Nothing Like the Movies

Liz

“Okay, here’s the plan.” Sarah put her hands on her hips as we exited Emerson Field and announced, “Clark is going to ride with me and Mom, Wes is going to ride with Michael, and Liz is going to take Lilith and the equipment back to the hotel and then meet us at Nicola’s.”

Michael had shown up at Emerson while we filmed, which thrilled Lilith because it gave her more interview content to play with as he and Wes reminisced, and by the time we were done, Michael had organized an impromptu dinner meet-up with some of Wes’s friends (the ones who’d stayed local for college).

I was over-the-moon excited to see everyone, because it’d been way too long.

“So fricking bossy,” Clark said, looking at Wes’s sister like he’d never met anyone like her.

Which was fair for sure.

“So fricking boss, you mean,” she said, then laughed when he groaned at how lame it was. “Go dump your gear in the van before we leave without you.”

“Oh, we won’t leave,” Wes’s mom said. “She’s just being a snot.”

“She’s good at that, isn’t she?”

“She was born that way.”

“Why are you assigning car pools, exactly?” Wes said, but I didn’t look at him because I couldn’t.

Meeting his eyes was beyond difficult after last night.

I can still feel him kissing away my tears.

I’d lost my mind, swept up in the moment of trying to help an old friend, and I’d almost kissed him.

It was fine, because it was simply the product of exhaustion and emotion, but I didn’t want to look in his eyes and see that he thought it was more.

That he’d seen how much I’d wanted—in that vulnerable moment—for him to kiss me.

“Because she’s clearly a leader,” Lilith said, smiling as she looked down at her phone.

“She’s clearly something,” Clark replied. “But I’m too hungry to debate. Let’s go.”

Clark, Lilith, and I were walking across the parking lot, and the second Lilith answered a call, Clark said to me, “He’s not over you.”

“What?” My head whipped around to gawk at him, and then I glanced to see if Lilith was listening.

She wasn’t, thank God.

“Who?” I asked, even though I knew damn well what he was saying.

“You know damn well who,” he said quietly, his gaze spearing me with total accusation as we approached the minivan. “I know what you told me, but it’s obvious there’s unresolved stuff between you two. The dude looks at you like he knows he’s going blind in an hour and he’s trying to memorize every detail of your face.”

My stomach flipped, and I remembered the way he’d looked at me on the floor of his living room.

No. I wasn’t going to revisit it. It was all about grief and had nothing to do with other emotions. Nothing. I calmly said, “He does not.”

“He does, and it makes me feel like trash.”

I darted a glance at Lilith, who was nodding her head and looking in the other direction as she listened to the caller.

“There are thick undertones when you two are together,” he insisted, looking a little mad at me. His barely visible blond eyebrows were furrowed when he said, “And I don’t like the way our dating lie makes me feel.”

“How does it make you feel?” I asked, hitting the button on the remote that opened the back of the minivan.

He glanced over his shoulder, like he was making sure no one else was close enough to hear.

“Like I’m hurting Bennett,” he said. Then he pointed at me and said, “And don’t be flip about how sentimental I am. I think he’s into you, which means our lie is probably causing him pain.”

“But we haven’t even fake-dated very much, not really,” I said defensively, because it was totally true. “I doubt he even remembers I said that.”

“Oh, he remembers,” he insisted, and it appeared Lilith was ending her call. Clark looked guilt-stricken when he muttered, “I can see it in his eyes when he talks to me.”

“Hey. Gigantor.” Sarah pulled up with her mom, honking the horn. “Cut the chatter and get in.”

“Oh, look—it’s my ride,” he said to us, his mouth curving into a big smile as he dumped his equipment in the back of the van. “Have a good time in your room, Lil, and Liz—I’ll see you at the meatballs.”

I was torn between wanting to roll my eyes and laugh out loud when he climbed into the back of the car and Sarah took off. His door was barely closed before she stomped on the gas, and he let out a howl.

“That’s obviously the fun car,” Lilith said, loading her equipment in the back and closing the door.

“Right?”

Lilith and I talked about the footage we’d grabbed the entire way to her hotel, and it was obvious she was excited about the content. I was too—everyone had been incredibly generous. But as excited as I was, it felt like a relief to drop her off and to not think about it anymore.

Because I wanted to focus on seeing old friends and enjoying my last night at home before going back.

Wes would be there too, but I wasn’t going to let the night be about him.

After I dropped her off, I parked at a meter spot in the Old Market and walked to the Italian restaurant.

I heard Noah’s loud voice before I even got to the corner.

He was yelling something about Louisville football, of course.

It was impossible not to smile as I strolled down Jackson Street, the crisp autumn evening providing the perfect backdrop for a long overdue reunion. Nicola’s had an amazing outdoor dining area, with strings of lights illuminating the corner patio, and when I got close to Thirteenth Street, there they were.

Gathered around the biggest table out there were my old friends, and it was like a snapshot of the before. My brain grabbed the chorus of “Old Days” and wrapped it around the moment.

Wes was leaning back in his chair, laughing with Noah about something Gigi (the restaurant owner’s daughter) was saying to them, and I was happy to see they were still close. Noah was the biggest smart-ass I’d ever met, the kind of person who would debate virtually anything until he was proclaimed the winner, and I’d missed his sarcastic grin.

No matter how I felt about Wes, I was glad he still had Noah in his corner.

Michael (my former crush) was holding out his phone while Joss (my high school bestie) stood behind him and watched over his shoulder, and Wes’s cousin Charlie was drawing something on a napkin that was making his girlfriend Bailey full-on belly laugh.

I miss the us from the old days…

“Lizard!” Clark was sitting at a smaller table with Sarah, and he raised his hand so I’d see him.

His booming voice made everyone look in my direction.

“Holy shit, you finally came home!” Joss yelled when she saw me, then ran over and threw her arms around me. I was overwhelmed by how much I’d missed my friend, and we were both a little teary when we finally pulled apart. She wiped her eyes and said, “I hate LA for stealing you from us. Come sit by me.”

I followed her to the table. “But now you have more time to devote to Noah.”

“Yeah, thanks for that, Buxbaum,” he muttered, but his eyes were all over Joss. They were one of those couples whose love language was sarcastic roasting, I swear to God.

“Why are you over there?” I said to Sarah and Clark, even though they were so close they were basically within touching range.

“Because I didn’t want to sit with my brother’s stupid friends, so I borrowed your boy toy for company.”

Clark was looking at her face as she spoke, and… he looked a little interested.

Interesting.

“Cool.” I sat down between Joss and Michael, and I could feel Wes watching. I didn’t look in his direction, but I knew.

“This is the best Italian in the city,” I said to Clark, trying my hardest to act unaffected when I knew that absurdly long-lashed brown eyes were on me. “So choose your dinner carefully.”

“I always choose my dinner carefully,” he replied, looking at the menu.

I felt awkward for the first five minutes when I ran through all the what-are-you-up-to questions with my former friends, but then it was like we’d never been apart. I mean, it was different being with them when I wasn’t with Wes (I connected with most of them because of him), but time and good food had a way of mellowing everything.

Dinner was great. Even though Clark turned on his camera and recorded the casual hangout, it felt like a comfortable old cardigan, warm and soothing and something I’d needed for a long time.

Clark asked a few interview questions while he inhaled portobello ravioli, but they were so braided into the friendly meal that we barely noticed them. Even when he mentioned Mr. Bennett’s passing, it felt like old friends recalling their memories, as opposed to a formal interview.

“Remember how he never got my name right?” Noah said, grinning at Wes as he shoved a meatball into his mouth. “The man called me ‘Isaac’ for half my life.”

“Well, they were both biblical names,” Wes said, laughing. “Almost the same. Can you blame the man?”

“Yes,” Noah loudly insisted. “Because we became friends in the third grade. I’m pretty sure Stu was just messing with me.”

“Oh, for sure he was,” Wes agreed. Then he added, “He thought you were a smart-ass little shit.”

Which made Joss say, “He wasn’t wrong about that, Isaac.”

Everything was perfect until the lemon cake.

Which, for the record, was always perfect.

But I’d just shoveled a huge bite of delicious cake into my mouth when Clark asked Joss and Noah, “So did you guys check on Wes a lot after he quit school, since your college is so close?”

They went to UNL, which was an hour away.

“I did,” Noah said. “But Joss was so pissed at him about New Year’s that she wouldn’t even let me say his name.”

Oh God. The cake turned to cement in my mouth as I heard them talking like it was in slow motion.

“It’s true,” Joss said, throwing me a wink. “He was dead to me.”

Shut up, shut up, shut up, I thought, wanting to disappear.

Wanting everyone to stop talking.

I felt queasy as panic shot through me—as I dreaded every possible word that was about to be spoken. We were having a fabulous time—why the hell did we have to go back to this?

Why the hell did it always go back to this?

Wes was on the other side of the table, and my cheeks burned at the thought of looking at him. I reached for my water because I didn’t know what else to do.

“What happened on New Year’s?” Clark asked, sounding amused, like he expected a funny story.

“Everyone slept late, the end,” Sarah said, and I did look at her. We exchanged a knowing gaze, each remembering that morning, and I felt a little lightheaded.

And queasier.

“Oh, come on,” Clark said, his instincts just as bad as ever. “I need to hear this story.”

“Nothing happened,” Wes said, a warning in his voice. “I got drunk and acted like a jackass.”

“Is that what we’re calling cheating now?” Joss said, and it was clear that she still hadn’t forgiven him either. “That seems like—”

“Joss!” I interrupted—shut up shut up shut up—desperate for a subject change. “Let’s not. Let’s just—”

“Pretend he’s not the reason you’ve stayed away for years?”

“Oh my God,” I bit out, my heart racing as I refused to look at Clark. Or Wes. I felt embarrassed and angry, all at the same time. But I put on a fake smile and said, “I think we should really be talking about the way Michael checked in on Wes and kicked his ass into shape.”

“What?” Michael looked at Wes and said, “How does she know about that?”

I did look at Wes, then, and he was watching me closely, like he was trying to read my mind. His eyes stayed on my face as he said to Michael, “I told everyone the way you threw baseballs at me and made me vomit on the mound.”

I looked down, because the intensity in that direct gaze was too much.

“For real?” Michael said, cracking up. “I thought it was our secret.”

The moment kind of passed as Michael shared his side of the story, but Wes got quiet after that.

And so did Clark, who kept looking at me like he was thinking hard.

And he stayed that way, silently introspective, as we closed out our tab and left the restaurant.

He looked downright pensive when we started walking.

“Where did you park?” I asked Joss as we headed down Jackson Street.

“At the pay lot by Upstream,” she said. “Walk with us, and we can get ice cream on the way.”

“Ooh.” I turned to Clark, on my other side, and said, “Ted and Wally’s is on the way.”

“I’m always down for ice cream,” he said, but he was still looking at me in a very weird way, like he was thinking… processing… conspiring. I didn’t know what to make of it, because Clark was usually the easiest person on the planet to read, but maybe I was just overthinking because I was exhausted.

We started walking toward the ice-cream shop as a group, and as everyone talked and laughed, I wished I wasn’t leaving so soon.

Even after the awkward moment, I wanted to stay.

“Are you coming?” Charlie said to Bailey, who was walking behind him.

“These shoes are uncomfortable,” she whined, pointing to her adorable chunky boots that laced all the way up the back. “They aren’t broken in yet.”

“So cute, though,” Sarah said. “What size are they?”

“You’re not borrowing them, because you’re in California,” Bailey said, in a way that made it clear Sarah had overborrowed from Bailey in the past. “Also they’ll destroy your feet.”

“Come on, Glasses,” Charlie said, stopping and looking at Bailey over his shoulder. “You know I’m always willing to volunteer for piggybacking duty. Get on.”

She smiled and in a second, was sprinting and jumping on his back.

“You liar,” he said as she wrapped herself around him. “If you can run up on me like that, you little shit, you can probably walk.”

“But why would I walk when I can bury my cold nose in your warm collar?”

I looked away from them, because something about the way they were together felt familiar.

“We need to talk, Liz,” Clark said as we approached the ice-cream shop.

“What?”

He grabbed my elbow, stopping me, pulling me away from Joss and the rest of the group. He gave me a wink before he loudly said, “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Do what?” I said, having no idea what he was talking about.

“This,” he said, sounding frustrated. “Us. It just isn’t working.”

“Us?” I said, and then I wondered.

Is he fake–breaking up with me?

“Clark,” I bit out, looking toward my friends, who’d stopped by the door and appeared to be watching us. “Can we talk about this in the car?”

“No,” he said, driving his hands into his hair and dramatically exclaiming, “because I can’t take another minute of this. I can’t, Lizard.”

Dear God, he was.

But why? Why would he be doing this without talking to me first, and in front of my friends?

“Of, um, what?” I said, unsure if I was supposed to play along or what I should do. I’d never had a fake boyfriend dump me before, so this was new territory.

“Of feeling nothing from you,” he said, putting his hands over his heart. “You looked at your pizza with more emotion than you look at me.”

“Dude, chill,” I heard Noah say, sounding annoyed.

“Oh my God,” Sarah said, and I could see her covering her face in my peripheral vision.

And just like that I was irritated. Why wouldn’t he talk to me first? My face was on fire, and I said the only thing I could think of. “I had the penne ragu with meatballs.”

Charlie snorted.

“When was the last time you felt anything at all, Liz?” Clark asked melodramatically, and his eyes were twinkling. It was Clark Clarking, fully committed, and I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or throat punch him.

I grabbed his tree-trunk arm and tried moving him. “Can we at least go around the corner and discuss this, where we aren’t on a busy street?”

“No,” he said with flourish, throwing my hand from his arm like a tantruming toddler. “I’m done—”

“Whoa,” Wes said, stepping toward Clark. His face was normal, but his voice was tense when he said, “No need to manhandle her, Waters.”

“He’s not,” I said, watching him watch Clark, wondering what he was thinking while looking so intense.

“Yeah, I’m not,” Clark repeated. “I’m just ending things while we’re still friends.”

“Oh, is that what you’re doing?” I said drily.

“Dude, ever heard of privacy?” Charlie muttered.

“Joss, um, will you order me a chocolate malt?” I said, needing to end this spectacle. “We’ll be inside in just a sec.”

“Yes, I will.” She understood and said to the group, “Let’s go order, guys.”

Everyone followed—thank God—and as soon as the door closed behind them, I whirled on him. “What the hell, Clark? Why wouldn’t you tell me before you took it upon yourself to fake-dump me?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but it just happened, Liz. I was already feeling guilty about Wes, you know that, and then I rode with his sister and mom to the restaurant, and after listening to them, I just couldn’t do it anymore.”

“Well, you could’ve given me a little warning—”

“Liz.” He grabbed my upper arms and squeezed, looking more intense than Clark ever looked. He didn’t really do intensity. “There are things you need to know. Things I am positive you’re unaware of.”

“About Wes?” I asked. He obviously thought this was important, but I was already on Wes-overload after last night. I couldn’t handle more Wes information.

“Yes,” he said. “Sarah said—”

“I don’t care,” I interrupted. “There is nothing I need to know—”

He cut me off by putting his hand over my mouth and giving me stern dad eyes. “Yes. There. Is. Can you please shut up for ten seconds so I can speak?”

I sighed and nodded.

“Do you trust me?”

I nodded again, and he dropped his hand and said, “So here’s the thing. I started interviewing Sarah and her mom in the car, but decided to scrap it because the mom has verbal diarrhea and overshared a lot that I don’t think Bennett would want in the doc.”

“Okay…?” I wondered what she’d shared, but I also knew I was better off not knowing.

“But, like, it was insane stuff. Stuff that you need to see.” He unlocked his phone and held it out to me. “Watch it. It’s only, like, four minutes long.”

I am dying to, but I can’t. “Clark, I don’t want—”

“I’m going to go inside and smooth things over so your friends don’t kill me,” he said, setting his phone in my hands as he spoke over me yet again. “The company line will be that you and I have agreed we’re better as friends, and all is well. You’re on a phone call and will be in, in a couple minutes. Got it?”

I looked down at his phone and wondered what I was going to see. “Okay.”

“The worst that can happen is that nothing changes,” he said quietly, reaching out a big hand to grab my shoulder and start pushing me toward the bench on the side of the building. He gently pushed me to a sit and tousled my hair. “But I feel like it’s important for you to see this.”

I watched him walk away, and after he went inside the ice-cream shop, it felt still outside.

Like everything in the universe was on pause.

I stared at the phone in my hand and didn’t know what to do. The best move would be to not watch it. Their words were for Clark, not me, so I had no business eavesdropping. I’d be doing the right thing by moving it into the trash file and forgetting what Clark told me.

I mean, what could Wes’s mom possibly say that would be that important for me to see? I barely knew the guy anymore. Aside from a weak moment on a living room floor (that my brain would just not let go of), we were merely acquaintances now.

So why am I about to watch it?

My fingers were shaking as I took a deep breath and started the video.

Clark was in the front seat, and he was filming Wes’s mom, who was in the back seat behind Sarah.

She was looking directly at the camera as Clark asked her, “What do you think makes Wes’s story so special?”

From off camera, Sarah said, “He has a sister who’s cool as hell.”

“Oh, I haven’t met her yet,” Clark said under his breath, but the camera stayed trained on Wes’s mom.

She crossed her arms, and said, “The fact that he survived everything that was thrown at him. Like, literally the fact that he’s not in a gutter somewhere is a triumph, right?”

That made me want to smile, her flair for the dramatic.

“Like, everyone just thinks his dad died, so he came home to help out and managed to make it back to baseball. They think that’s the story. But that’s not the story, kid.”

“Ma,” Sarah said. “Maybe don’t.”

“What is the story, in your opinion?” Clark asked.

She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes, like she could see it playing out. “For starters, he felt like Stu’s death was his fault, so from the get-go, he’s had to deal with a lot of guilt.”

I felt my breath catch, and my eyes were fixated on the screen, dying to know more because I’d seen firsthand that something haunted him. Some kind of heavy grief was eating away at him.

Clark sounded shocked when he asked, “Why would he think that?”

She gave her head a shake, like it was a sad story. “He called home, and they had an argument. Stu was bullheaded and pushy as hell when it came to baseball. So Wes got mad and said a lot of terrible things that he didn’t mean, including telling Stu he didn’t want him at his exhibition game, which we were already packed and ready to drive across the country for.”

I watched, frozen, dreading the rest.

Because his dad died before the exhibition game.

“So Stu hung up on him, sat down to watch a ball game, and had a heart attack an hour later.”

Oh my God. My hand covered my mouth, and I swallowed, blinking back tears as I tried to imagine how anyone would handle the guilt of that.

“Oh God,” Clark said. “He thinks he killed his dad?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, shaking her head with tears in her eyes. “And when he came home for the funeral, I was dealing with my own PTSD, though I didn’t know it at the time. I’d completely checked out, but instead of going back to school, Wessy got two full-time jobs because I couldn’t work. He paid the mortgage and the rest of the bills every month, while also making sure Sarah got to school every day and had what she needed.”

Oh God, oh God, oh God. I stood and wiped at my cheeks, staring at the phone in the darkness. I started pacing around the Ted and Wally’s parking lot as I realized Mrs. Bennett hadn’t been melodramatic at all.

It was a triumph that he’d survived those hits.

“Enough, Mom,” Sarah said, sounding angry.

Dear God, how can this be true? How did I not know?

Why didn’t he tell me?

“Wes was the one who insisted I see a therapist, so he saved my life by being stubborn,” she said, coughing out a laugh while wiping her eyes. “Like, what kind of a teenager does all of that? He gave up everything he’d ever dreamed of—school, baseball, dating—to take care of us.”

“Don’t use this, okay, Clark?”

Clark swung the camera over to Sarah, and she looked upset. Her brown eyes, so much like Wes’s, were bright with unshed tears, and she shook her head. “I think it’d kill him for people to hear this.”

“I won’t,” I heard Clark say. “I’ll delete it all. But why wouldn’t he want people to know how selfless he was?”

She shrugged. “If he thinks he’s the one who caused it all, it probably doesn’t feel like selflessness, does it?”

“You okay?” he asked Sarah, and then the video ended.

I stood there, staring down at the phone, its silent screen jarring after what I’d just watched. I looked around, at the dark downtown night, and it felt like everything had changed. People were still walking around, smells of delicious food swirling in the air, but it had become a different place.

It was now the setting for a heartbreaking plot twist.

How was it possible? My mind was racing through memories, comparing what I had with what I now knew. The silly, lighthearted Wes who’d FaceTimed me every night back then had been going through that?

And it was tough to decide what the worst part of the story was. Was it Wes thinking he was responsible for his dad’s death, that his harsh words had literally killed his father, or Wes having the weight of the world resting on his eighteen-year-old shoulders?

“Liz.”

I gasped and turned around in time to see the door to the ice-cream shop closing behind Wes. He zipped his jacket and walked toward me. I wiped at my cheeks, but it was no use as I saw him watching me like he could see the mascara tracks.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his eyebrows furrowed together. “Clark was an asshole to—”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Wes?” I heard myself ask, my voice cracking.

“What?” He narrowed his eyes. “Tell you what?”

“Why didn’t you tell me about everything you were dealing with after your dad died?” I asked, abandoning any hope of keeping it together. I couldn’t hold back the tears as I imagined the way he must’ve felt, and I wanted so badly to be able to go back in time and know the truth so I could help him. “Why didn’t you let me help you?”

His mouth opened like he was going to speak, but he didn’t. He closed his mouth and squinted, like he was trying to figure out what he was supposed to say.

“We talked every day, Wes,” I said, grieving for him two years too late. My voice was thick when I said, “And you never said a word about any of it. You told me you were working a lot to save money for school. Were you seriously working two jobs to pay all of your family’s bills?”

“Someone had to do it; it wasn’t a big deal,” he said, looking uncomfortable.

“It wasn’t a big deal?” I asked, my voice a high-pitched squeal. “God, why wouldn’t you say something? I could’ve helped you.”

“How?” he asked, shrugging like he was embarrassed. “How could you have helped? You were a teenager away at college—what could you have done?”

“I could’ve been there for you,” I said, hiccupping out a sob that should’ve embarrassed me, but I was too emotional to care. “I could’ve supported you while you dealt with all of it. God, was I so self-centered, you couldn’t tell me?”

I said it more to myself than to him, honestly.

“Was I so tied up in what I was doing at school that you felt like you couldn’t say anything?”

“No,” he insisted, stepping a little closer to me, shaking his head. “That wasn’t it at all. I was dealing with so much shit, spiraling and hating who I was every fucking day, and I didn’t want to take you down with me.”

“But you wouldn’t have,” I said, shaking my head as grief shook me. Grief for the boy he’d been and the people we’d been together. “You said it yourself, that I was away at college. You couldn’t have taken me down.”

“It was already happening, Liz,” he snapped.

“What? No, it wasn’t,” I argued, irritated by whatever case he was trying to make. Because there was no reason he couldn’t have told me. Maybe it was a guilty conscience, but I felt defensive, for some reason.

“Oh, really?” He raised his eyebrows and said, “Remember Jack Antonoff?”

“What?” I looked up at him like he was crazy because what the hell did that mean?

“You were invited to an industry event at Antonoff’s house,” he said, looking angry now. “Do you remember that?”

“Yeah. Sort of…?” I did remember that I was invited but I couldn’t remember why I hadn’t gone.

Why wouldn’t I have gone?

“You and your roommate Bushra were invited. She went, but you stayed home because you said you’d rather talk to me.”

“Okay…?” I said, unsure of the point he was making. I was also surprised I would’ve done that, to be honest.

He looked pissed that I didn’t remember. His voice was a little louder when he said, “You had this incredible opportunity to do something that could help your career, but you chose to stay home and talk to your grocery-stocking boyfriend, in fucking Nebraska, on the phone, instead.”

“So?” I said, unsure why we were kind of yelling at each other now.

Unsure, yet it was right. I was full of rage and sadness and angst about everything that’d ever happened with us, and it was boiling over as he spoke like freshman Liz had been a lovesick idiot.

“So I was already taking you down—don’t you see?” His voice was loud with frustration when he said, “God, Liz, you blew off Jack fucking Antonoff for me!”

“Oh, come on, Wes—”

“Seriously,” he said, cutting me off. His dark eyes were flashing when he added, “Who does that? Who has the chance to meet their idol but chooses to take a nothing phone call instead?”

“Are you mad at me for not going to Jack Antonoff’s party?” I asked, confused by why this recollection from back then seemed to anger him.

“Yes!”

I looked up at raging Wes and had no idea what to say.

“Don’t you see? That was why,” he bit out in frustration, shaking his head back and forth while his eyes were hot. “That was when I knew I had to br—”

His mouth snapped shut. He stopped talking and scratched his eyebrow.

“Had to what?” I said, watching him censor himself.

“Nothing,” he said, his Adam’s apple moving around a big swallow. “I just—”

“No, Wes, what were you going to say?” My heart raced as I asked the question that I suddenly knew the answer to. “That was when you knew you had to…?”

His jaw flexed and unflexed, his eyes on me, before he said, “That was when I knew I had to break up with you.”