Page 48 of Friends to Lovers

“Amanda deserves someone who feels about her the way I feel about you,” he continues, eyes on the water.

“I decided I would propose to her, back in March. It made sense. I went to look at rings and I just—I saw you everywhere.” He sighs, rubs a hand down his face before he drops them both between his knees again.

“I tried to shut you out for so long. I told myself that I’d been wrong about us, that we weren’t something out of the ordinary, that maybe I just loved you that way because we’ve been so much a part of each other for so long.

But as soon as this other, possible future with someone else actually started to happen, as soon as I decided on it, I couldn’t get you out of my head again, and I…

” He pauses, gathers his thoughts. “You’re it for me, Joni, and maybe there’s some day down the line where that isn’t true, but it hasn’t come yet.

No matter how hard I’ve tried to will it.

And the truth of it is that I’d rather be alone than with someone else. Maybe there’s something sad in that.”

I don’t want it to come , I want to say, should say, but Ren isn’t done yet.

“I was so scared to see you this week,” he says. “After I broke up with Amanda, it was like I was right back to where we started, years ago. Except this time we weren’t even friends. It felt like losing you all over again.

“I was so angry with you after you left,” he says, and it slices through me, this acknowledgment of what I did to us.

“I mean, at first, I was just numb. I couldn’t see any way forward.

But after a while, I think being mad was the only way to deal with it?

I just couldn’t comprehend that you didn’t even care about our friendship. ”

“I did care,” I say, digging my fingers into the sand.

“I think I knew that. Or I hoped. But it was what I told myself to get out of the hole I was in.”

I have to look away, over my shoulder in the direction of the lighthouse. I want to reach into the past, find him where he was after I left, hold him through it. I want to tell him I was in that same hole, always digging deeper down but never any closer to his.

I glance back over at him once I’ve composed myself. “You didn’t seem mad when you got here this week.”

Ren’s smile is soft, barely there. “I haven’t been mad at you for a long time,” he says.

“I spent a lot of time trying not to think about you, but I wasn’t angry anymore.

I hoped we might talk this week, I hoped—” He breaks off.

“You were right,” he says. There’s something like regret on his face.

“It was too much back then. I’d had years to sit with how I felt, so when we got together, I just assumed it was forever.

But it was new for you, and I put too much pressure on you.

I expected so much, and I couldn’t see that you didn’t want it in the same way.

” His lips press together, then part as he looks at me like he’s asking for forgiveness. “I’m so sorry, Joni.”

“I wanted it,” I say, and Ren’s eyes narrow in confusion.

It breaks my heart that he didn’t know, that this whole time, he truly believed me when I said it was a mistake. That there wasn’t some small part of him that suspected I was lying when I left him, taking what I know now was the easy way out.

The truth finally hurtles out of me. “I heard you talking to your parents that night. About your job offer.” I watch his face shift, eyes beginning to clear as he works it out, as that night reorders itself in his head.

I offer up the remaining pieces I have. “You were going to give up everything you’d worked for.

And you’re right, I had just figured out how I felt about you, and it terrified me.

It felt so enormous, and I didn’t know how to protect it.

You. I needed you to be happy, and I knew if I left any door open between us, I’d slip through.

I was so close to taking it all back on the sidewalk that night.

I wanted to be with you, but it just seemed… safer. To cut you out.”

It all sounds so foolish now. In my mind, I’d been doing the right thing for both of us.

The pain of that night washes over me again, like it did for months after I went back to New York, until it lessened to a subtle, constant ache, like some old wound I carried around that had never healed properly.

Ren’s jaw works as he looks out at the water, the sun breaking through the clouds to paint it golden. I want to ask him what he’s thinking, but I keep my mouth shut. Give him the same space he’s always reserved for me.

“Joni, you’ve always believed in me,” he says. “More than anyone else. About my job, about everything. I might have stopped trying a long time ago if you weren’t my best friend, but—” He rubs a hand at his neck. “I would have been fine in New York. Happy, even. My work isn’t everything.”

I think about that night, how my brain started working against me again.

I loved him so much that I let it cloud my judgment.

“I’m sorry that I tried to make that decision for you.

That I was projecting all my own anxiety onto you,” I tell him.

“I just… I couldn’t think of anything but the worst what-ifs.

If you moved and hated me for it. If I hated you for it.

” I let out a sad laugh. “But the worst possible thing is what happened. We didn’t speak for—”

“Two and a half years,” Ren finishes for me.

If the last few days have shown me anything, it’s that time has done nothing to dull my feelings for him.

I want what I never gave us an opportunity to have.

But I keep coming up against the fact that my life is in free fall right now.

I’m unemployed, all my things are in an apartment on the other side of the country, I haven’t actually dealt with any of the mental fallout of getting fired, what the absence of that work, art will do to me.

If Ren and I are going to be together, it has to be different this time.

I look over at him, some tempered kind of hope in my throat.

“My life is a mess right now,” I say. His face tells me he disagrees, but I continue.

“But I don’t want this thing between us to be a mess.

I know it’s a lot to ask, but maybe if we just pause for a little while.

Maybe if we’re friends again first, and then after I’ve sorted everything out we can…

” It’s unfair, I know, to ask him to wait, but I’m worried if I don’t at least try, this will be it, the end of our love story.

Ren takes a long time to answer. He stares out at the tide as it slowly begins to make its way back in for so long that I almost know his answer before he says it.

“I thought I’d do anything to be with you,” he says, “and I’m sure I’ll hate myself for saying this, but I don’t know if I can be with you and be worried that every time things get complicated, you might leave again.

” He pauses, takes a deep breath. “Loving you…it’s like my heart exists outside my body, and that just hurts, sometimes.

And losing you once… I got this glimpse of a person I didn’t want to be.

And I’m so afraid of that, Joni. Surviving it once was hard enough. I can’t risk losing you again.”

I have to bite the inside of my cheek, urge myself to stay steady for him like he always has for me. I love him so much, and I want to give him what he’s asking for. “I don’t want it to hurt,” I say. “For either of us.”

He holds his hand out toward me then. I cover his palm with mine, fingers sliding between his. He squeezes, once. “You’re still my best friend. And I’m not interested in a life without you in it,” he says.

“Neither am I,” I say, my heart turning over in my chest like it’s trying to beat for the first time. I meet his eyes, the same warm brown eyes I’ve looked for all my life. In the halls at school, across crowded rooms, on busy sidewalks in a city he wasn’t even in.

“I’m sorry—” he says, but I raise a finger to his lips, silencing him.

“I think we’ve apologized enough.” Part of me wants to say more, get to some core we haven’t reached yet.

But I need to trust what he’s telling me, not force a decision on him again.

Appreciate the dream this week has been.

“We still have today,” I say, wanting to preserve it longer. “And I still want you.”

He smiles, a laugh exhaling through his nose. “I still want you too.”

“Then we enjoy the time we have left,” I say, trying to sound cheerful. “And the rest…” I flick a hand toward the vast Pacific in a que sera, sera movement. Ren smiles.

His arm comes around my shoulders, and I curl against him, head tucked under his chin, eyes closing.

I want this to be a new start. I want to sort out my mess. Find Ren when I have a clear path forward. I want to have mornings and nights and a life with him.

I want this to be a love story.

But there’s also this. A quiet moment worth the kind of at tention I’ve been reserving for work. An opportunity to let my thoughts settle. To feel Ren’s strong arm around me, to let everything we’ve just told each other sink in.

* * *

I don’t know how much time has passed, but soon Sasha is calling Ren on his phone, demanding to know where we are, and we have to move on to the reason we’re all here: Stevie and Leo’s big day.

We stand slowly, brushing the sand off our pants, stretching our legs. As we amble back in the direction of the house, the sun warming our shoulders, our hands find each other’s, holding on tight.