Page 163 of The 21-Day Boyfriend
“No, please…”
“You two can continue whatever you were doing. No one will interrupt.”
He turns his back and walks back along the path. I follow and grab his hand, begging him to stop; Sean turns, his beautiful eyes damp and suffering. And all because of me.
“Either way, today was our end date,” he says. I blink in confusion. “I kept my word.”
“Sean…”
“It didn’t work. You said so yourself, right? Now stick to your own word and just let me go.”
I drop his hand and let him leave; watching as he walks away from me, turning his back on this pretence that felt so much like reality. I watch him walk through the grass; the wind tousling his hair, the nostalgia of him seeping into my bones with every step he takes in the wrong direction.
“We’re friends,” I hear Jake say from behind me, “and I love you. But…” I turn and face his gaze. “Fuck, Eric. Have you not learned from your mistakes?”
I lower my head, guilty.
“Come on,” he says to Mila, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and leading her along the same path that Sean followed just moments ago.
“Frederick…” Colm’s unwanted voice doesn’t even wait a full minute.
“Not now.”
“I thought it was pretend.”
I thought so, too. Or maybe I never really believed it. But Colm has no right to know what I’m thinking, or how I’m feeling.
He’s lost every right when it comes to me.
I leave him on that hill and follow the path the others took, hoping to catch up with them along the way; to find the pieces of Sean’s heart and collect them as I go, find some way to put them back together, to fix us, and everything I’ve broken.
42Eric
Jake lets himself into my apartment. He follows me into the living room, where I let myself fall lifelessly onto the sofa. He takes off his jacket and drapes it over the arm, then looks around.
“I see things went downhill quickly.”
“How is he?”
“Who?”
I glare at him.
“Oh, you mean my best friend? The one you absolutely didn’t want to meet, then met, then liked, then slept with, then threw away like bad leftovers?”
I let my head fall onto the backrest.
“I trusted you.”
“If you’ve only come here to…”
“I’ve come here because, despite you being a complete dick, I’m still your friend.”
“I don’t know how this happened.”
“What? You falling in love with him? Or you cheating on him with that pretty boy surgeon?”
“I didn’t cheat on anyone.”
