Page 3 of Meant For Love

“Wait a minute,” my cousin Zara says, slapping her hand on the table in front of her, “you told him what?” She’s flabbergasted. Her eyeballs look like they are going to jump out of their sockets.

I put down the cup of coffee I’ve been holding in my hand since I got on the FaceTime call with her two minutes ago. I sent her an SOS text in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep because I was replaying the worst night I’d ever had in my whole life. The minute she read it at nine o’clock in the morning, my phone was ringing. “We were having dinner.” My hands start to shake when I relive it out loud and put it out in the universe. I mean, it’s already out in the universe, but it was just between Josh and me, and now that I’m telling Zara, it’ll be sort of reality. “I looked over at him and asked him where this was going.”

“Just like that?” she balks. “Hey, can you pass the salt, and by the way, Josh, where are we taking this?”

“I mean, not in those words, obviously,” I state. “More like, we’ve been with each other for over two years now, and it’s like we’ve just started dating. You live at your place; I live at mine. We see each other a couple of times a week, but there is nothing more. I want to know where I’m going in the future.”

I didn’t think Zara’s eyes could get bigger, but I was wrong. “And what did he say?”

“He was like, I love you, Zoey, you know this. I just, I like having my space, doing my own thing,” I repeat the words that made my heart sink. “What we have is perfect. So I told him it wasn’t perfect. Nothing that we had was perfect. Did we love each other? Yes, I know we do, but I want to know he can’t live without me. I want him to want to rush home to be with me. I want him to be like, I don’t know, my parents.” I throw up my hands.

My parents met when my mother found a picture of her boyfriend’s engagement photo online and then tweeted my father to crash the wedding with her. Well, that worked out so well they ended up not even going to the wedding but planning their own. “I want to know this relationship is going somewhere and I’m not wasting my time with him. Like, are we in this forever or is it just for the moment? Am I being selfish by giving him an ultimatum? I guess you can say that, but let’s not waste anyone’s time.” I’m trying to give myself a pep talk without giving myself a pep talk.

“You’re not being selfish.” Zara tries to make me feel better. Our mothers are twin sisters and we are both named after the other sister; it is what makes our bond so unique. I mean, all of my cousins and I grew up more like siblings than cousins, but Zara and I, we were always just the two of us. “And you're right. If you don’t know what you want after two years, then he’s the problem and not you,” she says softly, watching my face. “So how did you end it?”

“I ended it with, perhaps we need time and space away from each other. You do your thing, I do my thing, and we’ll see if we are really meant for each other.” I say the words as my stomach tightens.

“For how long?” She asks the loaded question I’ve been asking myself all night long.

“I never said.” I pick up my cup of coffee again, my mouth going dry. “I waited a whole five minutes for him to talk me out of what I was saying.” I swallow down the coffee that was hot but is now warm. “But he said nothing and just stared at me. It was more of a me saying this and more of him nodding and not saying anything. I mean, I gave him time, and when he didn’t say anything, I just got up and left.”

“You what?” she shrieks, and I have to admit that me leaving shocked even me. “Did he chase you?”

“He did not,” I admit sadly.

“Fuck him,” she snaps. “Fuck him and his bullshit horse he rode in on.”

I laugh because it doesn’t even make sense, but it makes enough sense to me that I get it. “Since he’s in finance, I think he rides the bull down on Wall Street.”

“Well, whatever he is riding, it’s not going to be you.”

I point at the screen. “He is definitely not riding me anymore.”

“Okay.” She takes a deep inhale. “How are you feeling, for real?”

“Sad,” I admit, blinking away the tears that threaten to come on full force. “I mean, I came home and took a bath with a bottle of wine.”

“Oh my God.” She puts her hand to her mouth.

“And then I cried for about two hours straight. I almost busted out Celine Dion’s ‘All by Myself,’ but I refrained,” I say proudly.

“You should have busted out Beyoncé and the ‘Hold Up’ song where she smashes everything with a bat.”

“I should have,” I agree, “but now it’s said and done.”

“I’m shocked he didn’t even come to your place after you left him in the restaurant. I mean, maybe he was in shock, but when the shock wore off, he should have chased you home,” she replies to me hopefully, and I just shake my head. “I mean, what a dick. Even if he did, you wouldn’t answer.”

“I would have.” I don’t bother lying to her. “I would have. I one hundred percent would have opened that door and taken it all back. If he gave me even one inch of indication he wanted me, I would have.”

“We should go away this weekend,” she says. “Go away to a spa.”

“We are already leaving in a couple of weeks for our annual family vacation,” I remind her, and she groans. “Exactly. We need to conserve all our energy for that one.”

I’m about to say something else when I see a text come through on my phone. It goes away after a second, but I think my eyes are deceiving me.

I click on my messages and see his name right away. Nash.

Nash: Hey, Zoey, I have a question for you. Call me when you get a chance.

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