Chapter 24 #3
I can hear Tina admonishing him quietly as I head upstairs.
I don’t look back. I head into the bedroom and close the door behind me.
I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid. For a minute there, I thought that I could move past what happened a year ago.
Even though Oliver never apologized, I thought that maybe he regretted the way he treated me and the reason he hadn’t brought it up was because he was embarrassed about the way he had behaved.
I guess that was wishful thinking. It turns out he wasn’t embarrassed about it at all.
He was just waiting for me to completely drop my guard so that he could bring it up again and reopen an old wound.
I can’t believe I’ve allowed myself to be blinded all over again.
The bedroom door creaks open behind me. I stop pacing the room to turn and glare at Oliver. He closes the door behind himself. He stays there, back against the wall, watching me.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“If you really have to ask that question, then I’m not sure it’s even worth answering.”
“Okay. You’re mad at me,” he says. “I don’t understand why.”
I pick up my backpack. “I’ll find another room to sleep in. You can keep this one.” I step up to him, waiting for him to move out of the way, but he doesn’t.
He shakes his head. “I really don’t understand you sometimes. One minute we’re having fun, and the next you storm off and now you’re moving into a different room?”
I can’t believe that all this time I naively believed that he might feel bad for embarrassing me last year.
Now I realize that he doesn’t even know what he did wrong.
I’m not sure which is worse. To tell him what he did and why it hurts would be admitting that I have feelings for him.
I’m not sure my heart can take the rejection.
“Maybe this is for the best,” I tell him. “We can use this fight to put an end to our fake relationship and we won’t have to pretend anymore.”
His face hardens. “Right. I guess it is all fake, isn’t it?”
He steps out of my way and opens the door for me.
I go out into the hall and let myself into the bedroom with the bunk beds.
I throw my backpack onto the floor and sit down on one of the beds.
The door flies open a second later. During the split second that it takes for me to look up and see who it is, I have this fleeting thought that it might be Oliver following me in here because he can’t let this go.
But it’s not him, because just as he said, none of what we have is real to him.
He’s probably relieved that I suggested we put an end to it.
I’m probably a lot more torn up about it than he is.
“Let’s get in the hot tub,” Tina says.
“I kind of feel like being alone right now.”
“Let’s get in the hot tub,” she repeats, louder.
I stare at her. She stares back, eyebrow raised. I know that look, and I know that I won’t win this argument. “Fine. I’ll get changed.”
I meet her out back on the patio. She’s waiting for me with a drink in each hand. I don’t see Oliver or Ryan on my way out, which is a relief. They’re probably having a beer together while Oliver makes up some breakup story for us. I wonder what he’s saying.
Tina hands me a hard lemonade. I step into the hot tub after her and sink down until my shoulders are covered and only my head and my hand with the drink are popping out of the water. I take a sip.
“Do you want to talk about what’s going on with you and Oliver?” she asks.
I shake my head. Tears spring to my eyes. I blink them away. I don’t want to cry, so I stare at the bubbling water and try to think of anything else.
“So, he said that he’s obsessed with you,” she says.
I guess we’re just diving right into this, then.
“And you’re upset… why? Because you wish he had said something else?
” She asks this tentatively, like she’s trying to get to the bottom of the reason for my reaction.
“Or because you feel like he’s still making fun of you? ”
I look up at her, surprised by how close she is.
“Ding, ding, ding!” she says.
“I think we might break up,” I say. This feels like the right opening.
“That’s stupid,” she says with a snort.
I frown. “You don’t really know anything about our relationship, so I don’t know how you can say that it’s stupid.”
“I know enough to know that you’ve been pining after that guy for over a year and you finally have him.
And shh—” She stops me from interrupting.
“Deny it all you want, but I know that it’s true.
Are you really going to panic and take off the second that he admits he likes you?
Talk about throwing away a good thing for the stupidest reason I’ve ever heard. ”
“You don’t know the whole story.”
“Then tell me the whole story,” she says.
I wish that I could, but I can’t. Not without opening myself up to more questions, which would ruin the surprise for her and Ryan. Then all of this would be for nothing. I try to find a way to tiptoe around it.
“He thinks that everything is a big joke,” I tell her. It might not be the entire truth, but the way I feel about it is real. “He just wants to have fun and I want the real thing. It hurts because I love him and he uses that against me. It’s like he doesn’t care at all how much that hurts me.”
I hear the words as they leave my mouth, but it takes a moment for their meaning to register.
I’m not even sure they’re true until they’re spoken out loud, hanging in the air between me and Tina.
When it hits me, my eyes go wide. I look up at Tina.
She watches me for a moment. She takes a drink, frowns at something out in the yard, and then looks back at me. “Does he know that you feel that way?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“I’ve just learned that men sometimes need things spelled out for them,” she says. “They’re not mind readers, as much as we wish they were. Take me, for example. That’s why I’m not waiting for Ryan to propose to me.”
“That’s different. You and Ryan are meant to be together. I guess what Oliver and I have is fizzling out.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re having your first fight as a couple,” Tina says. “I see the way you look at each other. What you have is most definitely not fizzling out.”
I’m not expecting how much of a fight Tina puts up over me breaking off my fake relationship with Oliver.
I just need this whole thing to be over so that I can move on, but she makes a good point.
If this were a real relationship, I wouldn’t be giving up so easily.
This probably wouldn’t have even been a fight.
“And a word of advice,” she continues. “Don’t sleep in separate rooms tonight.”
“Why not?”
“If there’s any part of you that wants it to work out with him, then just trust me on this. Don’t sleep in separate rooms.”