Page 46 of The Consequence of Loving Me

“Spin the bottle time!” Aspen cheers from across the basement while moving our coffee table from in front of the couch.

“Is he serious?” Veronica asks, her shoulder lightly brushing against mine.

We’re sitting on the other side of the basement, both of us perched on barstools placed against the wall. This was my private corner for most of the night—my place to wallow in my own thoughts—before Veronica had joined me.

“He’s probably serious,” I respond.

Her eyes are focused on Aspen as he hustles all the stragglers in the basement to join him in the juvenile game. People are humoring him, though, because they all start to sit in a circle in the open space in front of our couches.

Veronica watches him for an extended amount of time until she finally looks at me. We stay like that for a few moments as the party bustles around us. Aspen continues to pester people to play the game, but I barely hear him because I’m too busy peering into Veronica’s sad blue eyes.

I wish she would lower her walls a little more—let me into that beautiful mind of hers to see what she thinks when she looks at me like this—but she doesn’t.

And neither do I.

I try to hide the way my heart has picked up in my chest. The way I feel in this hollow pit in my stomach when I look at her and stop myself from touching her. I hide the fact that the way she rubs her lips together when she’s deep in thought—something she’s doing right now—makes blood pump all the way down to my dick.

I hide all of it.

I’m staring at her lips when she speaks. “Oh, fuck it,” she says, her gaze flicking to my lips—the lips she painted so vividly like she’d spent her life studying them—before she slides off the barstool and walks over to join Aspen’s circle.

I don’t register what she’s doing until she sits down next to Tristan, giving him a smile that makes me jealous all over again.

Is she really about to play spin the bottle?

She confirms my suspicions when she folds those legs underneath her, her knee bumping against his.

I’m busy staring at their contact when Aspen steps next to me. I think back to the other night, when I finally told my best friend what was going on. After Selma had been gone for a few days, he finally asked me if something happened.

I broke down and told him everything.

I wish I could say he was shocked to hear that Selma and I hadn’t ever really been in love, but he wasn’t. It appears that Selma and I were the only two people who’d ever fallen for the charade to begin with.

And maybe Veronica.

Even Lily has called me out on it all.

“I know you love her, man,” Aspen had told me during the conversation, his hand running over his buzzed hair. He’d been a few beers in but was somehow still philosophical. “There’s no denying it, but I think you need to rethink your definition of being in love. Love isn’t about loving someone so much you let nothing break them, it’s about loving them even though something has already broken them. That’s what you need. That’s what Selma needs, too.” He said those words and then walked to his room, as if he hadn’t sent my head spinning.

I thought love was about protecting someone, so they didn’t ever have to break at all. But I’m continuously learning that I apparently know very little about love.

I do know one thing, however.

Veronica.

The girl who’s now perched next to another man, about to play a game where I could very well watch her make-out with another guy.

Will I be okay with it?

Probably not.

She hasn’t left my head. No matter how many times I’ve tried—and continue to try—to force her out.

I just got out of a relationship that took up years of my life—one I would’ve stayed in for the rest of it. I shouldn’t be thinking of a woman I have to rip truths out of.

Yet, in every spare moment, her haunted gaze finds a way to fill my brain.

The way she’d been vulnerable enough to cry in front of me, to completely fall apart.

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