He asked me to be his girlfriend over a plate of food in a restaurant that smelled like pepper soup and possibilities. And I said yes. But even as the word left my mouth, another voice inside me whispered but what if?
It took Felix one more week after the reunion to officially ask me out.
He did it properly. He took me to a restaurant, ordered food, made me laugh through the whole meal, and then looked at me across the table with an expression so earnest and unguarded that my heart physically ached looking at it. He said he was in love with me. He said he wanted me to be his girlfriend, his person, his best friend.
I had been waiting for that question. I had not told myself I was waiting for it, but I had been.
I said yes.
He stood up and hugged me so tightly that I laughed into his shoulder. And then he whispered things to me beautiful, specific, personal things. He told me my eyes sparkled. He said my skin was beautiful. He said he chose me not in spite of what I thought were my shortcomings but because of who I was entirely, exactly as I was. He said there were millions of girls in the world and he was emotionally connected to me in a way he had never felt before.
Nobody had ever spoken to me like that.
I walked home that night floating. I sat with the feeling for a while, just let it exist without questioning it. I let myself be happy. I let myself be a girl who was loved and who loved someone back and I told myself it was allowed, that I was allowed.
Then I walked into my room.
Flourish was crying.
Not sniffling. Not the quiet kind of crying you can politely ignore. She was crying from somewhere deep and broken, the kind of crying that has been held back too long and finally has nowhere left to go. I sat beside her. I asked what happened.
The story came slowly, painfully. Her boyfriend the one she had trusted, the one who had once asked her out with flowers and a new hairstyle and all the things we dream about had cheated on her. And then, as if that was not enough, he had beaten her. He had laid his hands on her and then walked away.
I held her. I tried not to cry myself. I failed.
Then Best came in.
The expression on her face when she walked through the door told me everything before she said a word. She sat on her bed and burst into tears and between broken sentences she told us about Frank. About everything she had given him. Her time. Her body. Her future. Three times she had made impossible decisions for a man who had simply left.
I sat in that room between two women I cared about, both of them hollowed out by men they had loved with everything, and I looked down at my phone where Felix's message was still glowing on my screen.
Baby, you are the best gift I have ever had. You have brought me so much joy and peace. Forever you will be my day one. I love you, Sweetheart.
And there it was. The question I could not shake loose.
Will he do this to me too?
I did not answer him that night. I held my friends instead. I played music to soften the sorrow in the room. I told them they were going to be okay in the way you say things when you desperately need them to be true.
But in the quiet underneath all of it, fear was back.
Wearing Felix's face.