Page 105 of Fake It 'til You Make It

‘I’m more hurt than I think Andrew ever could have hurt me and everyone at that party probably hates me.’

She’s right. I fell for it too and I’m in agony, all of my own doing. She’s staring at me expectantly and I don’t know if I have the words to put any of this back together.

‘For what it’s worth, Abbey, no one who knows you could hate you. And I promise, if you can believe anything I say, that I’m hurting, too. I fell for it too. I’ve fallen for you.’

She scoffs, shakes her head and turns her back on me, walking away.

No. I always walk away from the fight. Not this time. This is the biggest fight of my life and she’s worth every second of it.

I run to get in front of her. ‘Abbey, please, just hear me out, and if you never want to speak to me again afterward, I’ll respect that. I’ll hate it but I’ll respect it.’

She closes her eyes and sighs but she doesn’t walk away, which I take to mean I can at least try.

‘At first, it was a case of mistaken identity. You made an assumption that I was my brother.

‘Then I saw you in Bloomingdales, laughing and joking with your friends. You bought all this designer stuff and I— I guess I thought you were someone like Fleur. So I couldn’t be bothered to correct you. I was messed up and tired. I was hiding in Mike’s apartment. Running.

‘Then I had that interview withGQ. The timing was awful. Nobody knew about what had happened with Fleur and Roman, so I couldn’t say anything different to what was printed in the magazine. I was hurt and embarrassed and would have given anything for it all to just go away.

‘The only thing I did in that apartment was bang those stupid baseballs off the wall until I felt numb. So when you called meout on it, I could hardly admit to the real reason behind it. That I was mentally all over the place.

‘Somewhere in amongst all of that, I decided life would be easier if I was more like my brother, even Roman. They always get the girl. I never did. So, I put on a front for you. Cocky, arrogant.’

She throws up her arms. ‘Those were the worst parts of you.’

I feel my lips rise slightly in a sad smile at the irony.

‘But that was all when we first met, Ted. You could have come clean so many times since then.’

I nod. ‘I should have. I can’t defend myself. You were just the only person I knew in New York and I liked hanging out with you. I didn’t want to risk losing you. Then when I thought you were an actress and you kept saying it was a much cooler job than numbers, I didn’t think a computer coder would be cool enough for you either.’

I drag a hand roughly through my hair at my own stupidity. ‘Then I was too deep into it, Abbey. I fell so hard for you that I’ve been tormenting myself for days, knowing I should tell you the truth but not daring to find out which way you’d land.’

‘Which way I’d land?’ She sniffs.

‘Whether you’d tell me to go screw myself or—’ I shrug because I know now, in this moment, there was never another option, only my own hope.

‘Or what?’

Here goes. The words that have been flying around in my head since we came here. The words I should have been saying under very different circumstances. ‘For so many reasons, what’s happening between us doesn’t make sense. But every instinct I have in me is telling me to lean into it. Into us. I can’t promise that one or both of us won’t wind up getting hurt. But I can tell you honestly that I’m a better version of myself when I’m with you. And I really don’t want to give you up.’

She bites her lip, that way she does when she’s contemplating, and glances back across her shoulder, where the party seems to be back underway. But when she meets my eyes again, I know which side she’s come down on.

‘Ted, I just got out of a relationship where I was lied to. Maybe some of the lies we’ve told and the time we’ve shared has been good for us both. But I can’t walk willingly into that again.’

I exhale heavily. I get it. In her shoes, I’d be saying the same thing. ‘I know.’ I look at her one last time. Her eyes, her lips, the dimples in her cheeks. Just as beautiful on the outside as she is on the inside. ‘For what it’s worth, you do know me, Abbey. It wasn’t all a lie. In name and job title maybe but the bits in between, they were me. I just got swept up in the lie. Swept up in us. Inyou. And I think… I think in another time and place, we could be pretty perfect for each other.’

I don’t know what I expect from her but what I get is nothing. Only an unreadable look into the depths of me.

So I turn and walk away from the one person I really never want to walk away from, up the lawn, back toward the house to get my things.

‘Stay tonight,’ Abbey says into the dusk. ‘You won’t get a flight out until morning, so stay.’

That’s not what I hoped for. Not even close. I nod and keep walking.

‘And Ted, for the record, some people might actually prefer the tech designer over the ball player. A little less cocksure, a heap more honest, and a self-confessed geek, like someone else I know.’

I can feel pressure behind my eyes, so I don’t look back. I keep walking as I say, ‘But not the one that matters.’

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