Thirty-Eight
W e’re quiet in the car. I spend half the drive wondering if I should rip the Band-Aid off and ask about how her meeting with Isaac went or wait until we’re at the restaurant. In the end, curiosity wins out. “How was seeing Isaac again?”
“Awkward,” she answers as she turns at a green arrow light. “Awkward and awful. But I was finally able to get a lot of stuff off my chest that I’d held back when we were together, so that’s something.” She’s silent for a while, thinking. “I’m still not sure he understands my side. Maybe he never will. But I think we both got what we needed from seeing each other a final time.”
“Closure?”
“Closure.” She nods. “Plus, I yelled at him for what his stupid girlfriend did to you. He’s not on TikTok, so apparently he had no idea about the video she made.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“It’s not about what I have to do.” A left turn, and then we’re in the restaurant parking lot. When she parks and shuts off the engine, she makes no move to get out of the car. “How are you? Really , Angela.”
I open my mouth to assure her I’m fine, then think better of it. I’m not fine. After the onslaught of criticism, more and more people are starting to come to my defense and reach out to check in on me. Last night I had a full-on sob fest reading through the comments and messages from friends, mutuals, and strangers alike. I haven’t responded to anyone—I still feel like I don’t deserve their kindness, but I’m closer to getting to the place I need to be in order to come back.
“I’m angry,” I admit. “At Esme, but mostly at myself. I keep thinking if I’d talked to her and Briana sooner, I could’ve avoided this. And then I remember what they put me through in high school, and I think fuck that . They don’t deserve an explanation. Not even Briana, though I think I’m starting to trust her.”
“Just say the word and I’ll find Esme through Isaac and—”
“Krystal, please.” There’s no bite to my voice. Just fond adoration, because apparently that’s the only thing I’m capable of feeling for this woman, even at my worst. “We should go inside.”
As soon as we’re seated, I regret not answering her messages sooner and making plans to meet somewhere a little more… private. Because there’s only one thing we haven’t addressed yet, and I’m not sure how I feel about being rejected in front of the deli lunch crowd. Which is only about two tables’ worth of people, but still.
“I need to tell you something I should’ve realized a long time ago.” Krystal fidgets with the place mats, avoiding eye contact the same way I have been since she arrived at my job. “I just…” She takes in a deep breath and lets it go slowly. “God, why is this so hard for me?”
I don’t think I was meant to hear that last part, which she mutters to herself in a rush of breath so low I almost don’t catch it.
“What is it?” I ask as a waiter delivers our food.
“My parents always loved each other,” Krystal says. I’m confused what her parents have to do with this, but I let her go on. “To this day, they still have their nauseating lovey-dovey moments. It’s why my mom was so devastated when Isaac and I didn’t work out. We were a way of connecting all the people she loved together forever. Breaking up with Isaac didn’t just hurt him. It hurt my mom too.”
She takes in a deep breath before continuing. “What hurt her even worse was the distance I put between us after we broke up. She means well, but she’s a meddler. I got sick of her always trying to control my life, of her believing she knew what was best for me better than I did. I had to do it for my own sanity. My parents hate that we barely see each other anymore, so I guess I was feeling guilty after I met with Isaac, because I decided to pay them a visit afterward.”
“Oh.” If her mom made her feel bad about how her relationship ended, I’ll go to bat for Krystal the same way she did for me against my cousins. I reach for her hand and squeeze once, my heart singing at the way Krystal automatically intertwines our fingers. “Are you okay? How was it?”
“I’m okay,” she assures me, her thumb stroking over my hand like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “I told them about seeing Isaac again, and then I…” Another deep breath halts her progress. “I told them about you.”
“You… did?” I blink at her, stunned. “Why would you tell them about me?”
“My dad reminded me of something I’d forgotten a long time ago,” she continues, ignoring my question. She breaks contact with my hand before rooting around her purse to pull out a wallet. “When he and my mom started dating, he asked for a picture of her to put in his wallet. He still has it, yellow and frayed at the edges with time, but he still looks at that damn picture the same way he looks at her now. Like a man in love.”
When she unzips her wallet and dumps out the contents, I’m more than a little bewildered. “What are you—” She pushes our untouched lunch aside as what looks like confetti flutters down onto the plastic table. On closer inspection, I realize they’re cut up rectangles of copy paper.
Each piece has a printed picture of me.
“Julian gave me this a few weeks ago.” From the card compartment of her wallet, she pulls out the only picture that wasn’t printed on copy paper. It’s my seventh-grade yearbook photo.
“Oh my god .” I cover my mouth with a hand as I take in my thirteen-year-old fringe. That was the year my mom yelled at me for dyeing my hair black with her box dye when she was at church. The height of my emo phase, which was the closest I’d ever come to a rebellious teenager, only lasted a year before I realized the hairstyle did not suit me. “I’m gonna kill him.”
“Don’t.” She catches my wrist in her hand. I notice her expression for the first time since dumping the pictures from her wallet, and for a moment I’m confused all over again. Her eyes are soft with fond adoration, and I’m reminded of the damning photo Esme took of the two of us. “He’s the one who sent me all these pictures of you. Before I knew what I was doing, I was arranging them in a Word doc, printing and cutting them into perfect rectangles, and putting them in my wallet like a corny 1950s husband.”
“Or a serial killer.” I raise a brow at her, but my smirk tells her I’m only kidding. “Seriously, how many pictures did Julian send you?”
“That’s not the point.” She stares down at the table, at the twenty or so pictures of me, and surprises me all over again. “The point is I’m not like this. Or at least, I thought I wasn’t.”
I shake my head, hoping it’ll be enough to chase the hope growing in my heart, but she only devastates me further.
“I think about you all the time. This whole week, I’ve been so worried about you. I hate what Esme did to you. Hell, I hate her more than I’ve hated anyone in my entire life. I’ve seen people say the most heinous shit about you online and it makes my blood boil. I hate not knowing if you’re okay, and I hate that you felt like you had to avoid me while you’ve been going through this alone when I want to be the person who comforts you through all of it. I know that that’s my fault, and I’m sorry, Angela. I’m so fucking sorry you have no idea.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her she has no reason to be sorry. She told me from the very beginning what she was capable of. I’m the one who didn’t listen. I’m the one who fought through every wall she put up, hoping against hope that I could make her change her mind.
“I’m even sorrier for not realizing this sooner, but I can’t keep it inside anymore. I tried holding it back—hell, I’ve tried for weeks not to feel this way about you, but, Angela—”
No part of me saw this coming, the words she’s about to say, what I can’t stop her from saying…
“I think I’m in love with you.” She lets out a humorless laugh. “No, I am. I know I am. The evidence is staring me in the face—literally. You’re probably the only one who knows how scary and impossible this is for me, and I don’t know if that makes it better or worse that you’re the person I fell for. And it’s been killing me to hold myself back and watch as you prepare to find someone else when I…” She trails off, but nothing more comes out except a tiny whimper from the back of her throat.
“You… what…” She’s not the only one left speechless. “You changed your mind about me?” My voice is so much louder than I mean for it to be. I only wanted clarification, but the question comes out sounding idiotic and baffled. Someone from the next table over turns to look at us. Krystal’s cheeks redden, and her head dips down so she can cover her face with her hair.
“I changed my mind about a lot of things, but I never had to change my mind about you,” she says, finally looking at me. “The truth is, I knew a long time ago how easy it would be to fall in love with you. I knew it two years ago, the moment you told me I was beautiful.”
It’s a cruel kind of irony that we’ve been pining for each other for years without ever knowing how the other felt. Of course, I did fall for her first. Five years ago, long before I truly realized I was romantically attracted to women, she caught my attention right away. That riot of curly hair pinned to the top of her head. The way the red light at the bar made her skin glow like a fucking goddess. The way I stammered over my words when she asked for my name. The brilliant grin that would take over her whole face whenever I came in.
“I wanted to ask you out,” she admits. “Say fuck it to all my insecurities about love and relationships and put myself out there for a change. But night after night, I watched you turn everyone away. I told myself there’s no way I’d have a chance with you. I assumed some lucky person already had you locked down. That you’d bring them in one day, and I wouldn’t be able to contain my jealousy.”
She’s never told me any of this before. The thought that we felt the same way, pined for each other from afar the same way for years and never knew how the other felt… it’s too much for me to conceive. It’s unbelievable.
“How do you know you love me?” I ask. “After everything you’ve told me about being incapable of love and not wanting to put someone through what you put Isaac through. I don’t understand.”
“With Isaac, I was always half in and half out. It’s not like that with you. It never has been. When I’m with you, I’m in. I’m all the way in,” she explains. “I wasted so much time trying to convince myself Isaac was right for me when I knew he wasn’t. That if I’d communicated how I was feeling better or compromised more of myself, our relationship could’ve turned out differently. But none of that is true. We just weren’t a good fit for each other, and that’s okay. I can forgive myself for the way I hurt him because I don’t plan on making the same mistakes with anyone else. Especially not you.
“I love you.” The words come bursting out of her, and somehow they’re not any less shocking than they were the first time. “I’m in love with you, Angela. I think I have been for a while, no matter how hard I tried to deny it.”
Krystal’s eyes stay trained on me, but I can feel her leg shaking beneath the table. For a full minute, I’m completely speechless. I can’t force what she’s just said to make sense in my brain. I can’t make myself believe that I’m about to get everything I want during what has undoubtedly been the worst week of my life.
“I thought you were going to let me down easy,” I say, because it’s the only thing I can think of right now. “Because of what I said to you on the phone.”
“Angel, I have about a thousand pictures of you in my wallet that I’ve been carrying around for nearly two weeks. You’re not the only one who can surprise people.” She tries to smile, but it comes out stiff. I watch as she gathers up the pictures littering the table with reverence before carefully placing them back inside her wallet. “What are you thinking?”
“I…” I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
It’s the worst possible response to someone after they tell you they love you. The disappointment on her face is immediate and crushing and all my fucking fault. I open my mouth to clarify, to take it back, to tell her I feel the same way, but how do I know that I do? Isn’t this the question I’ve been asking myself all week since I slipped and told her I was falling for her? I need to say something. Anything is better than leaving it at I don’t know . What kind of dumbass am I?
“I mean— Fuck .” I shut my eyes. “You’re right, Krystal. I do know how hard it was for you to say those words to someone new, let alone me . Even though this is what I’ve been hoping for since I can hardly remember how long. It’s just… everything I’ve trusted in for the past two months is falling apart. I’m falling apart.”
“I wish I could do something,” Krystal says. “Please, Angela. Let me help you.”
“You can’t.” I shake my head. “I don’t even know how to help myself. All I’ve wanted since I started posting was to talk to other people like me, and now they’re all turning on me. And just when I thought I could salvage the scavenger hunt, my boss told me to cancel it or my job could be in danger—”
“Wait, what ?”
“Nothing is turning out the way it’s supposed to,” I continue. “Now I can’t say ‘I love you’ back, and I’m going to lose you too.”
“Angela, I don’t need you to say anything,” she says, grabbing my hands. “I just wanted you to know how I felt. And that I’m not going anywhere.” Her eyes glint with something like determination. “Lord knows I’ve spent weeks giving you nothing but mixed signals. I’d be an asshole to react badly to a less-than-positive response to ‘I love you.’”
“I’m sorry,” I say, desperately blinking back tears. “I wish I could give you a better answer than this.”
“I should take you back,” she says instead of responding to me. She stands up and then hands me my untouched sandwich still in its wrapper. I’ll stuff my face at my desk when I get back. I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
“It’s okay,” she tells me. “Really. Just… think about what I said, okay?”
I will. I don’t think I’ll be able to think about anything else for the rest of the day.