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“No, tell me. I want to know what you would’ve done.”

“I don’t know, Lorenzo.” I shake off his grip, but I don’t turn away. I have nothing left to hide from him. He knows it all. He always has. I look into his eyes and I find him there, the same person he’s always been. Even with this humiliating revelation wedged between us. He loves me. He’s never wanted to hurt me. He spent the entire span of our teenage years fighting fiercely to protect me while pretending he wasn’t. And he wants me to love him. Am I really going to hold that against him?

I drop my head to his shoulder. His arms wrap around me, and I’m safe. I have everything I want.

Maybe if Lorenzohadn’t asked the question, it would all be okay. I would have moved on. We’d be a couple in love. But he asked and now all I can do is imagine my answer.

Flip the situation. What would you have done if I’d said those words to you?

If Lorenzo had stood on the dock on the last night of summer when we were seventeen and told me he was in love with me, I would have dropped to my knees and praised heaven. I would have kissed him and told him I loved him right back. I would have put his drunk ass to bed and spent the night awake, wondering whether anyone else in the world was as happy as I was. And when he woke up the next morning, I would have told him I loved him again.

I can’t stop picturing it. When I stood on the dock and told Lorenzo I was in love with him, he said nothing. Not shit. Not then, not the next day. He pretended it never happened. And this, essentially, is the story of Ruby and Lorenzo. This is the story we would tell our grandchildren: how I needed him, worshipped him, loved him since time immemorial. And how ... eventually ... he learned to love me too.

I can’t stomach it. He kept a secret from me about myself, something I had every right to know. Maybe he did it to save me from embarrassment or maybe to save himself from having to make a choice, but it doesn’t change what I realized the instant he answered my question—that Lorenzo can love me all he wants, but he will never need me like I need him. He never did.

Now I’m the one keeping a secret.

Outwardly, we’ve been okay the last few days. He’s busy with football camp and I’m working as many hours as they’ll have me and we never miss dinner together and the sex is still good enough to make me temporarily forget everything that’s changed. And, sometimes, in the moments after sex when real life bleeds back into my consciousness, I tell myself I can move past finding out he’s known for years how I felt for him. He wanted to know that I loved him; that’s the only reason it came out. What’s more pure than that?

But I’m not okay. I can’t move past it. I don’t want to be the girl he finally learned to love, who he concluded, after careful consideration, will always have his back and therefore makes a solid, logical choice for a partner. I want him to feel the desperation that I’ve spent a decade getting to know. And without that, the foundation I thought we had—the one that might help us weather our uncertain futures—has been ripped away.

Monday morning, as if a switch was flipped, I wake up knowing what I need to do. After all the hours of indecision and weighing the options and wishing everything were different, it’s a relief to suddenly feel so sure.

I text my parents the news instead of calling, knowing that’ll offset their sense of satisfaction just a little bit. I can already hear Richard:Texting when you could just as easily call is the ultimate example of modern disregard for common courtesy.He’s said these exact words to me multiple times. I think he keeps them written down in a little pocket notebook somewhere. The little book of Richard-isms. I bet he thinks they’ll be donated to a museum or some shit after he’s gone.

And I’ll be hearing a lot more of them now that I’ve done what I swore I never would.

FORTY-THREE

ruby

I’m weak.I’d planned to tell Lorenzo the news as soon as I saw him, but when I walked into his apartment, he was just out of the shower, and the way his wet, glossy hair stuck to the back of his neck set off a bone-deep ache for him. Now we’re on his couch and fresh off orgasms, and now that the timing is the worst possible, it spills out of me.

“I need to tell you something.”

His eyebrows quickly draw together. “It’s never good when you have a preamble.”

“Just listen.”

His face pales as his eyes drop to my belly. “Are you?—”

“No!” Reflexively, I touch my stomach.

“’Cause I swear the last time you said you needed to tell me something ...”

“It’s not that.”Damn it. That’s the last thing I want to be thinking about right now. Me and Lorenzo. A baby. Gee, Universe, rip my fucking heart out right now, why don’t you. I plow forward. “I told my parents I’m taking the job they offered me.”

I brace myself, but Lorenzo looks blank. “Like ... to fuck with them?” He smiles uncertainly, and that makes me irrationallyangry—at myself. Because I’m about to hurt him and he has no idea.

I stand and grab my underwear off the floor. “No.” I yank the panties up my hips. “Because I’m taking the job.”

Miraculously, he’s still wearing a smile, though it’s gone sour on his face. “Wait, what?” He lets out a weird little laugh. “What do you mean you’re taking it?”

“I had to get realistic about my future.”

“You’ve been realistic. You were figuring things out. You had a plan coming together, everything.”

“I had a plan, and it wasn’t working out. I need some time to step away and figure out where I’m going.”