Page 46 of Friends to Lovers

“No, it’s good,” I say quickly, because if I don’t, I will break down into a mess on her lap.

If I don’t, I will convince myself that this is okay, that Ren can give everything up for me and that he won’t resent me for it in two months, six months, a year, and that I won’t resent him for the pressure it places on me.

I will convince myself that we won’t break up because he chose me over everything.

That we aren’t headed for a grossly inevitable cliff.

“It’s good because Ren can be happy this way,” I say, my cheeks hurting as I try to smile.

“What are you talking about?” Stevie says, and I swear her eyes go shiny too. “He’s so in love with you, Joni.”

I should ask her how she knows, how long she’s known. But my hands are growing numb, the ringing in my ears getting louder with each second, and her words hardly mean anything to me.

“Stevie,” I say in a strangled voice, reaching out to grip her wrist. “Please don’t ask me why. I just— I have to go.” As I rise, I can feel the woman at the mirror watching us.

Stevie’s expression shifts to one of, if not understanding, acceptance, as she stands up with me. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll come with you.”

“No. You stay. Have fun. Call Leo.”

“I don’t care about Leo right now. I’m coming with you.” She tucks her hand into the crook of my elbow.

“Stevie, no ,” I snap, shaking her off and whirling on her. “I’m going alone.”

She falls back a step, stunned.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m just— I’m going to go back to your apartment, and I’ll see you when you get home, okay?”

I can tell she wants to protest. “Okay,” she says instead.

I force a small smile even as I feel my heart caving in. “I just— I need to go. Can you make an excuse for me?”

“Of course,” she says.

I start to leave, turn back to her at the last minute. “Please don’t tell Mom.”

Stevie gives me an odd look, lips pursing like she’s almost disappointed. But she nods, finally, and I go.

In line at the coat check, I grip my elbows, toe tapping against the floor, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds. I have to get my things and get out of here before my mother, Thad, Ren comes down the stairs. I check the time on my phone. Eight minutes to midnight.

As I step out the doors, the cold air hits me like it’s trying to shove me back inside.

I draw my coat tighter around me and duck my head against the icy breeze.

There’s a dusting of snow on the ground, flakes drifting down lazily.

When we arrived earlier, I thought the facade of the historic hotel was romantic, all brick and white detailing, but now it just seems imposing, stark against the modern buildings around it.

I pull out my phone and order a car that’s close before checking to see if I can get on a flight out tomorrow morning.

I tell myself I’m doing the right thing. That this is what loving someone is: putting their happiness before yours. That this is an opportunity for me to prove to Ren exactly how much I love him.

But I never expected loving someone would hurt so much.

“Joni?”

At first I’m surprised when I hear his voice. But the sound of it quickly settles over me. Of course he’d find me.

I turn, shove my phone back into my pocket.

“Let me take you home,” Ren says. He stops just short of me on the sidewalk, no coat, just his suit jacket, snow already in his hair. “Stevie said you’re not feeling well.”

“No.” I shake my head. Panic is creeping in like it hasn’t in months, years, maybe. Raw and sharp with a life of its own. “I already requested a car. You should stay.”

“I don’t care about staying,” he says. “Let me take care of you.”

“Ren,” I say, voice pleading, my arms wrapped around my middle. “Please go back inside.”

I watch as his brow furrows, his mouth flattens. “Where are you going?” he asks.

I swallow. “Back to Stevie’s,” I say.

“Joni,” Ren says, and it’s in that moment that I drop a veil between what I’m feeling and how I have to act. I can’t let Ren know how much this is killing me, leaving him. Leaving this . Us. I channel every time I’ve ever seen him do exactly this, shut down any flicker of emotion on his face.

“Will you talk to me?” he asks, stepping in closer, his hand lifting toward my arm.

I retreat, twist slightly out of his reach.

I look up at him, heart thudding painfully in my chest as his lips part, body goes remarkably still.

“Ren,” I say. “This won’t—” The words catch. I try again, my voice small. “This was a mistake.”

He doesn’t move. “What was a mistake?”

“All of it.”

He stares at me quietly for a minute, eyes locked on to mine. His mouth tightens like he’s trying to work something out. I stare back, work as hard as I can not to betray anything.

“You don’t mean that,” he says finally. He’s looking at me like he doesn’t believe it, like what I just said doesn’t add up, short breaths lightly fogging the air in front of him.

This will be my memory of tonight, I realize. Ren in his suit and tie on a freezing city street.

I lower my gaze to the sidewalk between us. “I do,” I say. “August shouldn’t have happened. We—we rushed into things.”

“What about the past few days?” Ren asks, voice just breaking on the last word.

It makes me look up at him, which is a mistake. I’ve never imagined what hurting Ren would look like, would feel like, but it’s a stab at my side, a knife hollowing me out.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have said something sooner. But we can’t do this, Ren, it’s too—it’s too much.”

“Okay.” Ren nods, rubbing at one temple. “Then we pretend it didn’t happen,” he says, a desperation in his voice.

I want to take the last four months back, but it’s out there now, the truth of how I feel about him, and I know our friendship won’t be able to recover, not fully.

If I tell him I can pretend, I know I’ll stumble sooner rather than later, and I’ll let him move for me, let him give up his dream job, the whole life he’s built here, just because I want him.

Maybe a year from now I won’t feel this way.

Maybe I’ll wake up in a month and decide I was too rash.

But right now I’m having trouble thinking beyond my next breath, and I have to get out of here, and explaining any of that to Ren will just land us back in this same impossible place.

“I don’t know if I can,” I say.

Ren takes a step toward me and says, hoarse, “You’re my best friend. What—what am I supposed to do without you?”

I can hear the same fear that I feel in his voice: I can’t picture a world without him in it either. It seems impossible.

“We messed it up, Ren,” I say, and swipe an angry hand at my cheeks when I realize they’re wet. “We crossed a line we said we wouldn’t and now we can’t go back to how things were before.”

“When did we say we wouldn’t cross that line?” Ren asks.

My gaze floats back up to his. “What?”

“When did we ever say we wouldn’t cross that line?” His voice is firm, like he’s found some point to keep me here.

“We didn’t,” I admit. “But—”

“Then what’s the problem?” Ren presses. “So we crossed it, so you don’t want this anymore. I—”

“Best friends don’t do that, Ren.”

“Well, we did,” he says. He takes another step toward me. “We wanted it.”

I shut my eyes, squeeze them closed like it might make all of this easier. But nothing will make this easier. The only thing that will make him accept this is if I lie, if I say something I don’t believe but that cuts to some vital part of him.

“I don’t think you know what you want,” I say, and Ren falls back a step.

“I don’t know what I want,” he repeats to himself.

“Your job,” I say, willing him to understand that I know , that I can’t tell him I know because if I do, he’ll be able to talk me out of it. That I’m doing this because I know, in the end, it will be what makes him happiest. I add, for good measure, “Amanda. She was good for you.”

“I want you , Joni,” he says, eyes pleading.

These are, at once, exactly the words I want to hear and exactly the words I can’t hear.

I scramble, picking lines out of books and movies that I think might work to push us apart, protect us from the damage we might do to each other.

“I think you want some version of me,” I say.

It’s wildly unfair, but I don’t know how else to convince him.

“You’ve only had this vacation version of me for the last few years anyway.

This is only romantic when our time is limited.

You want this tradition.” I wave a hand toward the building. “The weddings.”

“That’s not true.” He scans my face like he might find some proof that I’m making this all up.

“It is true,” I say, the words coming hard and fast now. “We were never going to be real, Ren. It was always going to be a fantasy.”

He goes quiet at this, my last blow landing. But something else seems to occur to him then, his gaze darkening. “Were you just going to leave?” he asks.

“I—” I break off, put a hand to my stomach. I have the distinct feeling that whatever stitches hold me together are rapidly unraveling, like one of my carefully constructed Novo characters destroyed. “No, I—” Standing here, the wreckage of us at my feet, I lower my head. “I would have called.”

Vaguely, somewhere above us, voices are counting down. Both of us glance up. We should be part of that crowd, ringing in another year. We might have been up there in another life, and maybe this one can still be it. We could erase this, make it work. I just got you.

But then his eyes are back on me, expression flat.

“Called.” He nods. I want to reach for him, want to tell him that I love him, that I take it all back.

“Ren—” I say, as a cheer rises above us and the first firework launches into the sky.

“No,” he says. “It’s okay.” He looks back down at me, and I feel like something has been stolen from me. He’s backing away, gold shimmering behind him, one hand in his pocket, the other rubbing at his jaw. He drops his hand. Nods at me. “Good luck with your movie, Joni.”

Just like that, he’s gone.