Page 54 of Picking Daisies on Sundays

Another sob left my throat that immediately brought him back down to his knees in front of me. He brought my head to his shoulder and wrapped his arms around my trembling body. “Shh, shh, I’ll get him, I’ll be right back.”

“He’s not here,”hiccup, “A girl came up to me and said he left early.”With my phone and its entire romantic confessional contents.

He pulled back. “He left you? He left youat prom?”He looked furious. The same fury I saw wash over him when Sarah, Claire, or Rhea returned home from school with tears in their eyes and a story about a boy. I didn’t know how to explain that it wasn’t like that without giving away my feelings for him. I didn’t care that Jeremiah left early; I cared that he took my phone with him.

“I just really need him right now.” When I looked up at him and saw sorrow in his eyes, the tears came again. The weight of my desire for him was pressing down on my clavicle, and it got heavier as I realized that it was getting less likely that Levi cared for me in a romantic way. But I couldn’t endure the weight of my secret any longer.

I loved him, I loved him, I loved him.“I love him,” I voiced my inner monologue. I cried into his shoulder, too insecure to tell him to his face.

The hand that ran up and down my back paused.

Why wasn’t he responding? Did he not hear me? I sighed. My

energy was running low from the vodka and crying. I just wanted to crawl into bed and email Dad. “I’m in love with you. I’ve always loved you.”Why wasn’t he responding?“I need Jere,” I sobbed and hiccupped. He had my words, the words I wrote for Levi, to explain.

That’s when the night became a crooked, silent film. Words were rushing out my mouth as quickly as my tears.

His body froze around my weak one. “We need to get you home. I’ll run outside and pull up the car.” He picked me up like a porcelain doll to stand up.

Did he not hear me? I love him,I’m in love with him. And he had nothing to say? No response or explanation? My first reaction was to be angry and push back. To tell him that he couldn’t just walk away from our conversation. But my habit was to sink into my insecurities. They pulled me back like puppet strings, telling me that I was wrong all along. He would never return these feelings. He came with another date for a reason. And now he was ignoring my comment so I could retain some sort of dignity by pretending it never happened.

But the part of me that was drunk was still cross.

“No,” I reacted. “I don’t want you to take me home.” His eyes widened and he retreated just a step backwards like I had slapped him. I had created a line between the two of us that told him I wanted nothing to do with him. Maybe he thought it was because I was drunk. But he must’ve known deep downwhy.

He nodded, resigning. “I’ll see if Nora can, then.”

I crossed my arms, tears now dry. “No, I’ll call Jeremiah. Go have a fun night.” He knew I didn’t have my phone to make a call. But he also knew that I was too stubborn to argue with.

“Fine. Text me when you make it home.” And with that, he walked away, turning back to glance at me from down the hall. But I kept my head down.

I walked through the crowd like I imagined spirits did: unsteady and empty. I found Nora and asked to borrow her phone to make a call. I called my mom, of course, not Jeremiah. That would be a problem for tomorrow. She said she’d be there in five minutes at the front of the venue.

I returned Nora’s phone with a brief thanks and made my way to the front of the building.

“Levi.”

My heart stopped. I whipped my head around, walking a few steps back to an adjacent hallway. Where I found Cora Messing kissing Levi. She moved her hands across every space of his skin, whispering his name, and touching every dark curl and wave of hair on his head. Levi’s hands remained unmoving, stagnant on her hips.

When Audrey Hepburn said, “He doesn’t even know I exist. I might as well be reaching for the moon,” inSabrina,I had never understood more until that moment. My throat tightened and opened just enough for me to breathe.

She was his date, after all, of course they could kiss. But this soon? This fast? After what I had confessed? I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t hold onto the slow bleed of my heart or calm the tremor in my hands when he looked at me, knowing it meant everything to me and nothing to him.

There would be noI’m hometext or call tomorrow. There would be no apology letter in the mail. There would be no more morning drives together or movie nights with the girls or trips to the thrift store or baking strawberry shortcakes or beach days or baseball games or or or or…any of it.I couldn’t do any of it anymore.

Losing our friendship meant losing a fraction of my heart that had been filled when Dad died. A piece that had been restored by him and his family. I didn’t want to lose any of it, I never did. But I couldn’t remain if it meant being on the sideline of his love life for the rest of mine. I was too much of a hopeless romantic for that. I’d rather be unhappy with a chance at love, than no chance at all.

But no one tells you how much love feels like grief until you have your heart broken and realize you can’t take any of it back.

25

‘moving on’ was a broken record that I never had the

strength to lift the needle off of

I cried so many tears that I could’ve filled enough champagne bottles to serve to every man that ever made me feel insecure. Tears for my broken heart, for putting myself out there, for the constant rejections I’d been enduring in my career, and plentiful for Dad. I missed him so much. Nights like these, I forgot for a split moment that when I ran home, sadness weighing me down, that he wouldn’t be on the other side of the door to hug me. To wrap my arms around his old flannel and breathe in the smell of the cologne my mom bought him since the day they started dating.

Gabe and Jia found me on my doorstep in my mother’s designer dress. They cradled me like a child before guiding me inside and onto the couch. Fortunately, my mom and Mandy were out tonight so I could be spared with relaying this story more times than I wanted to recall.