to her. We’re going to talk, whether I want to or not—that much is clear.
“I’m going to say something that’s going to piss you off,” she starts, “because it sounds like it’s about Alice, but it’s not.”
Knee-jerk defensiveness rolled through me like thunderheads. “Maybe you can just say what you came to say and leave her out of it?” For all her brains, Tressa had no idea what she’d done to me. Finding Alice, her kindness and stability, had showed me a future without loneliness. I’m aware—too aware—of all the things Tressa brings to the table that Alice can’t, but it doesn’t mean I don’t love my fiancée.
“I love you, Noel. Still.”
Even though I expect them, the words affect me. They race through my arteries and into my thudding heart, dump into my veins, and come back for more. No matter what, they’re going to be a part of me forever. I manage, “Still?” I manage.
“Yes. Do you want to know when I first knew I was in love with you?”
I don’t want to know. I want to know worse than I’ve ever wanted anything. Eventually, she continues, as I knew she would before she finished the question. It’s hard to figure this new Tressa out—the one who wants to talk about her feelings, about her and me—but her essence is familiar.
“When you went on vacation with your family. So about five weeks into our disaster of a relationship. I didn’t admit it to myself until six months later, right after I visited for that football game?”
“But you never said anything. I thought nothing had changed.” We’d never broken up because, according to her, we’d never been officially together. We’d gone back to our respective colleges, and she’d visited when she’d felt like it, until finally, I hadn’t been able to do it anymore.
“I know. I’d never been in love before, Noel, and it terrified me.”
Silence wraps around us. The night is quiet, the sounds of crickets and cicadas gone with summer. Tressa reaches out like she wants to touch me but doesn’t. I want her to but am glad she doesn’t. Electricity and confusion are the two most constant things between us, and somehow, with her confession, the second has eased.
Not the first. Sparks sizzle, infusing the space with a heat, making me too aware of every curve of her body, the way she smells . . . a
ll of it.
“What’s changed?”
She drags a shaking hand through her chestnut hair and laughs. “I’m still scared. But now of living the rest of my life with the words inside of me. I know it’s not fair to do this to you now, and it wasn’t fair to do it two years ago, after I found out you’d moved on . . .” Tressa trails off, biting her full lower lip in a way that makes me want to do the same, and I look away. “You’re settling, Noel. Even if it’s too late for us, I hate that for you.”
Settling. The word feels like poison in my ears, like oil trying to mix with water. It’s not Tressa’s place to make that kind of comment, but I’d be angrier if I hadn’t wondered the same thing.
“I’m going to say this once, as your . . . well, not friend, but as someone who loves you. I was a hot mess, and I never gave you any of the reassurances you needed. Shit, I spent every night with you for almost eight weeks and insisted we weren’t serious.”
Almost every night. There was that one, when she’d been with Micah Blake.
“But Alice is too far the other direction. She might be the perfect doctor’s wife. She wears the cardigans and I’m sure never misses an opportunity to say how lucky she is to have you—because she fucking is, Noel. But she doesn’t challenge you.”
“Maybe I outgrew that, Tress. You . . . the way we were, it was like a drug. An amazing, beautiful, addictive high but with lows so deep it took me days to climb out of them. That’s not how adult relationships are supposed to work.”
She looks down the street. The girls’ soft voices waft down from the windows upstairs, and nerves tightens my chest. I should make her go before Alice gets hurt.
Except it feels good, talking to Tressa about feelings, about life.
“Maybe that’s a lie we believe, so we stop looking.”
“What’s a lie?”
She turns toward me, golden flecks in her hazel eyes blazing with determination. “That we outgrow passion. Noel . . . I love you so much it makes me feel out of my mind, sometimes. You loved me so much that you wanted to punch the wall with frustration daily. We screamed and fought and hurt each other. When we made up, the intensity was there, too. All of it made me sure I was alive. I feel that way now, for the first time since I last saw you—alive.”
“Love.”
“What?”
“You said, I loved you so much. I still love you, Tressa. You’re right. All of it . . . It left the kind of mark that won’t ever go away. But that’s not how I want to live anymore.”
The words cost me. They ripped off a part of my heart, maybe my soul, that belonged to Tressa. It’s like I’ve been holding it for her all this time, and now, when she leaves, it will go with her. It feels a little bit like dying, but Alice is my life now.
There were so many times when letting her go was unimaginable. Even after the night she’d spent with Micah, I hadn’t been able to send her away. At the time, I was still able to lie to myself. To cling to the belief that things would change, that this day would never come.
