Royal(36)

Her nose wrinkles. “Like how?”

“The kind of loneliness you feel when you watch someone else live the life you were supposed to live. When you see the only person you’ve ever given a damn about smiling and laughing and fawning over some goddamn shallow jackass who doesn’t deserve her and sure as hell won’t take his marriage vows seriously.”

I leave out all the moments I watched from afar, all those times I flipped through hundreds of images on her Facebook page. Their first year of dating was chronicled with dozens of sickeningly adorable selfies, and as the months passed, I watched them grow serious about each other, take little trips, and explore the boundaries outside the great state of New York together. From behind a computer screen, I watched as Brooks Abbott integrated into the Rosewood family with a disturbingly natural fit. I was there when he popped the question, and the day she updated her relationship status to ‘engaged,’ my heart sank hard.

Loneliness is watching the only girl you’ve ever loved find happiness in the arms of another man.

“How often did you watch us?” she asks.

“You’re making it creepier than it is,” I say. “Wasn’t like that. Your really need to lock up those social media pages. Your entire life is out there for anyone to see.”

Demi clears her throat, her gaze falling to the blanket beneath us before rising.

“Maybe that was the whole point.” Her words are stiff, low. The heat from the fireplace is distractingly hot, but I don’t feel it. I’m focusing on Demi, watching her fidget and tuck her hair behind her ear and chew her bottom lip. “Maybe all these years, I was hoping you were watching. I thought maybe if you could see how happy I was, you’d miss me as much as I was missing you.”

Her knees draw up to her chest, and she buries her face against them.

“God, that sounds so juvenile.” Her voice is muffled. She pulls herself into a standing position, fanning her face. “It’s really hot. Are you hot?”

She hits the switch on the wall, and the flames die a sudden death.

“So all those moments.” I rise. “All those pictures and all those things you were doing with Brooks . . . that was all for me?”

Her right hand hooks her left elbow, and her feet cross at the ankles. She looks away.

“It sounds ridiculous and absurd when I say it out loud,” she says.

“I thought you were happy. I assumed you’d moved on.” My jaw sets. “It’s why I stayed away for so long. I never would’ve stayed away if I knew . . .”

“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” she says. “Brooks and I . . .we were mostly happy. We had some good times. When I told him I loved him, I meant it. It just wasn’t the same kind of love. It . . .it didn’t feel the same as when I said it to you. But I loved him enough.”

“You loved him . . . enough?”

Demi glances down at her nails, picking at them and huffing. “You know what’s funny about all this?”

“What’s that?”

“We’re more or less perfect strangers, and I’m being more honest with you right here, right now, than I’ve been with myself in years.”

“I’d hardly call us strangers.” I move toward her, cupping her cheek.

Our eyes meet.

“We have a history,” I say, “that no one can take from us. No matter what happened in the past, no matter what happens from here, it can’t take away from the good thing we had. You were my first love, Demi. You only get one.”

“And you threw me away.”

She blinks away tears, turning her face as if she’s ashamed of crying in front of me.

If she only knew how wrong she was.

“Sometimes I feel so stupid,” she says. “Like we were just kids, Royal. We didn’t know anything about love. We didn’t know what we were doing and saying. Teenagers have no business making promises to each other, you know? And here I am, a grown woman who spent the first half of her twenties fantasizing about the day you’d come back to me and knowing damn well it was never going to happen.”

Her hand rests on mine as my thumb traces her bottom lip.

“And then you showed up. At my door.” She sniffs. “And part of me wants to pick up where we left off. Part of me wants to jump in your arms and kiss you and smell you and feel you and lose myself in everything about you. And the other part of me hates you. Because you’ve ruined love for me, Royal. I’m never going to love anyone the way I loved you, and I want to. So. Much. I want to feel the way I felt with you . . . with anyone but you. And I’ve tried. And I can’t. And I hate you for that.”