Page 91 of Guy's Girl
“Can I—talk to you for a second?”
“Of course.” He stoops over, extricating himself from a tangle of wires. “What’s up?” He walks over and sits next to her on the couch. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes. Everything is—yes. I’m good. I’m great, actually.”
He tilts his head, eyebrows furrowed. “Okay.”
“I wanted to say...” She looks down at her hands, which are twisted into a knot atop the Hardy Boys book. “I will never be able to thank you for what you did these last few weeks. I can’t—I don’t even know what to say.”
“Ginny.” He shakes his head. “You don’t have to say anything. You’re my friend. I know you would have done the same for me.”
You’re my friend.Is that what she is? Is that what she wants to be?
She already knows the answer to the second question.
“I just—” She inhales and exhales. Fiddles with the book’s spine. “God, I’m nervous.”
“Nervous?” Adrian leans forward, concerned. “About going back to New York?”
She almost laughs. “No, Adrian. Not that.”
“What, then?”
“I’m nervous because—” Inhale. Exhale. “I don’t know. I don’t really know how to describe what’s happened between us the last two weeks.”
“Ah. That.”
“Yes. That.”
“Well.” Adrian shifts on the couch, turning to face her. “You want to talk about it, then?”
“I do. The thing is—” She clears her throat. “My time here should have been hell. And in some ways, it has been. I’ve been miserable. I’ve hated myself. I’ve cried more than I can remember crying in my entire life.”
Adrian’s face kind of crumples then, but Ginny keeps talking because she doesn’t want to see any pity in his eyes. She just needs to say what she needs to say.
“But in other ways, my time here has been fucking magical. You and Eszter and Imre—you’ve taken such good care of me. You made me feel like I wasn’t a burden, like I genuinely belonged here. And I feel like IknowSzentendre now. Like it’s some kind of second home.” She takes a breath then. Because this part—this is the part she’s afraid to say. “You took me in. You shared your home with me. You fed me. You—you saved me. I was—” Her voice cracks a little there. “I was killing myself, Adrian. Even if I didn’t know it. I was dying. And I couldn’t—I couldn’t save myself.”
“Ginny—”
“No. I’m not done.” She shakes her head. “I couldn’t save myself. But you did, Adrian. You picked me up and you put me back together.” She swallows. “And I will always, always, always be in your debt.”
Adrian is the one shaking his head now. “You don’t owe me a damn thing. Don’t you see that? I did this because I wanted to. Because I care about you.” He reaches down and takes her hand. “You’re so afraid of being a burden. I have no doubt that that’s one of the reasons this disease has kept its hold over you for so long. Because you’re too afraid to ask for help. But the people who care about you—me, Clay, Tristan, your brothers, your sister, your parents, all of us—we want to help you. It’s no burden to us. And if it is, then we don’t deserve you.”
He looks away. She thinks, for one crazy moment, that he’s going to start crying. Instead, he blinks once, then looks back.
“You’re one of the best people I know, Ginny. You’re like—you’re like sunshine. I’m just grateful that I know you at all.”
She’s breathing deeply then, her chest heaving up and down. They stare right at each other, his dark eyes wide open andunguarded in a way she’s never seen. She thinks,He looks fucking beautiful.
She wants to say that. She wants to tell him thatheis the one who is sunshine. That he seeped warmth into her at a time when she couldn’t feel anything at all.
She tries to say that. She does. But the words in her head—the ones that had been growing all week, stacking one atop the other, filling every corner of her mind—they choose that moment to reach their tipping point. They choose that moment to come spilling out.
She can’t breathe. She can’t think.
This feels nothing like the confession she made to Finch on a park bench. There’s no ulterior motive behind it, no last-ditch desperation, no attempt to bend the will of another man, to force him to choose her over someone else. She just needs to tell him. She needs to tell him now, or she never will.
“I love you,” she says.
