Page 72 of The Five Stages of Courting Dalisay Ramos

“Help me, please! I’m trying to understand! Because we’ve been sleeping together, all this time, and somehow that doesn’t count? I know your family wants you to stay ‘pure’ until marriage. So why do some traditions matter and others don’t?”

Having her own hypocrisy thrown in her face hurts more than she imagined. “It’s complicated.”

Evan’s voice is thick. “But moving in together isn’t.”

Tears swim in Dalisay’s eyes, and it’s so much worse when she sees them swim in Evan’s too.

“My family is protecting me. They’re not controlling me.”

“Yeah, well, it’s really hard to tell the difference.”

She chokes on a sob. Anger makes her face hot. “They don’t make decisions for me. My mother is not your father,” she says.

That hits a nerve. Evan’s face scrunches in on itself and he turns away from her, rubbing his hand on his face again. The tension in his shoulders makes his movements stiff. She can tell he’s trying not to cry too.

She watches him, holding her breath, and it starts to hurt. She knows it was a low blow, but she had to say it. She doesn’t know how to get through to him. And yet, she regrets it immediately.

Evan, meanwhile, takes a deep breath, hand still on his face, before he turns around again. His eyes are glossy, but he’s doing his best to keep his tone level, even though she can hear the strain in his. “So, what pizza did you pick?”

“No, we are not pretending like this conversation never happened!”

“Well, I don’t know what else to talk about! You don’t want to move in with me, you jump immediately to the prospect of divorce—”

“I just want you to listen to me and respect my decision!”

“A decision hinging on your family’s approval. Tell me I’m wrong. Please.”

The words are out before she can fully process them. “I can’t marry you.”

The hurt on Evan’s face is acute, like a full-stop punctuation mark. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

Evan’s breath comes out in a shudder and the tears in his eyes threaten to overflow. “I think you’ve made the decision for the both of us. You said what you want, or what you don’t want. That’s all there is to it. Besides, I’m not sure I want to marry into a family whose love is conditional anyway. What if our future kid is gay, or trans, and your mom decides to treat them like she did Nicole? And we have to be cool with that? We have to respect that?”

He’s right and she knows it, but too many words have been thrown around for any rational thought to enter her brain. “Let me deal with my mother.”

“Sure you will.”

The disdain in his voice is crystal clear. “Right,” Dalisay says, her chin wobbling. Her cheeks itch as the tears fall, but she refuses to wipe them clear. “We’re done, Evan.”

He doesn’t move, he just watches her with his hands on his hips, his face red as he holds his breath. His words come out in a rush. “That’s it? We’re breaking up?”

Before she leaves, she turns around and looks at him. It hurts to do so.

“I really had you pegged from the start,” she said. “You don’t know anything about me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It’s been five months since Evan has seen Dalisay. Five whole-ass lonely, terrible, miserable months.

He replays their breakup over and over in his mind, trying to find any way he might have been able to salvage things, how he might have said something different, something better, chased after her, tried to make it right. But he didn’t. He screwed up. There was no talking to her after that. The night they broke up, he tried calling her, but it went straight to voice mail.

He lay awake all night, psyching himself up to speak to her at work the next day, but he found her desk empty, cleared out. When he asked Naomi, she said that Dalisay had asked to work from home, starting immediately. Nowadays, he only sees her in weekly virtual meetings, but she keeps her camera turned off, and he makes every excuse not to go to the meetings anyway.

A Dalisay-shaped hole has been carved into his life.

There was nothing at his apartment she’d left behind, nothing for her to come back for, no reason for them to see each other again. He didn’t want to give up on her, not like he gave up with Becca, but he’s certain she’s blocked his number by now. If Dalisay didn’t hate him before, he’s pretty sure she hates him now. She doesn’t want to talk to him ever again,she’s made that quite clear. The most interaction they have is formal, stilted, work-related. No more emoticons, no more texts, simply Overnight emails relevant to articles and deadlines and assignments when their departments collaborate. They’re worse than strangers.

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