I just wanted to be with him.
And the fact that he could not have cared less hurt like a bitch.
I don’t do what people expect. A tinge of bitterness leaked into my mind and lashed out. What else do you expect from a pathological liar? it taunted.
Even though a small part of me—the part that loved him unconditionally—felt compelled to wage an argument on his behalf, I couldn’t. Watching him stand there like a shell of himself and tell me I wasn’t important enough to change the rules for, I felt like I had witnessed his worst lie yet. The saddest part of it all: I still wasn’t sure whether he was lying to himself or purposely lying to me.
Had I just been a fun challenge to him the entire time?
Were our moments of deep intimacy just a façade to snare me in his web of deceit?
My gut instinct told me that what we’d shared couldn’t have been faked, but I honestly didn’t know anymore. A hidden, insecure part of me feared that Reed had gotten me to do the one thing I’d spent the majority of my columns trying to get my readers to avoid—giving your trust to someone who was unworthy.
Hell, this week’s column had even revolved around it.
Sex Says: Trust actions, not words. If someone deserves your trust, you will see it in everything they do—not the lip service they pay.
Trust is like paper; once it’s crumpled, it can’t go back to the way it was. It’s forever changed—forever imperfect.
Had Reed broken my trust? I honestly didn’t know.
I knew I hadn’t heard from him since I’d walked out of his apartment while he appeared to be in the process of self-destructing.
Or had he just been done with me?
I knew with certainty that I hadn’t had any expectations regarding what our relationship was and what it wasn’t. I hadn’t been clingy or pushy when it came to him or us. I had been content with just letting things evolve naturally because neither Reed nor I were traditional kind of people when it came to relationships. We were both very much on the same page on all things dating and relationships and commitment.
Well, at least, I’d thought we had been.
Now, I wasn’t so sure.
Now, obviously, I was questioning everything when it came to him.
“I think you should put on some more sunscreen, Lola,” Annie said from her prone position on the beach chair beside mine.
The Santa Cruz sun was hot and persistent, damn near blinding anyone without sunglasses with its strong rays, and even though my sister may have been right, I still groaned out loud over her mothering.
“Thanks, Mom,” I retorted. “But I’m good right now. I just put on a fresh coat about an hour ago.”
My gaze moved out toward the ocean where Brian played Frisbee with Henry and my father, and my mother was entertaining Emma and Lucy with her expertise in the art of sand castles.
They were all laughing and smiling and basking in the happiness that was spending time together as a family.
I, on the other hand, felt like curling up into the fetal position and going into a temporary coma. The way things had gone down with Reed had soured my mood, and overwhelming sadness hung heavy over my heart like the San Francisco fog.
This should have been an enjoyable trip. I shouldn’t have had a head full of bad thoughts and a heart that felt like it had been hacked with a cleaver. I should’ve been enjoying time with my family, not withdrawing into a pit of gloom.
It pissed me off, and that anger was probably the sole reason I had been able to get out of bed and make my way to the beach this morning.
Fuck Reed Luca and his clusterfuck of contradiction.
I knew that Reed and I had never declared I love you, but I couldn’t help that I very much did love him. I had one-hundred-percent fallen in love with him, and now, I felt like that would end up biting me in the ass. Several days ago, I might’ve left his apartment to avoid getting clobbered by his indifference, but the stabbing pain in my chest said I had already been clobbered.
“What’s your deal today?” Annie asked and flipped the brim of her ridiculous beach hat up to look over at me.
“Nothing.” I met her eyes and shrugged. A fucking shrug. Jesus. It was like Reed had rubbed off on me, and I was acting like an idiot too.
She pointed an accusing finger in my direction. “You’re such a fucking liar.”
“I am not.”
“Tell me again why Reed didn’t end up coming with us this weekend,” she fired, and like the gunshot at the start of a race, I knew Annie’s annoying inquisition had just begun.
Behind the safety net of my sunglasses, I rolled my eyes. “He had plans.”
“Oh, that’s right, you mentioned that, but you never really said what his plans were.”
To avoid expectations.
“He had a thing.”
“A thing?” she questioned with narrowed eyes.
I sighed. “Yep. A thing.”
“Sounds important. This thing.”
How many times were we going to say thing? We had nearly reached the point where it didn’t even sound like a word anymore.
“Apparently, it was important,” I responded, and the words filled my chest with an undeniable ache. Reed had made me feel like everything but me was important. I honestly hated how badly it hurt. The pain crawled from the base of my skull into my eyes, and I bit down on my lip to stop it from spilling out onto my cheeks.
Instead of facing it all head on, I chose to use the scapegoat of sarcasm to avoid discussing the real root of my sadness. “He even had to get the president’s approval and everything,” I teased with a smile that felt forced.
“I knew you were lying,” Annie declared, and I rolled my eyes again.
My sister was too fucking perceptive. And nosy. Jesus Christ, she was nosy. Didn’t she have anything better to do than meddle in my life?
“So why didn’t Reed really come along?”
Obviously, meddling was her number one goal of the day.
I sighed heavily and gave up on skirting around the topic of Reed, and slowly, the truth started to seep from my lips. “Because he doesn’t do what people expect of him. Apparently, Reed and expectations don’t jive at all.”
She scoffed. “That sounds like a crock of shit if I’ve ever heard it.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t have agreed more.
“He hurt you big-time, didn’t he?” Annie asked, her voice now a soft whisper.
“Yep.”
“Are you okay?” Her eyes turned tender, and my emotions couldn’t handle it. Tears pricked behind my eyes.
“I will be,” I muttered past a clogged throat. The words for myself just as much as they were for her—maybe more. “Just need some more time.”
“Anything I can do?”
“Besides stop asking me questions?” I answered with a soft smile, and she laughed.
“Okay…Okay…I get it. I’ll stop meddling.” She flipped the brim of her hat back down and proceeded to enjoy her lazy nap under the sun.
But my brain was now buzzing with questions again, and after a few minutes’ silence had passed, I just couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“I don’t think Reed and I want the same things,” I admitted on a quiet whisper.
Goddammit, Annie. Screw you for being so nosy and asking all the right questions and doing exactly what you always do to get me to tell you everything.
“What makes you think that?” she asked, but she didn’t flip her stupid hat back up this time.
“I just don’t think we do,” I answered honestly.
“Like, he doesn’t want marriage and kids kind of thing?”
“God, no,” I responded. “Hell, I don’t even want marriage and kids.”
She sat up in surprise. “You don’t?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I really don’t. I’ve already told you that like a thousand times.”
“But I thought you were just saying that because my kids are the kind of kids that would make any sane adult question parenthood. And Brian’s awful dad jokes don’t exactly make marriage appealing to the majority of women,” she said with an amused grin.
That spurred a laugh from my lungs. “Your crazy kids and Brian’s dad jokes aside, I still don’t see marriage and kids in my future.”
“Then, what do you want?”
“I want to find someone to spend my life with, just not in the traditional sense like marriage. I want someone who wants to be committed to me. Someone who wants to be loyal to me. Not out of obligation, but because they want to be. Because they love me so much that they don’t want to be with anyone else.”
I want Reed, my heart whispered.
But it didn’t really matter what I wanted if he didn’t want a future with me.
And my pride could only take so much before my need for self-preservation kicked in at full force. Even if walking away felt like swallowing hot coals, I wasn’t the type of girl who hung around when all the signs pointed me in the opposite direction.
“Do you think Reed is scared of commitment?”
“I’m not sure.” I shrugged. “I mean, I don’t necessarily think that’s it, but I think he strives so hard to do the opposite of what everyone expects of him, he doesn’t realize there are moments when that shouldn’t matter.”
“That sounds like commitment issues to me.”
“You think everyone has commitment issues,” I retorted. “Hell, you thought Brian had commitment issues when you first started dating him.”