Page 103 of Tell Me It’s Right

“I wanted to.” I tighten my fingers around his arm. “How about we start with one thing at a time?”

He nods.

“Why did she show up tonight? What was she showing you on her phone?”

That, finally, loosens the tension in his shoulders. He lets out a disbelieving laugh and shakes his head. “That.” He fishes his phone out of his pocket, swipes around for a second, then hands it to me.

It’s pulled up to one of the shop’s social media pages. I haven’t logged in since work a few days ago, but there’s a post from today. One I didn’t schedule.

I click on it, and blink in surprise when my face appears. It’s of me at the beach the other day, my eyes closed as I smile and the sun sets behind me.

Wish our social media savior—ahem—manager a happy birthday!

Liam shifts his weight in his seat. “You said I should practice posting, and that personalities and faces are important, and I just thought it was a good picture and?—”

I laugh at the nervous edge to his voice. “Thisis what she was so upset about?”

He laughs too and covers his eyes as I hand the phone back.

“Anyway, she’s back in town for this thing with my sister. They’re working together on a new branch of the business. And this is just something Hailey does. Every time we break up, if she feels me moving on, she likes to pop back in.”

Every time we break up.

“How many times have you ended things?”

He shakes his head. “Since we first started dating in high school? At least half a dozen.”

I don’t know why my stomach twists at that. Liam must see it on my face because he hurries to add, “This time is nothing like those, I swear. This one was for good.”

I wish that made me feel better.

“Please come inside. I’ll explain everything. Answer any questions you have.”

I don’t respond, but I let him take my hand and lead me up the stairs. He doesn’t let go, not even after we’re inside his apartment and on the couch, and there’s a slight tremor in his fingers.

He said there were things Leo didn’t know.

I’m starting to think there’s a lot of things that maybe no one does.

“Look, I don’t know how to do this. I don’t have any idea where to start, so I’m just going to start talking, okay?”

I run my thumb along the back of his hand, desperately wanting to believe there’s an acceptable explanation for all of this, but I can’t get Leo’s words out of my head.

If you want me to get on board with this, I’m not going to. And that should mean something to you.

Because no matter how angry I am with him for how he handled things tonight, his opiniondoesmean something to me. It means everything to me, actually.

But then I think of the past few months with Liam…all of our conversations and little moments, the way he took care of me, how he remembered all the tiny details about me that no one else ever has…I don’t want to lose that either. But was any of it real if I’ve been in the dark this entire time?

Liam keeps his focus on our hands and lets out a long breath. “Hailey and I met my sophomore year of high school. She’s two years older. She was my first everything, but she’d dated other guys before. So everything with her…I guess I just assumed she knew more. That that was how relationships were supposed to be. I thought it was normal.”

His forehead creases as he says it, and he pauses long enough that I wonder if he’s waiting for me to respond. But then he adds, quietly, “It took me a long time to figure out that it wasn’t. Normal. The fighting, the yelling, the hitting, the insults, the going through my phone, the silent treatment, the not wanting me to go places without her…” He sighs. “We’d started dating a few months before my mom died. I wonder a lot if things would’ve been different if that hadn’t been the timing. Because even when things were bad between us, she was there for me. In a way no one else was. And I kind of…clung to that. And I think that made it easier for her. She didn’t want me spending time with other people, and I was at such a low point that I didn’t want anyone else around. She was my whole world, and she knew it.

“Anyway, after she graduated high school, she went to a community college about an hour down the road, so we stayed together. Even if it wasn’t that far, the distance was tough. She’d get mad if I took too long to respond, if I didn’t drive up to see her enough… We broke up a lot during that time. Once I hadsome distance from her, I started to see I feltbetterwhen she was gone. But I also had this, I don’t know, attachment to her. It was hard to let go. After pushing everyone else away for so long for her, if she was gone, I didn’t have much left.”

For the first time since he started talking, he meets my eyes.

I remember those years, vaguely. Leo’s first two years of high school, Liam was around as usual. I saw him a lot less those final two years, but I’d assumed that was because they’d both gotten their driver’s licenses and didn’t need to ride with me and Mom anymore.

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