“I’m not in—”
Connor reared in his seat and for a moment I thought he was going to throw the beer bottle at my head. “Tell me the fucking truth, Wes. Stop lying to me and yourself.”
“They’re just words,” I said. “Fiction. They’re—”
“You’re telling me you wrote all those letters and it’s all bullshit?”
“Connor, man. Listen—”
“She doesn’t love me, Wes,” Connor said, his voice thick with pain. “She loves you. Your w
ords. Your soul. She said so herself. Rich or poor, popular or not, she doesn’t care.”
“Sure, she says that now,” I said, my voice low. “But she would care. Eventually, she would care a lot. What I am…it would wear her down. She’s luminous, and my ugliness and my mean streak would do nothing but dim her…”
My mother’s words from years ago, that all men were trash—hammered into me, over and over again—came back, along with my worry that I’d hurt any woman I might someday love.
So I vowed not to love anyone.
I shook my head and looked to Connor.
“Something’s fucking wrong with me. Broken or missing. Whatever it is, you have it.”
“Now you’re really talking bullshit.”
I loosed a frustrated sigh. “You know, man, you need to give yourself a chance.”
Connor’s eyes widened. “Me? I need to—?”
“The point is,” I said quickly, “I’d suck the happiness out of her while trying to figure my shit out. At the end of the day, love letters are just words on a page. You can’t live off them.”
“No?”
“No.”
Connor leveled a gaze at me. “We fucked with her heart. When she finds out, she’s going to hate us both.”
“She doesn’t need to find out.”
“You expect me to just go on being with her, knowing you love her?”
“I don’t—”
“Wes, for fuck’s sake,” he cried through his teeth.
“You said it yourself,” I said. “She’ll hate us. It’ll break her heart. You want to do that to her? For what? So I can fuck up whatever’s left?”
Connor turned his beer bottle around and around. “I don’t want to hurt her.”
“So don’t.” I leaned over the table. “It’s too late to tell her, and that’s my fault. I’m sorry I…got carried away. So fucking sorry. But we’re shipping out in a few days. Deployed to the goddamn front lines for a year or more. That’s scary enough for her. We don’t need to add to her pain. I took it too far, but I did it for you. And her. To give her everything I can’t give her myself.”
The best of both of us.
Connor slumped back in his seat. “I should call her.” He shot me a look. “Or you should. I don’t know what to say.”
“Tell her what you feel.”
“My best friend is in love with my girlfriend. How exactly, am I supposed to feel about that?” There was no animosity in his tone, only heavy sadness. “Maybe you could write it down for me.”