Page 36 of Break Your Fall

In that brief trailing off, I rush to assure her, “I’m not laughing at you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, the shine back in her eyes. “It’s hard to look at myself right now. It’s hard to have everybody looking. Everything is just … hard.” She blinks, unshed tears clinging to her lashes, and closes the rest of the distance between us. My hands automatically release the edge of my desk, ready to reach for her. “I don’t want to lose you.”

There’s so much packed into that statement, and I’m shaking my head, pulling her into me. That’s what I would do if things were normal, before we all broke her heart, before I laid my heart out for her to see. When she’d come to me, when she’d need me. She’d wrap her arms around me, too, lean into me.

But she doesn’t.

“It’s just me.” My coaxing makes her tense. It’s slight, but enough to make me question myself again. If all of this can be fixed. If nothing has to change.

As soon as I start spiraling through thoughts that we’re sinking into more awkwardness, I feel her slowly relax. She pushes up on her toes and her hands slide up my chest to wrap around my neck. We sigh into each other and I pull her in closer, hugging her as tight as she now hugs me, my fingers buried in her hair, rested at her neck, her fingers pressing into my back.

This is what we needed.

“I’m sorry about your parents,” she says at my ear, then whispers, “Everything falls apart.”

“But we don’t have to,” I say as we separate, capturing her stare.None of us have to.“Please don’t read into things,” I ask of her aloud, knowing she already has. “Nothing has to change.”We don’t have to change.I’m just me. Just Tommy. And I’ll stay that way if that’s what it takes to keep her in my life. “We’re still friends,” I say, lower, trying not to let how much I want to be more come through my voice. “We can still be us.”

“Like it never happened?” Her brows bend with a hopeful apprehension that I understand.

No, I don’twantto act like it never happened. I don’twantto act like I’m not in love with her. I never have. But I also don’t want a notch in our friendship from my screwups. And I sure as hell don’t want any discomfort between us.

“No,” I say, my face twisting around how to say that without actually repeating that I’m in love with her before settling with, “I never really tried to hide my feelings for you. I just wasn’t …openabout them.”

“I know. I get it,” she rushes out with a small smile. “We can just get back to some place normal.” The statement is decisive, and my heart cracks and repairs itself in the same breath. “But … what kept you from telling me?”

I rub the back of my neck as our history flashes before my eyes, beginning with every complicated and pitiful reason, and ending with a simple shrug. “I never really saw the point.” I continue on before she can pore over all the reasons why. “I’m sorry, Reyna. I’ve pictured the moment so many times in my head, and it never came out like that,” I say around a slight laugh, regret on my face. I apologize because she deserves to hear those words differently. Better. She deserves a do-over.

But when something wasn’t supposed to come out in the first place and you got shoved away, that’s impossible to do.

“I shouldn’t have pressured you,” she says with her own apologetic stare, like I only told her because I had to. It’s true, I felt stuck, but the timing has no bearing on what she’s always meant to me.

“I could’ve not said anything,” I tell her. “It wasmychoice, and I wouldn’t for a second take it back.”

Now that I’ve made this declaration, I know it’s true.

A slow smile lights up her face, then she says, “You’re like me. You wanna keep everything and everyone together.” She sighs as if expelling everything negative that has happened between us the past few days. “You wanted me to be happy. Your heart was in a good place.” My face matches hers—lit up and optimistic—as she adds, “Just have my back.”

“Always,” I promise. We say the promise because it’s true. We say the promisebackbecause we believe in each other. She doesn’t say it back, but I don’t dwell, because she will. I still have to show her, and she’s showing me that she wants me to. She’s letting me have that chance.

Reyna gives me a nod as she steps back, walking backward toward the door. “You’re my favorite. You know that?”

My reaction is the same. The exact same stilled to silence, dragged inhale through parted lips, as if I’m hearing her say those words for the first time. It feels like I am. She’s sober now. She’s one hundred percent present with me and I’m still her favorite.

I had a feeling she meant it that night, but this night removes any doubt from my head, and allows me to be able to say it back.

“You’re my favorite, too.”

“I kinda figured,” she teases, and I sputter a laugh.Normal.“Goodnight, Tommy.”

Goodnight. Badnight. She was having a bad night, and I don’t want her to leave yet.

“Reyna,” I blurt out, and she faces me from the doorway. “If there’s any way I can help—”

“You already have,” she says with a nod, then a soft half-smile. “More than you know.”

Reyna’s seeing me. And she’s smiling. I know she’s not seeing me the way I see her, but she knows now. She knows and she sees me and she’s not looking away.I’m still her favorite.

One question pins itself to my brain as she walks away, one I don’t risk asking myself or taking in as I see the words.

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