Page 105 of You've Got Male

“I wouldn’t know, I got a call in the middle of it and had to leave.”

“Will they let you make it up?”

“Sure. Next year.”

“Jesus, Evie. I really fucked up. If I’d known this would happen, I would have left my phone on. This day was really important for me.”

Thatwas the wrong thing to say because any openness she had vanished and all those walls snapped into place. “Today was important for me.”

“I know.” He reached for her hand but she backed away.

“Do you? Because they only offer this test in the fall, which means I have to put off school for another year.”

“Maybe I can call them, explain that there was a family emergency—”

“There aren’t any do-overs, Jonah,” she said, sounding weary. Up close he could see how tired she was, how the creases around her eyes were deep with discouragement and resignation. “This is just the reality. My reality. You made a decision that suited you and it blew up my plan.”

NO.The guilt hit him like a punch to the stomach. She’d had so many people derail her life. How could he have let this happen? He hated that he was just another in a long line of people who’d put her last.

“I don’t know how to fix this,” he said, cupping her cheek. “Tell me how to fix this.”

“You can’t. I get why you did it. But the end result is the same. I can’t carry any more weight, Jonah.”

“You don’t have to carry me, sunshine.”

“Today tells me I do. I’ve been carrying people my whole life, and for once I wanted someone to carry me.”

“Then let me,” he said quietly.

That’s when the first tear lined her lash and his gut hollowed out. “I’d rather do it alone than risk being dropped again.”

“What are you saying?”

She shook her head and that tear fell. Followed by another and another. “I can’t do this anymore.”

He had to take a moment to decipher what she was saying. Yesterday, she’d told him she was falling in love and today she was suddenly done.

“That’s it?” he asked roughly. “One mistake and you’re calling it quits?” It was as if he were right back in that moment when Amber told him she didn’t want to be part of the medical trial. She chose to leave him rather than fight. And Evie was doing the same thing.

“Both of us knew that this was never going to last.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.”

She wiped angrily at her cheeks. “Maybe at one point I believed that it could be more, but more can’t exist when there isn’t any room left. There’s no room for you in my world, Jonah.”

“Then let’s try to make some room.”

“I’m tired of waiting for something to change. The only way I’m going to make my life better is to change how I’m going about it. Plus, this was never real, remember?”

And that was the stake through his heart that he’d been dreading. “This is as real as it gets for me,” he said. “I love you, Evie.”

She shook her head and stepped back. “Love shouldn’t mean giving up parts of yourself for it to work.” She went up on her toes and gave him a gentle kiss on the cheek. “I can’t do that anymore, and we both agreed that if it wasn’t working we’d reassess.”

“Yeah, reassess how to make it work.”

“It can’t work, and the longer we ignore the truth the worse it will be when we finally do.”

The air vacated his lungs and filled him with panic. He was losing her. He could feel it in his soul. “So what are you saying? We go back to being neighbors separated by a fence who argue over a fucking tree that overlaps some invisible easement?”

---