I dropped her gaze. It was too hard to hold all the pain and sadness buried in her eyes. Pain and sadness that she was inferring I’d caused.
I stared at my kneecaps, not really seeing them. Instead, I saw Rob, the “rich uncle” she’d taken me to meet as a birthday present. “She brought you here for me,” he’d told me when he’d made his moves. He’d told me outright, and I still hadn’t gotten it. Hadn’t wanted to get it.
“Liam,” I said, thinking out loud. Amber had played doting wife, but maybe she’d given herself that role. It was me he’d loved to spend hours talking with over a bottle of wine. It was me he’d buy gifts for, little presents he’d find around town that reminded him of me.
“He was so in love with you. You were so detached. So unattainable. When you decided we should leave, I figured you’d finally realized that he would have been the one for you, if you’d let him.”
My head snapped up to see if she was serious.
Her expression said she was. “I could never decide if that bothered you because he wasn’t what you wanted or because you were worried about me.”
“I don’t know.” I was numb. Had I known Liam had felt that way? Deep down somewhere, had I known?
I’d wanted to leave because he’d scared me. He’d made me understand things about myself, how I liked to be treated, how I liked to be fucked. He’d made it easy to be that way with him – because he’d loved me? Because he’d loved even the bad things about me?
“Things were better when we stopped sharing guys,” Amber said, and I wondered if she were taking her own trip down memory lane or if she were just guessing the places I was visiting myself.
She’d resented me. For so long. It was apparent now, so clear I couldn’t believe I’d never seen it.
It triggered my own resentment. “Then the real reason you ended our friendship wasn’t because you thought I was better than that life. It was because you were afraid I’d get in your way with your next boyfriend.”
“It was both,” she admitted. “You can’t tell me there aren’t things you’ve done for me that didn’t have a benefit for you as well.”
Reeve. I’d gotten involved with him because of her, but also because of me. “No, I can’t.” It wasn’t enough of an apology. I just didn’t know what exactly to apologize for.
I tried to imagine what it must have been like for her, to feel like I’d always been between her and the various men she loved. “You should have gotten rid of me earlier.”
“Emily,” the word was thick. “I never wanted to get rid of you at all. You were my touchstone. I kept hoping that somehow, someday it would work out, and we’d both find whatever happy ending we were looking for. But then Bridge… not only was I not enough for him – not good enough for that fucking useless asshole – but he also ended up hurting my best friend. So bad.” Her voice cracked, and my gaze followed a tear dropping down her nose.
“You pushing me away hurt almost just as bad.” My eyes were dry, but my chest ached.
More tears fell, wetting her cheeks. “I know,” she said. “It hurt me too.”
She sniffed, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “Ending things with you didn’t work anyway. You were still there in the middle of my relationships, even when you weren’t physically present.”
I shook my head, not understanding.
“Like, with Reeve. I’d finally found a guy who really loved me. Me. And the whole time, I couldn’t stop wondering whether or not he still would have picked me if he’d known you.”
“That is not my fault.” But it made me feel sick because she’d been right. It made me sick because I understood – I’d done the same thing, imagining her there through so much of my relationship with Reeve.
“I’m not blaming you. I’m telling you how it is.” She swallowed. “I’m telling you I know there are parts of him that are better suited for you.”
She shut her eyes as a slew of new tears fell.
“Amber…” I reached out for her.
But she stood up, pulling away from me. “I can’t do this with you anymore, Emily.” She rocked back and forth on her feet. “I can’t. Blue raincoat. I quit. Because I don’t want to compete with you again. I want to love you and I want to love him and I don’t want those two things to conflict with each other like they have over and over and over.”
I scrambled to my feet. “Don’t you see I feel the same way?”
“Yes, I do! That doesn’t make this any easier.”
No. This made it harder. Knowing all of this, and I still hadn’t said what I’d planned to say. But how I felt didn’t seem to matter as much at the moment as how he felt. If we both loved him, then he needed to be the one to decide. And he had.
“He wants me.” I didn’t say it triumphantly, but I said it proudly. I said it definitively. I said it knowing it was what needed to be said most.
As heavy of a declaration as it had been, it didn’t faze Amber. “He wants you because they always want you. Because you’re an option. If you weren’t here anymore, he’d come back to me.”
I gaped. “And you want that? To be his second choice?”
“I was his first choice, first.”
It was a truth that slammed me in the gut. How ironic that I’d been wrong all those times that I’d thought she’d been the star of our relationships, and now, when I finally wanted to be the star, I was merely an understudy.