I hiccupped. More tears eked out of my eyes. “I’m not romantic. You said that.”
“No, I said you weren’t into bringing me flowers. That’s, like, one possible way to be romantic.” He squeezed again. “You made Sidney food. You kissed their hand. Tell me that’s not romantic.”
“And you brought them chocolates,” Mia added.
I sniffed. “They were on sale. The chocolates. And Sidney had been listening to a podcast about chocolate, so I thought...” Oh god. I missed hearing about the podcasts they were listening to, telling them about my wacky documentaries. I tried to stay strong this time, but I wanted to curl in on myself until everything went away.
“But that is romantic.” Mia stroked my temple as I leaned against her. “Dec, romance is...paying attention. You know? It’s listening and sharing and enjoying each other.”
“And being thoughtful. You never brought me flowers, but you used to do little things that I didn’t see as romantic at the time, but totally were.” Mase ducked his head to catch my eye. “Remember when you got me that electric toothbrush after I got cavities?”
I groaned. “I’m the worst, oh my god.”
“Nah, it was sweet. You saw a thing that upset me and you tried to help me fix it. Or when you got me that subscription fruit basket for my birthday when I said I was going vegan?”
Mia laughed. “Okay, that was hilarious and also very sweet. I think all of us ate better that year.”
“And we took all those sexy fruit pictures!”
I cringed. “The one with the, uh, melons? And Ronnie with a sports bra on?”
“I should have made her buy that sports bra! I could never wear it again.” Mia kissed my forehead. “You are an incredible friend, Dec. Think of all the times you’ve dropped dinner by when you knew we were busy. Or all the nights you’ve stayed up playing board games because Ronnie couldn’t sleep.”
“You’re the only one who can stand Oscar when he’s had another breakup.”
“That’s nothing,” I argued. “I just ignore him when he’s being an asshole.”
“You’re a fucking saint, man. He’s lucky I don’t punch him when he’s being an asshole.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s like he has all these feelings and he doesn’t know what to do with them so he lashes out. I don’t take it personally.”
Mason squeezed my hands again before releasing them. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Those are the qualities that make you a really good friend, you know?”
“That doesn’t mean I can be...whatever Sidney wants.”
“Why do you think they want something other than a really good friend? It seems like that is what they want.”
“Plus,” Mia said, tone super reasonable, “didn’t you say the sex was good?”
“Yeah, but...”
Both of them just looked at me.
“But there’s...other stuff. Like...like the inevitability of me fucking it up.”
Mia nudged Mason. “I’ll let you take this one. I have to pee.”
“Girl, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were pregnant.” He narrowed his eyes. “Wait—”
“No way! We just got married! We are not having kids yet.” She slid off the bed and into my tiny bathroom.
Mason engulfed me in a hug that felt so good I wanted to move in and stay awhile. “Basically you decided you were eventually going to fuck up so you fucked up really hard as soon as you could?”
I sagged. “I hate this. I miss them so much. And it’s not like with you and me. I thought it was going to be like that, that not being with them would be hard at first, but on some level I’d at least feel like it was the only thing I could have done.”
“It took me a long time to feel that way, but I think I know what you mean. The sense that maybe doors were opening instead of closing.”
“Yeah. Exactly. This... I feel like I drove straight into a wall. On purpose. And now I’m all, gee, being covered in glass shards and bleeding all over the place is super inconvenient, why didn’t I think of that before?”
“Well, this is nothing like that because you can walk this back.”
I pulled away. “You’re joking.”
“Um. No? What’s your genius plan? Pretending none of it ever happened and hitting the dating apps?”
Mia emerged in time to hear the last half of the sentence. “But wait. You have to talk to them. Right? You can’t not? Declan. You have to talk to them.”
“And say what?” I demanded with way more vehemence than Mia really deserved to have shot in her direction. “Sorry. I just mean, what do I say about this? Oops, sorry I accidentally dumped you while having a slight panic attack?”
“Yes!”
“Excuse me—” Mason tugged me in for a brief, almost violent hug. “You ass. What panic attack? You had a panic attack and you didn’t call me? Hi, your best fucking friend. What the hell.”
“It was stupid.”
“You’re stupid.”
I uttered a watery laugh and shoved at him. “Shut up. It was horrible. I thought I could push it down. Do the show like normal, pretend everything was fine, but then I was flipping out and babbling and Sidney was just staring at me and...”
“Dec...” Mia sat down again, expression troubled. “One of the things that’s nice about having a person, like a relationship—and I know all relationships aren’t the same, but in general—is that you don’t always have to pretend with that person. But what if you’d gone to Sidney’s and said you were super anxious and couldn’t do the show in that exact moment?”
“But I’d said I would.”
“I know, but you...couldn’t.” She’d gone all gentle. “You had a panic attack. It’s not like you could just reschedule it for when it was more convenient.”
“Sometimes I can cover it up for a while.” Not forever, but it hadn’t been dumb to think I might be able to do it for an hour.
“But you didn’t have to. Right? What’s the worst that could have happened if you’d been honest with them?”
It hadn’t occurred to me. I wiggled under the blankets on the bed and pulled them up to my chin. “I don’t know.” Except that wasn’t true. They would have been wonderful and compassionate. And probably not in a pitying way, either. If I’d said I couldn’t do the show right then, Sidney would have told me it was fine. They probably would have invited me to stay and read a book or something. Because they liked it when I was around while they worked. And they cared about me.