Page 107 of Let It Be Me

It’s unfair. That’s what gets me. Lorenzo knew I loved him, knew I wanted him, knew if he said the word, I was his. I feel childish being so hung up on this feeling, but I am. He had the advantage all along, and I went on playing the just-friends game like an idiot. For years.

When feeding is done, I start the long task of checking equipment. It’s tedious, but the repetitive nature is soothing, letting me work on autopilot so I can attend to the tedious and repetitive thoughts in my brain.

Did Lorenzo know I had no memory of saying those words to him? My stomach drops every time I imagine how it went down. I was such a sloppy, emotional drunk back then. Did I cry? Beg him to love me back? Or—oh, god—offer myself to him? Take my clothes off? It’s all so possible. And Lorenzo would never have the heart to tell me if I humiliated myself like that.

I picture my high school self with a runny nose and tear-streaked face and mascara everywhere, words tumbling out of my mouth while Lorenzo stares down at me, a deer in headlights. That’s when it occurs to me to ask the question. The glaringly obvious question that I overlooked yesterday in my shock and embarrassment.

I can’t believe I didn’t think to ask him.

“What didyou say when I told you I loved you?”

I’m standing in the sunbaked parking lot outside the athletic facility, where I’ve waited for the last twenty minutes for Lorenzo to come out, this question burning my mouth.

His expression moves from happy to confused. He stops in front of me. “What?”

“What did you say when I told you I loved you? Did you declare your love to me, Lorenzo? Or did you stand there and say nothing?”

I expect him to tell me to get in the car so we can talk about this in private, but he only looks at me. His silence tells me everything. “I didn’t say anything.”

How can it hurt so much to find out something that, deep down, you already knew? I swallow, nausea gripping me from my stomach to my throat, the smell of hot asphalt impossible to escape. I want to turn from him so he won’t see the humiliation on my face, but I can’t seem to look away from the sorrow in his dark eyes.

Can one moment define your life? What about a moment you can’t even remember? Turns out, yes—that moment on the dock that has never even lived in my memory.

When the silence goes on too long, he says, “Don’t go reading into it like that. Please?”

“Why not? You tell someone you love them and they’re silent? What should I read from that?”

“What was I supposed to do, Ruby? I was a kid. I didn’t know what to think or how to feel.”

“You must have felt something. Or maybe that’s it; maybe you felt nothing at all.”

“I felt a hundred different ways! Doesn’t mean I knew the words for them. We were drunk, you were crying, it was a mess. I didn’t expect those words from you. I just ... didn’t know.”

All reasonable enough, but fuck reasonable. I turn and walk away, knowing he’ll follow me, and good—but I can’t keep staring at him.

“Okay, what would make you feel better? If I told you right now that I said the same words back to you? Is that the problem here?”

“No.” But the truth is yes, that would make me feel better. Knowing that, at least then, we were on equal footing.

“Then what?”

I spin to face him. “You’ve had this over me for four years. You knew this about me, the fucking deepest part of my heart, and you just let it ride. You knew a secret about me that even I didn’t know. And you never bothered to tell me, just held on to it until you could use it to your advantage.”

“Use it to my advantage?” His voice dips low. I shouldn’t have said that. “That’s what you think of me? What’s my advantage exactly, Ruby? How the fuck am I winning right now? You’re angry I didn’t say ‘I love you’ back, but you’ve been doing the same thing to me—pulling away, making me ask you to say the words.”

“It’s not the same. Maybe you didn’t love me in high school. Fine. But you let me believe we were on equal ground this entire time.”

“We were!” He throws his arms out to the sides. “No one has ever come close to you. Whether it was platonic or not, no one has ever meant more to me than you. Even then.”

I wait for this to soothe me, but it doesn’t. I don’t want to just be his favorite person, the best friend he ever had, the one he respects above all others. Right now I want to know he’s loved me as long and hard as I’ve loved him. That all those days and nights I was lovesick for him, he felt exactly what I did. That’s the kind of love I want. “I’m sorry,” I mumble. “It doesn’t feel like enough.”

“What am I supposed to say?” His shoulders sag. “I don’t have a time machine. I can’t go back and say something different, I can’t make my seventeen-year-old self into anything other than the confused kid I was.”

I give a single nod because I know this too well. How many things would I do differently if I could go back?

“What would you have done?” he says. “Flip the situation. What would you have done if I’d said those words to you when we were seventeen?”

I shake my head and look away, but he takes me by my shoulders.

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