Nothing Like the Movies

Wes

“But.” Her green eyes looked huge as she gazed up at me like I’d just hit her. “The Antonoff party was right after you moved home.”

“Yeah,” I said, not sure where this was going.

“So we didn’t break up for weeks,” she said, her eyebrows furrowing.

Because I wasn’t strong enough to let you go, Lib.

I’d known it was the best thing for her, and I was determined to do it.

But every night, I was too weak.

As soon as I heard the sound of her incoming FaceTime, I’d tell myself one more time and get lost in Liz for one more conversation.

“Was that why you were so distant?” she asked. “You were trying to get rid of me?”

“I had to,” I said, feeling weak from the recollection. “I loved you.”

That flipped a switch. As soon as I said I loved you, her face went from sad and confused to straight-up angry.

“No, you were cheating on me,” she said through gritted teeth. “Don’t you dare act like you loved me, Wes.”

“But I did,” I yelled, because that was the only truth I’d ever known. “I always loved you.”

“Shut up,” she snapped, but her tears lessened the aggression as she shook her head and hiccupped out a little sob. I felt it in the center of my chest when she said, “I hate that you suffered, and I hate what you went through, but that doesn’t erase what you did.”

“I didn’t, though,” I said, ready to finally confess. “I didn’t cheat on you, Lib.”

She took a step back, putting her hands on top of her head and looking at me like I was out of my mind. Her eyes were huge when she said, “You can’t lie about this now, Wes, because you were the one who told me that you did, remember?”

Yeah, how could I ever forget?

New Year’s Day

Two Years Ago

I was lying in bed, hungover and depressed, when the doorbell started ringing.

The first time, it was a singular ring.

Since Sarah and I never answered the door unless we were expecting someone, we both ignored it.

And when it rang again, we responded in the same way.

But then, whoever was at the door lost their ever-loving mind and started lying on the bell, ringing that thing over and over and over again like a psycho.

“Go away,” I muttered, covering my head with my pillow. Just being awake was bad enough; I definitely wasn’t interested in engaging with another human.

But then I heard Sarah run down the stairs and open the door.

Idiot. It was probably those people who sold pest control door to door.

But in an instant, everything inside me roared awake and my heart started pounding hard in my chest, because I heard her voice. I heard Liz say, “I need to talk to your brother.”

I wanted to scream NO!, to lock my door and hide under the bed, because there was no possible way I was strong enough to be alone with her and not beg her to love me forever.

“I think he’s still asleep,” Sarah said. I knew my sister liked Liz, so the odds weren’t in my favor that she’d slam the door and throw the dead bolt.

“In his room?” Liz asked.

Please don’t come up here please don’t come up here. I looked around like a fool, trying to find some way to escape, but there was nothing.

Nothing but the sound of her footsteps on the stairs.

Coming down the hallway toward my bedroom.

I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep, like a total coward, clueless as to what the hell I was supposed to do.

She knocked on my door—please go away, Lib—but then I heard her step into the room.

“Wes,” she said, and my heart seized in my chest at the sound of her voice so close. “Wake up.”

I opened my eyes and instantly regretted it. Because somehow she looked more wounded than she had last night, when I’d intentionally hurt her. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were red, and I wanted to pull her down on the bed and kiss her until she forgave me.

Instead, I scratched my head and said, “Liz?”

I sat up, pretending I was half-awake and confused when all I really was, was a dick.

“Tell me about you and Ashley,” she said, her voice cracking.

Dammit. As I’d been pouting on the deck at the party the night before, Ash laid a peck on me at midnight. There had been nothing to it—it was only because of New Year’s, and I was surprised Liz had heard about it at all.

I wished I could make her feel better so fucking badly, but I shrugged and said, “It was New Year’s Eve, Buxbaum.”

“I’m not talking about last night,” she snapped, looking like she wanted to hit me. Or bawl her eyes out. I hated both. She took in a breath and said, “People are saying that you and Ashley were ‘hanging out’ in October, when you and I were still together.”

Of course not.

There is no one for me but you, Lib.

In October I was too busy missing you to notice other humans.

It obviously wasn’t true—I worked with Ashley and that was it, but people in this town loved starting rumors.

I didn’t know what to say as she watched me, gnawing on her bottom lip. I wanted to reassure her more than I wanted to breathe, but maybe this idiotic rumor was exactly what I needed. I said, “Is that right?”

She nodded and asked, “Is it true?”

No, it’s not true! God, Lib, do you really think I could ever do that?

I took a deep breath, staring into her eyes, and managed to sound bored when I said, “Does it really matter now?”

“Yes, it matters,” she said, blinking back tears I wanted to kiss away. “Of course it matters. Did you cheat on me, Wes?”

I dragged a hand down my face, down the beard that belonged to an unfamiliar person, and I said, “I don’t know—it’s a blur, okay? I can’t remember exactly when one thing ended and another began, y’know?”

My throat hurt. It was burning as I forced it to speak these ridiculous lies.

“Bullshit,” she said, a hiccup in her voice. “Just admit it.”

“Seriously?” I felt nauseous as she looked up at me, and I forced myself to groan like she was a total pain in the ass. “Okay, I guess I admit it.”

I looked down, unable to look at her or anything because I was a half second from falling apart. I reached out and grabbed my phone from the nightstand, as if I was so uninterested in our conversation that I needed something to look at.

But she broke my heart when she said in the smallest voice, “Why?”

I did look at her then, because I realized at that moment, I’d probably never be that close to her again. I wanted to bawl as I looked into her eyes and said, “Because she was here and you weren’t.”

“God, I hate you,” she whispered before running out of the room, and I knew we’d never be okay again.

I took a deep breath and forced myself back to the present.

“But it’s true,” I said. “I only said I cheated to get you to move on.”

Her face became impossible to read as she said, “Explain what the hell that could mean.”

I took a deep breath and just dove in.

“When you showed up on New Year’s Eve, I expected you to hate me for breaking up with you. I was positive you’d moved on. But then you smiled at me.”

Her eyes narrowed, and I wasn’t sure if she was glaring or listening intently.

“You smiled at me and even took the kiss bet. I realized, when you looked at me, that even though we weren’t together, you still hadn’t moved on.”

She made a noise in the back of her throat, almost a growl, but I kept going.

“And you needed to because it was for the best. So I was an asshole at the party, on purpose, and when you accused me of cheating the next morning, I took the easy out.”

“But everyone said you and Ashley had been—”

“We worked together after I moved back, and we commiserated a lot because we both had crappy home lives. So people saw us together and made assumptions.” I stepped closer to Liz, needing her to believe me. “But we were always just friends, because there was never anyone else for me but you.”

She growled again, then said, “So you broke up with me because you loved me so much, and then said you cheated on me because you needed me to move on but knew I wouldn’t unless you did something terrible.”

I knew something wasn’t right in that, but I said, “Yes…?”

“And this is the absolute truth?” she asked, her eyes everywhere on my face.

“Swear on my life,” I said, feeling relieved because she looked like she believed me.

“Dear God, I cannot believe the ego.” Liz shook her head, her eyes wide as she yelled, “How can you be so incredibly arrogant?”

“Arrogant?” I was truly confused. I was a lot of things, but arrogant wasn’t one of them.

“Yes! Are you God? Are you my dad? How would it ever be your place to decide what’s best for me without my input?”

“It wasn’t like that—come on,” I said, rubbing the side of my neck, wishing I could make her understand. “But I know you, Lib. I knew you’d stay with me no matter how big of a loser I became, and I couldn’t let you do that.”

“For starters, do you realize how insulting it is that you think I’m, like, so childish or lovesick or freaking enamored with you that I would just stay like a loyal retriever no matter what?” She was full-on yelling now, her eyes blazing. “You infantilized me by assuming you knew best. God save me from this ego.”

“There was no ego involved,” I argued, a little pissed because I might’ve screwed up, but my entire life was a pile of shit at the time. “For God’s sake, Lib, you have no idea what it was like. Just put yourself in my shoes for five seconds.”

“I don’t know how to be in the shoes of God, Wes.”

“And can you take a half second to recognize the fact that I never cheated on you? Can I at least get a reprieve for that?”

“No!”

“You guys?”

“What?” Liz and I yelled in unison.

I looked to my right, and Sarah was standing there, watching us with her eyebrows raised.

“We need to leave for the airport,” she said sheepishly, holding the keys to my mom’s car as she looked back and forth between the two of us.

“I need five more minutes,” I said, not even close to finished.

“No—I’m done,” Liz said, pushing her hair behind her ears. “Safe travels, Sarah.”

She marched away from me and toward the ice-cream shop, her rage whipping like a breeze behind her. I stared as she went inside, and I could see through the windows as she walked up to Joss and started talking.

God, I love the way she talks with her hands when she’s pissed.

“I’m really sorry.”

“What?”

Sarah was looking at me like a worried parent, like she was afraid I was going to break down. “I feel like this is my fault.”

“It’s not your fault.” I put my hands in my pockets and kept watching Liz through the window. “You didn’t force me to lie.”

“No, but I’ve been telling you for forever that you needed to be honest with Liz. Now you finally listened, and it backfired.”

“How do you figure?” I watched as Joss shook her head and put her hands on her hips.

“Um, all the yelling…?” Sarah replied, her voice full of sarcasm. “I hadn’t imagined it would go off the rails quite like that.”

“I actually think it’s good.” I looked back at my sister and felt relaxed all of a sudden. “The air has finally been cleared.”

“Huh,” she said, looking at me suspiciously. “I would not have pictured you responding this calmly.”

“Well, you don’t know everything, do you, Stanford?” I teased, then looked up at the sky. It was a clear night, so clear that I could see a few stars in spite of the downtown lights, and it felt like something.

“Rewrite the Stars” started playing in my head as I thought about the fact that Sarah was right—it didn’t make sense that I wasn’t more upset right now.

But two things had just come into my head, realizations as clear as those tiny stars in the night sky, and they were making me really fucking happy.

The first—Liz was single now. She was finally available, and she didn’t seem to be all that broken-up about losing Clark.

All she’d screamed about was me.

Us.

And that was the second thing—her rage. Liz was livid, angrier than I’d ever seen her, and that was… well, kind of fantastic.

Because it meant she hadn’t moved on.

She wasn’t over us at all.

Something that felt a hell of a lot like hope was buzzing through me as I looked up at those stars and pictured her face when she’d yelled, I don’t know how to be in the shoes of God, Wes!

Because instead of the measured looks I’d gotten used to from her, where it felt like her feelings were locked up tight, she’d looked at me with flushed cheeks and flashing green eyes, as if she was engulfed in the white-hot flames of her blazing anger.

Toward me.

There really was a fine line between love and hate, and Libby’s rage fueled me to burn that line to the ground.

What if we rewrite the stars

Say you were made to be mine…