Page 114 of Problematic Summer Romance

“You like me,” I say, firm. I may be crying, but he doesn’t need to hear the tears in my voice. “You like talking to me. You like the way I look. You care about me. You tell me things you are unable to put into words when you are with others. You—this, what we have, as odd and limited and unusual as it may be, is the best partof our lives. Perhaps I’m just an idiot, but I cannot understand why you’d rather deprive us both of it than—”

“Because you aretwenty-two years old, Maya. Because you have a whole life ahead of you. Because every last fucking thing about this is problematic. I’ve been desperately trying to navigate the best fucking thing that’s ever happened to me and still be fair to you, and I can no longer see a way to do it without taking something from you. If our relationship is keeping you from experiences that you should be having at your age, then Iamtaking advantage, and I can no longer allow myself to—”

“I love you,” I interrupt him. Calm. Even.

I think I hear him die. “Maya.”

“I love you.”

“No.”

“I love you. And you are my best friend.”

“No.”

“I don’t care that you’re older. I don’t care that you work all the time. I don’t even care if your weird brain wants to pretend that we’re just platonic pen pals until I hit thirty. I will wait for it. I will wait foryou.”

“No.”

“The only thing I care about is: Are you in love with me?”

The sound of breathing. A hitch, barely audible. “That’s irrelevant, Maya.”

I laugh. And for a split second, I actually feel happy. Hopeful. Fuckingelated. All that running he’s been doing, and he can’t even lie to me. He can’t bring himself to say the one untruth that would shut me up. “Nice try.”

He ignores me. Composes himself. “Everything you just said, that’s the exact reason this needs to stop. You need to be withsomeone your age. Someone who doesn’t come with sets of issues that span generations. Someone who—”

“Someone who’s in his original condition! Pristine! Someone who has never experienced suffering! I need one of those collectible action figures, the ones that never get taken out of the box! Shall we check eBay?”

He steamrolls me. “It’ll be good for you, some time away from me. You’ll have room to explore—”

“I have no interest in the Camerons of this world. I have no interest in anyone but—”

“You don’tknowwhat you’re interested in, Maya. You are far too young, and our relationship is limiting your opportunities to fully grasp the extent and variety of your options. Whatever you think you’re feeling about me—”

“I’m in love with you, Conor.” The words slip out thick, watery, and I hate it. “So please, say that, instead of this whatever-you’re-feeling bullshit. At the very least do me the favor of acknowledging my words.”

An exhale. A ragged one. “I know you think that you are in love with me, but if you give it time, it will run its course. And the kindest thing I can do for you at the moment is to free you from me.”

He used the wordkind. And I want to take it from him and use it to stab him. “And what about you, Conor? Will it run its course for you, too?”

A terrible silence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

That’s where my hope dies. Something selfish and dark swells within me—something murderous and cutting and vengeful, at the knowledge that he trusts himself and me so little, he’s not going to let us have this. He’s going to take it away. And he’s not even going to admit that he…

The anger is high up in my throat. And it always leads down the same path. “Conor.”

“Yes, Maya.”

“Genuinely, from the bottom of my heart…Fuck off.”

I hang up.

We don’t talk for the following ten months.

2 days before thewedding

Chapter 36

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