Page 59 of Lucy Loves Him Not
“Maybe,” I said, even though I knew it already. I’d known it for a while.
“Lucy,really? Come on. There is no other way to take what he said.” She grabbed my arms, shaking them. “He was telling you he’s into you. He put it out there.”
I buried my face into a pillow. “Liv. What do I do?”
“No. Notwhat do you do. I want to hear,what do you feel?”
“I feel a lot of feelings,” I moaned. “One being a deep feeling of…” I moaned again. Olivia waited. “A deep feeling of like. I really like him. He is constantly proving my worst assumptions wrong. He’s surprisingly sweet. He’s also really hot. Like, let’s face it. His hotness has confused me since the very beginning.”
“I remember well.” Olivia nodded along.
“The other feeling is foreboding. Like there is a big sign flashing overhead saying, DO NOT ENTER. A sign I hung up with my own bare hands. How can I ignore my own good judgment?”
Olivia took in a deep breath that was always a precursor for a big sister speech. “Luce, you based your judgments on the perception he was stealing the festival from you and going to sell out Grandma’s legacy—he’s proven that wrong. He hired you, paid you for your work unlike in the past, and he holds your opinion in great esteem. I think he would make Grandma proud with the choices he’s made. She’d love the children’s museum being involved. She’d love the new concert, all of it.”
I wrapped my arms around a soft pillow and held it close.
“You were wrong about Adam. That’s a good thing,” Olivia said gently.
“You’re right. I’ve known that for a while. But what if it’s based on more than that?” I rustled the pillowcase in between my fingers.
“What else would it be based on?”
I shrugged. She scooted closer to me on the bed. “What?”
“I’ve seen what’s happened in the past. Our lives have been littered with heartache and disappointment that maybe we could’ve avoided…if only we’d known. I don’t want to ignore the signals and signs that someone might hurt me, or leave me, or…”
“Break you?” she whispered.
“I feel like heartbreak is a trap. There had to be signs or something giving it a way that people just miss.” My voice was crushed under the weight of tears. “All my life, I’ve tried to be smart about relationships and my heart. To have good judgment and avoid…my whole life getting turned upside down.”
“Sure, sometimes love might turn your life upside down in a bad way. But sometimes love turns your life upside down in a good way,” Olivia said. “Sometimes, a little shake up is what our lives need.”
I thought of Olivia’s own shake up. Her tears and shock when Ryan walked out of her life. “What about…” I stopped myself.
“Luce, are you thinking about my breakup with Ryan? Because Ryan wasn’t a trap. There wouldn’t have been signs or signals. Ryan was a great man. Maybe there were signs we weren’t going to last forever, that we weren’t on the same page anymore, but I eventually saw those when I was meant to see them.”
I took a jagged breath. “You don’t regret Ryan?”
“I could never regret Ryan. I loved what we had while we had it. I do regret that you only trust your feelings on what could be wrong or bad. What about all the feelings telling you that Adam might be right for you?”
I thought of the ache in my gut to be close to him. How my heart seemed to inherently trust him like a wave lapping at the shore, over and over, even when I was trying to build walls in the sand.
I mean, this man said my art made him feel at home. He had a piece of my heart hanging on his dining room wall and treatedit like his most prized possession. If I wasn’t careful, he’d have the whole thing in the palm of his hand.
Maybe I didn’t want to be careful anymore.
“You think I should…” I couldn’t even verbalize any of it. It was all so tangled up and stuck in my throat.
But Olivia knew. I didn’t have to say anything. She nodded at me. “I think you should.”
The next morning my hands were shaking as I poured my coffee. I almost left the house without my phone when I left for a meeting. A knot of excitement and fear in my belly.
I was going to see Adam today. I had no plans for what I wanted to do but, I wouldn’t deny my feelings anymore. I had to acknowledge there was something between us. There had been from the start and it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad at all.From there, we’d see what happened.The knot tightened. A vulnerable, terrified flicker of hope burned in my chest as I walked into Adam’s office.
His face was a storm. Arms angrily crossed over his chest. His eyes landed on me and they softened a little. Just a little.
“Hi.” I gave a hesitant wave. “Is everything okay?”
