Page 99 of If Not for My Baby
“Hey,” I try tentatively. I’m not going to ask what’s wrong. I know what’s wrong. “Should we talk?”
“Man…” Mike shakes his head at the cases of beer. “You are so in love with him.”
Thirty-Two
I nearly trip down the lasttwo stairs. “Excuse me?”
“You never once laughed with me like that…” Mike stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Not in a year of dating and six more of whatever this’s been.”
He’s right. “Mike…”
“It’s weak, I know, but I gotta ask because it’s going to damn well eat me alive if I don’t…”
“Ask what?”
He turns so I can see his face. “Why couldn’t it have been me?”
The question is like a knockout blow. Worse yet, there are too many childish parts of me that itch to sayI have no idea what you’re talking about.Parts of me that are rioting because I came down here to face him in the first place. I’m ashamed to find so much cowardice dwelling in my psyche.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I wish it could’ve been.”
He nods. He assumed as much. It only hurts more.
I cross the room until I’m standing right in front of him. I take his familiar hand in mine. “I’m so sorry, Mike. I—”
“Clementine—”
“No, I never should have encouraged anything more than friendship with you. I told myself it was easy, it made you happy, and it made our moms happy to see us together…But I think on some level I knew it meant more to you than it did to me, and that meant you couldn’t hurt me. Which was something I needed, I think, at the time.”
“Not anymore?”
I’m surprised to find those feelings in the rearview. “Not anymore. I should have told you as much when we last spoke, but I wasn’t sure I knew it then. I…For what it’s worth, I don’t want to lose you in my life. I really do love you, Mike.”
“Like family,” he clarifies.
I nod. “Your friendship means the world to me.”
“That’s a knife in the gut, you know that, right?” He’s not being cruel—he says it with a solemn half smile.
“I know. And I’m sorry.”
“You’ve nothing to be sorry for. In some fucked-up way, I’m happy for you.”
I stub my bare toe into the wood grain until it hurts.
“Hey—I’m serious. I don’t mean to be a dick, but I was kind of worried you weren’t capable of the feeling at all. Like one of those super-normal-seeming sociopaths.”
My snort eases the tension clouding the room. “I don’t know what feeling you mean.”
Mike gives me acome onglare.
“I’m not in love with him.”
And it almost kicks the wind out of me, how immediately I know that it’s a lie. How wrong it feels, uttering those false, gutless words.
Mike shakes his head. “You’re only bullshitting yourself.”
“He lives in Ireland,” I say, because at least it’s honest. “His day job is being famous. It’s just not realistic.”
