“What’s important is that you remember the other half of that big conversation we had that night. I didn’t only tell you and Aria and Lyndi that I love Paul. I told you that I love him enough to make sure he finds happiness with someone other than me. I’m not the one for him.”
“Says you.”
“Yeah, because it’s true. Layla, you know I can’t give him what he wants. What he deserves. And besides, even if I hadn’t made it clear to him years ago that I didn’t see him like that—”
“Lies.”
“Hush. Even if I hadn’t done that, I honestly don’t think he feels that way about me. It’s pretty clear to me that all of the help and support he’s given me over the years has put me firmly in the friend zone. In fact, maybe not even the friend zone. Maybe the sickly-patient-and-he’s-my-sexy-unqualified-nurse zone.”
“I don’t think that’s a zone.”
I glared at her. “It is. It’s the zone where someone has pressed on your legs to check for edema. Or held your hair back when you’re vomiting. Or caught you when you literally have a fainting spell in the middle of the high school cafeteria, then carried you through gawking teenagers to get help. That is not romance. That is, like, caretaking.”
Layla’s eyes were glassy as she stared off into space. “You say it’s not romance, I say watching him carrying you out of that cafeteria with mac ’n’ cheese all over your shirt was like the swooniest thing I’ve ever seen. He’s like your hero.”
My stomach fluttered as I imagined the scene. I’d been unconscious at the time, so all I had was what other people told me. But yeah, from what I heard, it had definitely been in the context of being a dreamy picture. And I could totally see why they’d think so since they weren’t the one being carried out of there, waking up with the school nurse hovering over them, feeling like a freak of nature.
For a long time after my diagnosis with HCM, a freak was exactly what I felt like. It was a genetic thing. It couldn’t be cured. It boiled down to my heart being diseased. The muscle was abnormally thick, making it difficult for my heart to pump blood, and there was nothing I could do about it. Paul had actually been a big part of me eventually accepting that there was nothing “wrong” with me.
It was a tough road, because instinctively, I wanted to reply with heavy sarcasm that there was, in fact, something wrong with me since my heart wasn’t built the way it should have been and could fail without warning. Helping someone through that kind of thing had to take away a person’s ability to view them as something you’d want, need, and crave in a romantic partner, right?
“All I’m saying is that this is it. This is your last chance to tell him how you feel before it’s too late,” Layla said, reaching out and giving my arm a squeeze.
I gave her a small smile. “Layla, it’s already too late. It was too late from the start. Maybe in another life Paul and I would have been perfect for each other. But here? In this one? I’m not perfect for anyone.”
And with that, I turned for the gym, using all of my remaining strength to keep my tears at bay. This wasn’t a pity party. It was cold hard facts. Paul was going to get engaged to a very sweet woman tonight. He was going to have healthy, happy children who were not at risk for heart failure. And he was going to sit on the front porch in his nineties, with his wife by his side, and watch his healthy great-grandchildren frolic in the yard. The end.