Page 6 of Olivia’s Only Pretending (Sweet River #3)

Five

R yan and I had dated for two years. He was the first guy I’d dated who felt like this could really be something.

We’d met at the university. Both of us started working there around the same time, and he asked me to lunch to discuss the department and how we were feeling about our new jobs.

I was still finishing up my PhD while he was further along in his career.

Over lunch, we bonded quickly over how much we had in common, how our goals so perfectly lined up.

Our friendship quickly turned into dating.

Ryan was tall with floppy brown hair and a confidence that made people want to follow wherever he was leading. Or sometimes made people want to put him in place. I really loved doing both.

He helped me feel comfortable on campus, right by my side as I found my footing in my new professor shoes, which was a bonus that still made me feel grateful as I looked back on our relationship.

It felt perfect in the way things going exactly the way you’d always imagined sometimes did. What would make more sense than me falling in love with a fellow history professor? It was what I’d expected my future love story would be like.

We worked together and could share office lunches and coffee breaks. It became serious between us quickly.

He met my sisters and mom, and they thought we made sense, too.

I showed him around Sweet River, taking him to the summer festival and ordering him the best coffee on the menu at Coffees and Commas, telling him how much this town and my family meant to me, and he told me he was falling in love with it, too.

Much like his love for me, he only loved it while it was useful to him.

We should buy one of those historic houses in downtown Sweet River , he’d said, after I’d told him owning an old house was my dream. My heart swelled. Everything was going so perfectly. I felt afraid to make a wrong move or say the wrong thing.

Because, as perfect as it looked, it felt precarious for some reason. Like I could smell the smoke, I just couldn’t see the fire.

Ryan and I made plans to save for a future home together, talked about engagement and wedding timelines. I saw and heard all of it with my own eyes, but something about it didn’t feel real.

My body always tensed like I was waiting for the drop on a roller coaster during our entire relationship. Tense and hopeful, because I loved our little campus love story so much until finally … the drop I’d been awaiting arrived.

He got offered a job in Minnesota. He’d told me he wanted to settle in Sweet River with me. We were saving for a house. We’d looked at rings. So my jaw dropped when he told me he’d taken the offer.

No conversation. And no invitation.

But I’d been honest when I told him I wanted my life here in Sweet River, so I wouldn’t have moved with him if he’d asked. Maybe he’d known that.

“I just don’t feel anything growing here,” he said, his voice tight. No growth? I thought our relationship was growing.

I wasn’t throwing out accusations, though. I felt numb. I silently nodded.

“There’s no development if I stay here. No upward mobility. My time here has served its purpose,” he said apologetically.

Was I just part of that purpose? I looked at my hands, tangled in my lap. He hadn’t said anything about our relationship, just on and on about his career, his goals.

For me, it’d been so much more than that. I’d loved Ryan and his always-organized desk, his brown, scuffed-up loafers, and the way he wanted to dream with me.

I’d thought I’d finally found someone who would stay.

“There’s got to be more to us than that, though,” I said. My voice was so quiet, he didn’t even respond. I was too disappointed to even cry.

On top of the shock and the heartbreak, I felt so embarrassed. Had he always known he didn’t mean it? Or was I just that easy to blow off for something better? I couldn’t decide which stung less.

In the year that followed, as I extracted Ryan from the beautiful life I’d built here in Sweet River, I realized I could keep all the beautiful parts. I didn’t need Ryan, or anyone else, to make those dreams come true. I wanted to stick with the plan—my plan—with or without him.

So, I kept saving for that old house.

Last June, a year later, I finally joined the Sweet River Historical Society we’d talked about joining together. I sat in a plastic chair in a room of fellow Sweet River lovers and watched a slideshow go by of a historical house downtown. It looked like a dream come true.

I toured the house that day and saw rooms for me to decorate, a yard for me to barbecue in with my friends, shelves to paint, and walls to break down. I could already envision the light coming in through the back windows as I turned the pages in a good book.

Yes, this was what I’d wanted all along.

This dream was mine to begin with. I’d only briefly shared it with Ryan. When he left, I felt freedom in knowing he hadn’t taken anything of mine with him. Not my dreams, not my heart.

Okay, he did take my favorite pumpkin mug.