lutter back up. She was expecting my outburst. She pauses a moment, then finishes her drink, before standing. Somehow we are eye to eye even though Liesel is over a foot shorter than me. Her heels and fury must make up the difference in height.
“I love you, Enzo. I would do anything for you. That’s what love is. And I wish more than anything that I could stop loving you because the ache in my chest hurts all the fucking time. If I could just let go, I would. So I’m not going to tell you to let go, but I will tell you to move on. The pain won’t get any better, but at least you will have a life. Something to live for instead of someone who doesn’t love you back. I won’t promise you that you will ever find that love in someone else. I haven’t. And I can’t promise you Kai will ever come back to you. She might, although where her mind and heart currently are, she won’t.”
I take a deep breath realizing as I stare down at Liesel’s tear-stained eyes, how much she loves me, and how much I hurt her. I understand now more than ever. And it kills me to see her in so much pain.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Don’t be. Loving you and thinking you could love me back was one of the greatest highs of my life. Realizing you will never love me was one of the greatest lows. Accepting that there is nothing I can do about that love is what has helped me to survive in a way that allows me to not spend my life drinking a bottle of whiskey every night.”
I nod. I understand, but her words don’t help.
“Now, let’s go get another drink. And then we can sit and talk about the people we love who will never love us back.”
“But I thought you said to move on.”
She sighs. “You weren’t listening at all. I told you I would never tell you to move on; it’s not possible. I said to keep living. And part of living is talking about the people we love. So tonight, that is what we will do. Tomorrow, you will try to go an hour without speaking her name. Thoughts of her will still be there, but you won’t be allowed to speak them. Next week, you will try an entire evening. And then one day you’ll learn to go days without speaking her name. And you’ll realize that an entire hour has gone without her crossing your mind. That’s when you’ll realize she doesn’t own you. That’s when you’ll realize she didn’t take everything from you. She left one tiny piece, and that piece is what you will build the rest of your life around.”
“Can’t you just tell me what Kai’s hiding? I think it would be a better use of my time to talk about how to win her back instead of talking about her in the past tense.”
She shakes her head and grabs my hand. The touch feels nice since I haven’t held Kai’s hand in a while, but it’s nothing like the spark I get from Kai.
She pours us both another drink and then hands me my glass. “Try not to break this one this time.”
I take the glass reluctantly. Drinking myself into oblivion sounds nice, but I’ve tried that option. It always makes things worse in the morning. And it doesn’t feel fair to Kai. Kai may be talking to Liesel, but that doesn’t mean she’s healed. It doesn’t mean she’s over whatever Milo did to her. So I’ll have one drink, but not more.
I follow Liesel back out to the deck and take a seat next to her, slowly sipping on my whiskey.
“So you want us to talk about the people we love who don’t love us back?” I ask.
She nods.
“You do realize the person you love who doesn’t love you back is me, right?”
She moans and downs her drink. “I’ll be right back with the bottle.”
I laugh and take another long sip of the alcohol. It would be so easy to ease my pain with alcohol, but I won’t. Kai deserves a better man. And that’s how I plan to live my life until I find a way back to Kai’s love. By showing her how much better of a man I am. And how I’ll spend my life showing her.
Five hours later, Liesel and I have talked ourselves out. Liesel is drunk after finishing the bottle mostly by herself. I did drink more than the one drink, but I’ve never felt so sober.
Liesel, on the other hand, won’t even be able to stumble back to her cabin.
“Come on, I’ll carry you,” I say, throwing her arm over my shoulder and cradling her legs.
She smiles brightly up at me as her red fingernails touch my cheek.
“You like me,” she says.
She’s so drunk.
I nod. “Yes, Liesel, I like you. We are best friends, remember?”
She moans. “Ugh, friends.”
I smile, she’s going to regret this in the morning. She may have said we were both going to talk about the people we love, but I mostly talked about Kai while Liesel talked about all the men in her condo building she wants to get with and which of the Hemsworth brothers are the hottest.
“Are you sure? Because I think I feel something hard poking me in the ass?” she says.
I roll my eyes. “That’s my phone in my pocket.”