Pricked

I close out of his text and return to the rest—re-reading a message my mother sent two days ago that I’ve yet to respond to because I haven’t found the words.

MOM: Hello, sweetheart. Just wanted to tell you that I miss you. Very much. My heart is breaking with each passing day. I hope you’re okay. Let me know if you need anything. Anything at all. I love you.

I feel bad for her, I do. But I’m not going home any time soon—or ever, really.

I compose a quick message, simply telling her I’m okay and not to worry, and then I glance over at Madden again. He hasn’t moved an inch.

I have no right to be as annoyed as I am right now. It’s not like he’s trying to make me jealous—as far as he knows, I have zero feelings for him. But still. He’s never been this inattentive. Maybe that’s what’s bothering me so much.

Getting up from the sofa, I slip out the front door and take a seat on the steps. I need fresh air and a starry sky and a vision that doesn’t include watching sports—or the guy I like talking to every girl in the room but me.

My phone vibrates with another text, and when I check my messages, I’m sure it’s going to be from my mom, but it’s not.

THOM: Hey! Dinner Friday?

Thom Pruitt is a fellow research assistant on my team at Hershman. He’s all khakis and button downs and thick, sexy professor glasses. Very preppy. Very well-spoken. Fluent in four languages actually. Master’s degree from Princeton. My parents would be all over him. And maybe in the past, I would’ve as well. But when I place him next to Madden in my mind, Madden wins every time.

He asked me for my number earlier today when we were the only two left eating lunch in the breakroom. It was completely out of the blue and caught me off guard, so I had to give it to him. That and the fact that we work together every single day and it’d be awkward if I didn’t …

“Who the fuck is Thom?” Madden’s voice behind me sends a shock to my heart. I hadn’t heard the door. “And who the fuck spells Thom with an ‘H’?”

A second later, he sits beside me on the steps.

“A friend from work,” I say, darkening my phone screen and sitting it aside.

“Didn’t know where you were,” he said. “Thought maybe you’d left.”

“Why would I leave?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know … maybe you wanted to hang out with Thom?”

I elbow him in the ribs. “I stayed. Even though you’ve been ignoring me all night.”

I hate … hate … that I sound jealous right now.

Hate it.

His brows lift and his forehead is covered in lines. “What? I wasn’t ignoring you. You were being antisocial.”

“Okay, Madden.” I stand and grab my phone. “Whatever.”

He wears an amused smirk. “What are you all worked up about? You’re never like this.”

“Nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.”

“You’ve been really distant the last week or so,” I say. “I felt like things were going really well and then you started pulling away … I thought you liked … this.”

“I do.”

“Then what changed?” I ask.

“Nothing changed, Brighton.” He gets up, standing in front of me. “Maybe you changed.”

“Don’t gaslight me.”

He laughs. “I’m not gaslighting you.”

“You’re trying to convince me that this is all in my head when you know damn well I’m not imagining this,” I say. “Are you bored with me? Is that what this is? You had your fun and now you’re over it?”

“God. Brighton. No.”

I lean in. “We used to have sex every day. Sometimes twice a day. Five that one time! You couldn’t keep your hands off me. And now it’s like …”

“That’s not it at all.” He blows a hard breath between his perfect lips, and I hate that as mad as I am right now, I’d still kiss them just to feel them one more time before this whole thing implodes.

“Then what is it?” I don’t mean to yell, but I’m yelling now. Someone peers out one of the living room windows. “I don’t want to do this here. I don’t want to fight in front of your friends, on Pierce’s front lawn.”

I slip my phone in my back pocket, cross my arms, and walk to his car.

“Take me home, please,” I say, leaning against the passenger door when I get there.

I expect him to protest, so when he starts walking this way, I swallow my surprise and keep my eyes down. He unlocks my door before heading around to his, and I climb in.

It’s a short drive back to the apartment, maybe six minutes at most, but it hits me as we’re a block away from the shop that maybe I had this all wrong.

“Oh, my God,” I say, turning to him as he pulls onto his street.

“What?”

“You like me,” I say. “That’s what this is. You like me and you’ve been pushing me away. How did I not see that before?”

“I don’t like you … I mean I like you, but not like that.”

He parks in his designated spot and we head up.

“And I’m not pushing you away,” he adds when we get to the stairs.

“Fine,” I say as we head in. “Just keep telling yourself that.”

He tosses his keys on the counter and kicks off his shoes.

“You know what I don’t get about you?” I ask because I’m only getting started. “You’ve spent every waking, non-working hour with me for the past several weeks and you still can’t even call me your friend.”

He starts to say something, but I lift a finger.

“I’m not done,” I say. “I’ve opened up to you, Madden. I’ve told you things I’ve never talked about with other people, and yet getting you to talk about yourself is like pulling teeth.”

“My past is irrelevant to … this,” he says.

I throw my fists in the air. “You couldn’t be more wrong right now.”

I pace the small apartment because if I stand next to him for too much longer I might accidentally slap him, and I’ve never slapped anything in my life.

“Brighton,” he says with the gentleness of a hostage negotiator. “You’re getting worked up over nothing.”

I balk. “Nothing? Really?”

“I told you. I told you from the very beginning … you spend one night with me and you’ll never be the same. I can’t love you, Brighton. I would if I could, but I can’t. And it’s not that I don’t want to.”

“I can’t believe you expect me to buy that.” I shake my head, offering an incredulous laugh.

“It’s more complicated than you could even begin to imagine.” He takes a seat in his makeshift living room, and for the first time I see the slightest hint of vulnerability shining through his dark eyes.

He’s not messing with me. He’s not feeding me lines.

It’s in this moment that my heart breaks. And it isn’t a clean break, right down the middle. It’s messy. Shards everywhere. If it ever gets pieced back together it won’t work the same, that’s for damn sure.

Hearing someone say they want to love you but they can’t is worse than hearing them say they don’t.

Without saying another word, I dig my suitcase out of his closet and start packing.

“What are you doing?” he asks, coming over to me.

“When we first agreed to this arrangement, I made you a promise,” I say. My hair curtains the side of my face, and I’m grateful he can’t see the tears welling in my eyes. “I told you that if this started to feel real, I’d walk away.”

He’s quiet.

I swipe the tears from my cheek before turning to him. “It got real a long time ago. And I think it did for both of us. Only you were too scared to admit it, and I was too foolish to say anything because I kept thinking one day you’d wake up and change your mind.”

I zip my suitcase and slide it off his bed.

“Where are you going?” His question breaks my heart, not because he’s showing concern, but because he’s not trying to stop me.

I lift my hand to his cheek, ignoring his question. “Thank you for everything. I mean that. You’ve completely changed my life in more ways than you could ever know.”

He studies me in silence, and I’d give anything to know what he’s thinking right now or if he’s letting himself feel any of this.

Or maybe he feels nothing.

I don’t know.

“You know how you told me no one’s ever loved you before?” I ask before I go. “Well, I did. So … there you go. You were loved. You still are.”

I walk to the door, leaving him standing in the middle of his apartment, frozen like the heart I’m certain no longer beats in his chest, and when I get outside, I order an Uber and return to Park Terrace, tail tucked.

The security code to the front gate and the back door are unchanged, so I show myself in that night, wheeling my suitcase through a dark, quiet house. My parents’ cars are here, but the house is lifeless.

I texted my mom on the way here to give her a head’s up.