Page 46 of The Princess and the Fraud

“Four years.”

He glanced at me in surprise. “Why did you break up?”

He cheated on me. The words were on the tip of my tongue, begging to be released if only to soak up Aaron’s response to it. But then again, would he be that horrified? Would he see anything wrong with it? Or was he one of those guys that raised an eyebrow and askedso?“He was at college for most of our relationship. We were a long-distance couple. We just weren’t the right fit.”

“So it wasn’t love, then?”

My answer was almost impulsive. “It was.”

“But you broke up.”

“You don’t have to be together forever in order to love someone.” My voice was quiet as I regarded him. He had a freckle just underneath the angle of his jaw, near his earlobe. “It doesn’t have to be some grand, epic thing. You put too many restrictions on the word, I think.”

“Maybe,” he allowed. “Does Caroline know how much talking about her brother bothers you?”

“Caroline is a very driven person. When she gets it in her head what she wants, she misses other things.”

Aaron threaded his fingers back down the keys, toward lower notes that reverberated in my chest. As he moved, his shoulder brushed mine again. I wondered if he noticed. “So, because she’s so focused on what she wants, it’s okay if she doesn’t consider that she might be hurting your feelings?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“I, of all people, know how easy it is to get stuck in the rut of only looking at whatyouwant and not at how it affects those around you.”

“It’s not like I can just ask her to stop talking about her brother.”

Aaron didn’t respond to that, but picked up the pace of the composition he played. I watched his fingers fan out across the white and black keys, watched the way his leg moved as he pressed down on the foot pedals to polish out the note. Even with a quicker tempo, the song itself was still soothing, an upbeat tune that I wanted to close my eyes and listen to.

“I didn’t know he was coming home,” I found myself saying, the words tumbling out before I could catch them. “When Fiona brought it up at brunch, I didn’t know… before that. I didn’t know he was coming home, and I didn’t know he was bringing his girlfriend.”

“How long have they been dating?”

This time, I tested the waters. “It’ll be a year in June, I think.”

Aaron’s finger hit a note too hard—it was loud and wrong, causing the song to slam to a halt. He stopped playing altogether and then turned toward me. There was not a trace of emotion on his face, but it was his body language that gave him away, and the way it held him stiff.

“At least, that’s what I heard. I heard they met in June.” I shifted on the bench. “I found out in September, when I flew to surprise him for his birthday. One of his roommates opened the door, and I could see the two of them on the couch. Kissing.”

Even now, that memory was so surreal that I almost wasn’t sure it’d happened. My boyfriend of four years with a beautiful girl draped over him, their lips pressed together as they were oblivious to the entire world around them. Oblivious to the girl and her suitcase who’d arrived at her destination after a flight that’d gotten delayed three times because of fog.

I’d taken a huge chunk from my savings for the plane ticket, took a full week of vacation time, eager to surprise him, only to have it all around me shatter like glass.

Aaron still watched me. “What did he say?”

“Nothing. I left, blocked him on everything, and that was it.”

“He didn’t come home to talk to you?” Aaron’s voice grew progressively more aggravated. “He knows where you are. You were together for four years, and he just left things like that?”

“He probably thought it was a gift from heaven. Just the clean break he’d been hoping for.”

Aaron’s fingers fluttered against the keys but didn’t press down hard enough to elicit a sound. I watched the agitated movement, since it was the only clear outward sign of any emotion. “I don’t understand love,” he announced, something almost like disgust in his tone. “You can be with someone for four years, rip their heart out, and still call it love? If that’s what love is, I don’t want it.”

I opened my mouth, but hesitated. Aaron was right, in a way.Thatwasn’t love. Toward the end, it hadn’t been love. It’d been sparse texts, quiet nights, phone calls that came few and far between. Grant hadn’t even called me on my mother’s anniversary. But it hadn’t always been that way. We’d dated for four years; it’d been love at some point… right?

I couldn’t remember the first time we’d saidI love you. When we started dating, Grant had felt like something solid I could hold onto while everything else was falling apart. I’d clung to him like a raft. It hadn’t started out as love—it had started as relief. A reprieve from the noise of grief and loneliness.

Grant had never made me feel too much, never stirred anything wild or consuming inside me. I’d always thought it’d been because after my mother died, that part of me that burned had been snuffed out. I’d lost the ability to feel anything too intensely. And after a year of being together, and he left for college, I’d been okay. Being with him in person and texting him every night had given me the same quiet calm.

Peace, stillness, safety.

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