“I can’t turn my mind off,” Phil sighed.
“I know.” I nodded, realizing that I had been battling with the exact same thing recently.
Except that it had nothing to do with my brother and everything to do with Phil. I was just watching him looking at the ceiling when he swung his feet off the bed and came to a sitting position so that he was facing me from his bed.
“Did you speak to your parents?” he asked. “Did you tell them about Brent?”
I nodded.
“And?”
“And it went as you would expect: awful.”
“I’m sorry you had to do that.”
“Someone had to,” I said.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you during that phone call,” he said.
The very fact that he would apologize to me for something like that made me want to cry. He was such an amazingly decent human being that it floored me how very gullible I had been.
“You have nothing to apologize to me for,” I said. “The on
ly reason you weren’t there for me is because I wasn’t there for you.”
Phil turned his head down, and I could see he was still struggling to make his decision about our relationship.
“Phil,” I said, drawing his attention.
“Yes?”
“I lied before,” I said. “I told you I didn’t know why I believed Brent over you, but the truth is I do know why I did.”
He looked nervous suddenly. “Why?”
“Because you were too good to be true,” I sighed. “You were this perfect man with nothing negative about you. I just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I mean, how could a man like you possibly be interested in someone like me?”
“What are you talking about?” Phil asked, sounding genuinely shocked.
“You’re handsome, you’re talented, and you’re an amazing firefighter,” I said. “You have the respect of the community, and you have a future that’s incredibly bright. You could have any woman you wanted… So why on earth would you pick me? I’m just a small-town girl, a college dropout…a virgin…”
“You can’t honestly have thought that this whole time—”
“Come on, Phil. I saw Anna,” I said. “She was beautiful. She could be a model. By comparison, I’m—”
“More beautiful,” he interrupted me. “You were always the most beautiful woman to me, Megan. In fact, I always thought you were too good for me. The problem is that you don’t see what I do. Sure, maybe you dropped out of college, but at least you went. At least you got in. I didn’t even apply. I knew there would be no point; no one would take me.”
“You became a firefighter,” I pointed out.
“It was either that or turn back to a life of crime,” Phil said. “And my hatred for my father was what turned me away from the latter option.”
I smiled and shrugged. “We both have our baggage, don’t we?”
“Everyone does,” Phil said. “I suppose it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“And yet…”
He smiled.