The Proposal(78)

“Anyway,” she said, before either of them could say anything comforting. That would just put her over the edge. “Why is it so weird that I brought them food to the hospital?”

Dana put her hand on her arm.

“It just . . . that doesn’t seem like you, that’s all.”

Nik shook Dana’s hand off and took a huge bite of her cupcake. She tried to calm down as she chewed. It didn’t work.

“That’s a pretty mean thing for one of my best friends to say about me. You don’t think I’d bring food for you in the hospital if you were sitting there waiting for a family member?”

Dana reached for her arm again.

“Of course you would. That’s my point. You would for me, you would for Courtney, you would for probably a handful of other people, but that’s it. I love you with my whole heart, Nik, but you don’t do favors for people you don’t care about. I can’t picture you doing something like that for any of the guys you’ve dated in the last five years. The rest, you’d absolutely contribute to flowers or food or whatever, if someone else organized it, but a hospital visit? No, come on.”

Nik sat and thought about that. Okay, she had a point there.

“Even if that’s true, what does it matter? I’m not saying I don’t care about him. I told him I cared about him! But when I told him that, he acted like I’d told him his food was just as good as the food from Taco Bell or something. I said I was happy to keep going the way we’d been going, and we could just pretend he’d never said ‘I love you.’”

“What did he say when you said that?” Courtney asked.

Nik put her head in her hands.

“He got really mad. Why do people think ‘I love you’ is the only meaningful thing you can say to a person? Why did he have to say he loved me?”

“Nik.” Courtney’s voice was gentle, which meant she was about to say something bad. “Why does it scare you so much for someone to say they love you?”

She shook her head.

“It doesn’t scare me! I just know from experience that that’s when everything gets bad, that’s all.”

Dana sighed.

“Justin really did a number on you, didn’t he? Just because he was an asshole doesn’t mean they’re all going to be like that.”

She leaned her head on Dana’s shoulder and thought about denying that this had anything to do with Justin, but what was the point? Courtney got up and fetched the bourbon bottle and poured more into all of their coffee cups. Nik took a sip and sighed.

“I don’t think about him that much anymore, except for that time I profiled the quarterback of his favorite team for GQ and pictured his face when he’d see my byline. Well, and those times when I have low moments and I hear his voice in my head. But Justin, in his terrible way, did me a favor. First, he made me feel like there was something wrong with my writing, then he made me feel like there was something wrong with me for loving writing and my career. But the end result of all of that was that he made me sure that I don’t ever want to let anyone make me feel that bad ever again.”

Courtney pushed her chair around the table so the three of them were all shoulder to shoulder.

“I know, honey,” Dana said. “But that doesn’t mean you have to close yourself off to everyone forever. You are great at being strong, and there’s no one else that either of us would have on our side in a fight. But it’s okay to be vulnerable with more people than just the two of us, you know? Letting yourself have feelings for people is scary, I know it is, but you can’t go through life with most people at arm’s length. Not everyone is going to be like Justin.”

Nik buried her head in Dana’s shoulder.

“I know,” she said. “But—counterpoint: what if I don’t want to be vulnerable with people other than you guys?”

Dana and Courtney didn’t even respond to that.

Nik sighed.

“I hate this. This is all Fisher’s fault. If he hadn’t done that stupid proposal in the first place, none of this would have ever happened, and I never would have even met Carlos.”

“Would you really want that?” Courtney asked.

“Yes! Okay, fine, no. I just wish Carlos had listened to me!” Nik said. “Okay, maybe telling him he was being emotional was a shitty thing to say, but I didn’t know how to react and I didn’t want this to ruin everything, but everything is ruined anyway.”

She put her head down on the table. Dana and Courtney immediately put their arms around her.

“I’m so mad at him for how mean he was to me this morning, but I hate that I hurt his feelings. See, this is another reason why I never should have dated him in the first place. I should have stuck to my streak of dating guys I couldn’t care less about. When I do that and we break up, I feel fine! Look at Fisher—did I care if I hurt his feelings? Not really! I need to find another Fisher.”

“No you don’t,” Dana and Courtney said in unison.

She shook her head.

“There must be something wrong with me. Here I have this great, smart, kind, hot man telling me he loves me, and I recoil. Everything was so great, and now it’s over, and he thinks I’m an unfeeling asshole. Maybe I am.”

Courtney got up and grabbed a box of tissues out of a cabinet and brought them over to her. She sat up and took a handful.