Page 122 of Don't Be in Love

The words on my tongue dried up. I didn’t know what to say. I was nauseous; my heart outside my body and the air trapped between us. He was supposed to understand. To understand how my brain and my heart worked. That this never worked for me. He wasn’t supposed to get this close because I couldn’t give him that.

And now he’d leave me to protect himself.

“Please say something,” he pleaded.

I was replacing the cold gusts with the hot air in my chest. In and out. In and out.He’s going to leave you. Your friend is going to leave you, just like Sabrina and Mia. He’s going to leave and find someone else who can make him happy and give him a family with twins. And you’ll be alone for the rest of your life, holding onto trinkets and the scent of sawdust at the bottom of drawers.

I shook my head. “You know I don’t do this.”

“I know, I remember what you had said. I’ve thought about it every day since. But you don’t justchoosenot to love. You can’tcontrol that. And if even some part of you cared for me, I had to know.”

“I do care for you,of courseI care for you. You’re one of my best friends. But I … I’m not … I don’t fall in love.”

He dragged the corner of his lip under his teeth in thought. His cheeks were so flushed. I wanted to press my hands to the sides of his face to warm his skin and beg for his forgiveness.

“Who did you think bought you the dress?” he asked. His voice was solid, unwavering.

“What?” I pulled my arms around my chest.

“When you got the dress, who did you think sent it?”

“Does it matter?”

He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “It was Dorian, wasn’t it.” It was an answer, rather than a question.

“Well, yes, but—”

He scoffed. “I should’ve known.”

Turning away, he strode through the garden back toward the ballroom with his hands stuffed in his pockets. The layers of my dress kicked up as I rushed to catch up to him.

“Known what?” I shouted from behind him.

The snow-soaked grass brushed the tops of my feet as I passed walls of dead hedges.

“James please, just talk to me. I promise this has nothing to do with Dorian.”

He halted. The stairs leading back into the ballroom were only a few steps away. He turned and his face was a perfect painting of sadness: disheveled air, red-rimmed eyes, pink cheeks.

“This has everything to do with Dorian,” he exhaled. “Because you’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

“Of course, not—”

“I wish I believed you. But the look on your face says it all. The worst part is that I get it, because I’ve known him my entire life.”

I was stuck. I didn’t know what else to say. How to convince him otherwise.

He continued, “I know that you think you can’t fall in love, but you don’t get to make that decision. You can choose not to date and to keep yourself at arm’s length from others who love you, but you can’t choose not to fall.” He sounded tired. Crestfallen.

“James, I don’t love him.”

“Stop lying to yourself,” he said with the light nod of his head. “Stop lying to me and giving me hope.”

I clutched my chest as he walked away, taking the steps two at a time and re-entering the ballroom, leaving me with his jacket.

I sank into the stairs. I wrapped my arms around myself, clutching my skin like a blanket and letting his jacket fall behind me.

The edges of the gardens blurred. A soaked postcard. Tears filled my eyes. Goosebumps puckered around my ankles and the side of my thigh where the dress parted.