I let out a laugh that might have been a little bitter. “Oh, pretty much everything,” I told him.
“Everything?”
I nodded. “Career choices. Life choices. What I picked for dinner.” I hoped if I made fun of it, he’d drop it, since I was fairly certain that getting into my emotional relationship insecurities on a first date would be a very good way to also make it a last date.
“Well, I can definitely say that this was the right dinner choice,” he told me, and I was grateful that he did, in fact, leave it there.
Elliot pulledup into an open space along the curb on Main Street, right in front of my building. We’d finished dinner, had a leisurely dessert, and then actually had walked along the docks as the sun set and the moon came out. Elliot’s hands had stayed in his pockets.
So by the time we’d gotten back to my place I had a pit in my stomach.
He didn’t look at me when I put my hand on the door handle, and I knew I was right.
“Seth—” His tone was apologetic.
“It’s fine,” I said, trying to stop things before they got any more awkward or embarrassing.
“It’s—It’s not that I don’t like you,” he said. “I do.”
“But,” I said, because I knew there was abut.
“I’m just… not ready yet,” he said.
I blinked. It hurt, but that wasn’t what I was expecting. “What does that mean?” I asked him.
His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “It means—” He sighed. “It means that… even though I do like you, I’m just… not ready for a relationship.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. There was disappointment, obviously—there wasn’t going to be a good-night kiss, a second date… None of the things I’d spent my afternoon fantasizing about while trying not to fuck up my job. But at the same time?—
There was no greater evidence that I was a completely hopeless romantic than the fact that some part of me found hope in the fact that Elliot had said that he liked me.
“Oh,” is all I managed to say.
“I—I don’t expect you to wait for me,” he said, the words tumbling over themselves almost as though they had minds of their own. “I—I wish I were ready. I just… I’m not.”
I nodded again, then pushed the door open. “Okay,” I said, sliding out of the passenger side of his truck, wincing as my knee protested to hitting the ground. “I understand.”
“Seth—”
I paused, but I didn’t turn around. If I looked at him, he’d see the tears I was only just barely managing to hold in check.
“Iamsorry.”
I went inside without looking back.
I layon my mattress until I-didn’t-dare-look-at-the-time-o-clock staring at the emptiness of the ceiling—my sad closet-sized bedroom didn’t even have a ceiling light—and tried to will myself into unconsciousness. It would be better than lying here, feelingthe tears track their way out of the corners of my eyes and into my bargain-bin pillow.
I should have known better. Better than to get my hopes up. Better than to think that Elliot had developed real feelings for me. Better than to think that I might be someone that somebody wanted.
And I should definitely have known better than to lie in bed all night thinking about it, although, in my defense, I wastryingto convince my body that it was tired enough to sleep. I wasn’t succeeding at it, but I was trying.
I wanted to text Quincy, but it was ungodly-in-the-morning, and I didn’t want to wake her up or disturb her if she’d been called into a scene. Part of me wanted to talk to Noah, but part of me also really didn’t. I didn’t have it in me to deal with the inevitable I-told-you-so-ing or the questions about whether or not I was going to move back to Richmond.
My other options for emotional support were… Hart? That seemed like an even worse idea. Hart wasElliot’sbest friend, not mine. And as much as I liked Taavi and Ward, I didn’t feel even remotely comfortable enough to talk to them about the pathetic state of my love life. I didn’t really feel like I knew Hart well enough, either, but he’d started it. Not that I was going to continue it, because either he already knew Elliot’s side of the story, or it would just be too embarrassing for both of us for me to admit what had just happened.
That I had been rejected, again. That I wasn’t good enough—lovable enough. I could be a sexual conquest, a friend-with-benefits, but I wasn’t good enough to be a boyfriend. A partner. Not even a potential partner.
Elliot hadsaidhe wasn’t ‘ready.’ I didn’t know what that even meant. How can you be ‘ready’ for a relationship? I mean, okay, I understood wanting to not jump from one to another, to giveyourself time to heal after a breakup, that sort of thing. But could anybody ever really be ‘ready’ for a relationship?
