Lino. Fuck.
I swallowed hard against a flash of jealousy. But there was nothing I could do about that. If Lino won her back, then he won her back. It wasn't like I'd ever know, one way or the other. I was never g
oing to be able to come back here, and I definitely wasn't going to be able to keep in contact with any of them. Even Mark would hate me if he knew what I had just done.
I sat down on the curb to wait for my taxi, putting my head down in my hands. I had done exactly what I had to do. But God did it hurt.
Chapter Thirty
Gretchen
I woke up early on January 1st, after a night of fitful sleep interspersed with bouts of tears. Fortunately, I didn't have any appointments for that day, although maybe it would have been better to have appointments and to keep myself busy.
I made a pot of strong coffee and just stood there while it brewed, staring pensively into the liquid, hardly able to believe what had happened the night before. I'd been so excited to bring him to another luau. I'd been so excited to kiss him at midnight. I'd been so excited to start my year with him, surrounded by all of my friends.
I hadn't expected him to act like the Christian who everyone else seemed to know. The guy who just fucked girls and then broke their hearts. God, I was so stupid. All the signs had been there all along. I should have listened to Mina and quit the whole thing before I'd gotten my feelings tied up in it.
I brought my coffee out to the porch, and for a moment, I stared down at the romance novel that I'd been reading lately. I carefully set my coffee down on the table and picked up the book, thumbing through it for a moment. Then, I brought it out to the trashcan and dumped it inside.
Mina was right all along. There's no such thing as true love.
I'd thought I'd had it, that was the thing. I hadn't even labeled it as love inside my head, but I still had been in love. It didn't matter now.
Mina was almost hesitant as she walked up onto my porch that morning. “Hey, girl,” she said. “How are you doing?”
I shook my head. “I'm fine,” I told her, lazily swinging back and forth and trying to pretend that it was normal for me to be lying out here without a book in hand.
Mina sighed. “I brought breakfast. Come on. It's parfaits from that great place over on the other side of the island. I got up early to get them.”
I grimaced. “I'm not hungry,” I told her. “I appreciate the effort, but-”
“I'm not taking no for an answer,” Mina said, shaking her head. “Come on, get up.”
I sighed and allowed myself to be directed out toward the back porch, stopping on the way for more coffee for myself, as well as a mug for Mina.
“So, what happened last night?” she asked as we sat down at the table.
I shrugged. “You probably saw all of it.”
“Yeah, we saw you guys fighting, but we moved away from you guys, so nobody heard what you were fighting about.”
“He's going back to New York,” I said. That was all that mattered about it anyway.
“You've known for weeks that he was going to eventually go bak to New York,” Mina said, sounding confused. “What was there to argue about? Unless he was trying to get you to go to New York with him? Or you were trying to get him to stay here?”
“Oh no,” I said with a bitter laugh. “No, that is definitely not what happened.”
“What happened, then?” Mina asked gently.
I sighed. “He was just being a jerk, okay? He said that there was never anything between us, that we were just fucking. Which, of course, we were; he's Christian Wall. He's done this all over the world. If you want to say, 'I told you so,' go right ahead.”
Mina blinked over at me. “Oh, honey,” she said sympathetically. “But the thing is, he hasn't done this all over the world. There are probably a few other girls who he has taken home more than once. As far as anyone knows, though, he's never been monogamous with someone, and not for a whole month. He doesn't even really date people the way that he dated you. Besides, I've seen the two of you together. If you're trying to tell me that he didn't have any feelings for you, you're either blind or seriously deluded.”
I swallowed hard, stirring my parfait but unable to even take a bite of it. “He said, though, that-”
“Oh, fuck what he said,” Mina said, rolling her eyes. “Honestly, he's a guy. Probably he's massively commitment shy, and he's already thinking ahead to the fact that he's going to have to go back to New York. He doesn't know what that means for the two of you, so instead of trying to work through his feelings and talk things out and come up with a solution like a normal person would, he panicked and tried to get rid of the whole thing.”
I cracked a slight smile at that. “That is possible,” I admitted. I shook my head. “I thought you didn't believe in the idea of true love, though. You think we were probably just fucking, right?”