You Found Me

“I can’t do this.”

Harry looked up at me, sucking the rest of his spaghetti into his mouth, a couple specks of sauce flicking onto his face. “You can’t do what? Eat?”

I let out a long breath and shook my head as I threw the napkin from my lap onto the table. “Not eat. I can’t do…” I gestured between the two of us, “this.”

“Oh,” Harry expressed, swallowing quickly and wiping off his face with his own napkin. “That thing.”

The conversation kind of ended there for a minute, the two of us looking anywhere in the room but each other. “Why?” Harry finally asked, his voice small, as if he were trying to keep himself from showing any emotion.

“I’m not sure you want to hear it,” I admitted. “It’s kind of long and complicated.”

“I think we know each other well enough for you to give me an explanation.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and scratched my hairline, still avoiding his gaze. “I’m not being fair to you. I’m not ready for a sexual relationship, and I know that’s what you’re looking for. Us being together isn’t going to benefit you at all.”

“What?” He sounded shocked, and then, to my complete shock, he laughed. “Leigh, I thought I expressed it clearly enough last week. I don’t care if I have to wait to have sex with you. If you were easy, then it would mean you didn’t respect yourself. I appreciate the fact that you want to slow it down. There’s no reason to break up over it.”

Oh. Well. I had been hoping that he would have agreed with my excuse, said that he really was ready for a more advanced relationship than I was willing to give, and moved on with his life.

But no. He was fucking nice.

I leaned forward on the table, clasping my hands on the table, staring at the table cloth. “Harry, I don’t think I’m ready for a relationship, period.”

Another long, ridiculously awkward silence followed. “Wait, let me get this straight. Are you saying that you’re still not over your ex-boyfriend?”

“Not really. I don’t have feelings for Jared anymore, but…I don’t know. I don’t think I’m ready for another relationship.”

“So you led me on for nothing?” he questioned, his voice rising in anger.

For a second, I let my vision flick up to his face, and I wished I hadn’t. His face was staring to get red, his long eyebrows were drawn together over irritated eyes. I’d never seen him look anything but happy and excited, so the sight came as quite the shock for me.

Harry ripped his wallet out of his pocket and dropped a couple of bills on the table. “C’mon, I’ll bring you home.”

We walked out to the car in silence, my arms crossed in front of my chest.

He started the car and shot out of the parking space without bothering to look, backing up so quickly that he almost smashed into the SUV parked in the space behind ours.

“Harry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you angry. I just wanted to tell you the truth.”

“Oh, instead of teasing me?” He let out a laugh filled with dark humor. “Instead of letting me know what it’s like to be with you before ripping it out from under my feet, telling me after almost a month that you’re still hung up on your ex-boyfriend?”

“Harry, that’s not-”

“How do you expect me to feel when you pull shit like that?” He went through a stop sign, which made me cringe against the back of my seat. “Did you think I’d feel relieved? That I’d go skip through the roses? I wasn’t even supposed to be in States this summer. I asked if I could go early so that I could be with you.”

Way to make me feel like shit, Harry. I took a deep breath as he went through a red light. “Will you fucking stop?” I snapped at him. “You’re going to get us killed. And I’m sorry that I made you angry, but I’d appreciate it if we could live through this.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “My mind is other places, I guess.”

I turned my focus out the window, struggling to keep the tears from pouring down my cheeks. That wasn’t how I wanted everything to happen. I wanted him to understand, to say that we could still stay friends. Or something.

But I definitely didn’t want to make him angry. Harry had been nothing but wonderful to me, and he’d sacrificed a great deal to spend more time with me.

I knew that I was throwing everything out the window, and my stomach churned as I began to realize the reality all over again. Breaking it off with Harry meant that I was never going to be able to talk to him again, to hang out with him. Nothing. I was going back to the life I had before the wedding. One where I spent my nights alone, watching television, waiting for Jenny to give me gossip about any of the guys she met.

“Are you getting out or what?” Harry snapped at me. Underneath the anger, I could hear the pain in his voice, but I really didn’t want to go searching for it.

Without another word, I climbed out onto the pavement and slammed the car door shut behind me, trying to vent some of the frustration I was feeling inside.

Harry didn’t wait for me to back up before he skidded backward and out of the driveway, zooming down the street, going at least twenty miles per hour over the speed limit.

I wanted to be pissed. I wanted to hate him for how he was acting, how angry he got at me when I was just trying to tell him the truth. Granted, his fury was much better than the sadness I’d hoped to avoid. Not that the fact made it any easier.

But no matter how long I stood there, staring down the driveway, trying to get angry at the curly-haired boy who had turned my life upside down, I couldn’t do it.

And soon after, the tears came.

* * *

“I was really hoping you’d decide not to go through with it,” Jenny sighed, seated next to me on my bed, rubbing soft circles on my back while I stared off into the distance. “I knew you’d just make yourself miserable.”

“But this is the right thing to do,” I sobbed, crushing the pillow closer to my chest. “I know it’s the right thing to do. I couldn’t do that to him anymore. I couldn’t lie to him.”

“I know, I know.” She made a couple of soothing noises. “I’m sorry it all had to happen this way. I was so sure he was your chick flick. Why couldn’t he have been the one?”

“Maybe he would have been,” I muttered in a weak voice. “Maybe he would have been if the timing had been better. If Ariana had gotten married in December instead of June.”

“But life doesn’t always work out perfectly.”

“Life never works out perfectly.”

“Aw, come on,” Jenny groaned. The bed bounced as she readjusted her position, although I couldn’t see what she was doing. “Don’t get to be so cynical already. You’re only eighteen. You have to wait until you’re at least forty before you start talking like that.”

“I’m starting early.” There was a short pause before I asked, “Is it too soon to say that I’m giving up on boys?”

“’Course not. There’s always girls.”

“Totally not what I meant. I’m giving up on…romance. I’m not sure it exists.”

“Oh, stop that.”

I sat up and gave Jenny a bit of a stink eye before she could elaborate. “No, listen to me. You may be hurting about Harry now, but you have to admit to yourself that, for a little while, there was romance there. There was deep, intense passion. There was a thrill.”

I kept staring at her, not wanting to answer or acknowledge what she was saying.

“Romance exists, honey. Harry might have not been the right guy to give it in the long run, but…it’s there.”

“Not if I give up on it,” I corrected, flopping back onto my bed. “Ugh, I need chocolate. And ice cream. And I hope it makes me gain twenty pounds.”

“I’ll go grab it. But I’m totally not jumping on that bandwagon.”