Page 62 of The One Where They Fall in Love

“I’m sorry about last night,” he finally says, his voice gravelly. The stubble on his cheeks is darker than I’ve ever seen it, and he looks weary, more so than usual.

“What happened?”

“I panicked. I’ve been panicking ever since the night we…” He looks down and I feel something twist in my stomach.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why couldn’t we talk about it?”

“Because that’s not going to make a difference right now, Elle. I need to figure some stuff out, and I need to do it by myself.”

He might as well have run me over with his car. Because that’s what the blow of his words feel like. I feel squished, like the gravity in the room just got a thousand times stronger.

“I don’t understand,” I finally say, swallowing the sob in my throat.

He finally picks his head up and I see his lower lashes are wet. I have to resist the urge to reach for him, because I can’t comfort him right now. Not about this.

“I know you don’t. And I don’t know how to explain it to you,” he says.

How did we get here?I could have sworn I despised this man—with his loud music and aloof approach to dogownership. I thought he was a jerk, a guy with an ego who didn’t care what other people thought of him. But then the weeks went by, and I found out this rugged exterior hid a man who is afraid of bugs buzzing by his ear and can’t stomach a gummy worm. I realized he cares deeply for the people he loves, and even though he appears grumpy, he wants to help people. He’s experienced the weight of expectation and the fear of failure, and maybe doesn’t think he’s worthy of the kind of love I feel for him.

Because I do. I love him.

Somewhere in the midst of all of our wagers, our back and forth shenanigans, I fell in love with Oliver Cole. I fell in love with the person I became when I was with him. I finally found the man who could give me happily ever after—the thing I’ve been searching for since I read my first romance novel.

But he doesn’t feel the same.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this, Oliver,” I admit, shaking my head. I hate to look like I’m disappointed in him, but I am. I look at him like he’s tearing out pieces of my heart, because that is what it feels like.

“I can,” he mumbles.

I pick myself up off of the wall and start to head towards the door, but stop myself. I can feel my disappointment turning to anger, and I know I should walk out the door. I shouldn’t turn around and say what I’m about to say. But part of me wants him to see. I want him to witness the impact of his sabotage.

“Youknowhow hard it is for me to trust people.” He watches me intently, surprised that I have more to say. “As much as I like to help people, I also isolate myself, whichisn’t necessarily a good thing, but I do. Because I realized that most people are never as good as books make them out to be. I always find myselfdisappointed.” He winces at the last word.

“Things in my world can be so heavy, and I thought you felt the same way. I thought maybe when we were together, it was like there wasn’t this fog around me that I couldn’t shake.” I scoff. “I guess I must have been imagining it.”

I pause, waiting for him to interrupt me, to say he feels it too. But he doesn’t. So I continue. “Sometimes, it feels like the stars are pressing down on my shoulders. Billions of them dragging the darkness down onto me.” Oliver’s gaze drops to the tattoo on my wrist. “These last few months, I felt lighter. When I was with you, the stars didn’t crush me so much. I trusted you. You were myfriend. And I can’t believe that things are ending this way.”

“I’m so sorry, Elle,” he whispers, a tear falling down his cheek, but it’s too late. I open the handle and turn around to look once more at the broken man sitting there.

“You should be.”

“Wellie, your couch isuncomfortable,” Nick says, his voice stumbling over the word. I reach over and ruffle his hair, and he lets out an adorable “Hey!” as he tries to fix it.

My brother is twenty-two, but the boyish smile on his face makes him look much younger. He’s the only one in our family with red hair, and it looks like it has been freshly cut. He is wearing the new glasses that I took him to buy over Christmas, simple black rims that he thought made him look like Clark Kent. I even drew an “S” on his forehead ineyeliner when we got home from the store. I almost smile at the memory. Almost.

He and Mom surprised me by coming into the city for dinner and a sleepover. Even I can admit that when I video-called my mother yesterday, I looked and sounded like death. My eyes were swollen and my voice was hoarse. She tried to get me to explain what happened with Oliver, but I said I didn’t want to talk about it.

Nick lays down on the couch, forming himself into the question mark shape that he sleeps in.

“Goodnight, Wellie,” Nick says, pulling a blanket over him.

“Goodnight, Nicky,” I say, kissing his cheek. When he closes his eyes, I stay on the couch for a moment and watch him, a knot forming in my throat.

When my brother was born, my life changed in so many ways. My parents divorced soon after, and my mom was so consumed by Nick’s medical concerns that I’m not sure she ever got the chance to mourn her marriage. I don’t think I did either. I was only six at the time, but I learned very quickly that my family can bounce back from challenging times, and when we bounce back, we bounce back hard. We jumped into Nick-mode. When I got home from school, I was whisked away to one doctor’s appointment after another. I’d do my homework in waiting rooms and help my mom make grocery lists before I was even old enough to help with the cooking. I think at some point, I must have resented my brother for all the attention he took, but all he had to do was smile at me, or throw his head back with a loud giggle, and the feeling would dissipate. Because I loved my brother more than I thought I could ever love anything.

“Stop staring, Wellie. It’s creepy,” Nick mutters, his eyes closed. I tickle his side before getting up from the couch and joining my mom in my bed. She’s a small woman, with burnt blonde hair that is always pulled back into a clip at the top of her head. The lines on her face show the strain she’s been through in her life, but she tries not to complain. She’s scrolling through her phone, but she stops when she feels me climb in next to her and opens her arms for a hug. I move over and place my head on her chest, tapping into the reassuring feeling of feeling her breath beneath me.

“Are we going to talk about it yet?” she asks, her voice reverberating in my ear.