Everett looked down at her hands, curled up into fists. “What do you mean . . . you don’t want to give it away to someone?” he asked slowly.
“I mean.” Teddy exhaled, looking everywhere in the room except Everett’s face. “I . . . I like you, Everett. I like everything about you, and I like that you care about your job and that you’re good at it. But I can’t be a sidekick to your dream. I need to find my own.”
“You will find your own!” Everett said, stepping toward her, but Teddy stepped back, finally meeting his eyes.
“Look at us already,” she said. “We’ve been together in person for, what, a few weeks?”
“Thirty-seven days since your first email, which was the moment I fell in love with you, if I’m being honest. That’s the moment I knew you were the girl for me, and I don’t need any more time to know how I feel.”
Teddy bit her lip and one treacherous tear slowly rolled down her face. “I can’t be the girl for someone else. I have to be my own girl.”
Everett shoved his hands in his pockets. He felt precariously close to tears himself. “What are you saying, Theodora?”
She winced. “I think . . . I think we want different things, Everett. It doesn’t matter how much we like each other. It isn’t going to work. What are you going to do, give up your show?”
“Do you want me to?” he asked, an edge to his voice.
“No!” Teddy practically shouted, and her voice cracked on the word. “I don’t want you to give up anything that makes you you. That’s what I like about you.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?”
“I think.” She took a deep breath. “I think you should go to New York, and you should be fabulously successful as a nationally syndicated children’s television host, and you should be happy that you get to spend all your time working at a job you love. And I should stay here in Ohio and figure out my own life by myself.”
“You think we should break up,” Everett said flatly.
“That’s another way to put it.”
“No,” Everett said. “Nope. I don’t accept this. We’re not breaking up.”
“Well, unfortunately you aren’t the only one who has a say in this,” Teddy said, a hint of steel in her voice.
And Everett, as much as he wanted to beg and plead and kiss her until she changed her mind and agreed with him—and he was sure she would do it, if only for a little while, if only until the next day—couldn’t make her doubt herself again. He couldn’t be another man who kept her from doing what she wanted.
“Okay,” he said. “But you’re wrong.”
Teddy’s brow furrowed. “About what?”
“I don’t like you, Teddy,” Everett said, taking in every detail of her face. The almost eerie wideness of her eyes. The angles of her high cheeks, slightly flushed. The way her tiny ears poked through her hair. “I’ve never liked you. I’m in love with you, and I have been since the beginning.”
Teddy shook her head as the tears on her cheeks sparkled. “Don’t say that.”
“I’m not going to stop you from doing what you want, but I’m not going to lie to you, either. I love you, Theodora Phillips. And I think you love me, too.”
Teddy smiled at him as she cried, looking like one of those thunderstorms that happened while the sun was shining. He didn’t understand how she could make him feel like this: the pure joy of seeing her mixed with the agony of knowing she was leaving.
She walked toward the door. “I have to go.”
“Teddy . . . ,” he said as she opened the door.
“Good luck at your meeting. I know they’ll love you. Everyone does.” She smiled and quietly shut the door behind her.
Everett stared at the door until he realized she wasn’t coming back. “Everyone except you,” he said to the empty room.
56
Teddy drove until tears blurred her vision so much that she didn’t feel safe, so she pulled into a parking lot to get herself together. But then she didn’t feel like getting herself together, so she screamed, closing her eyes and stretching her mouth open as far as it could go.
All she wanted to do was go back to Everett’s apartment and kiss him and forget all about this. She didn’t want to think about the fact that he was leaving. She wanted to live in a beautiful fantasyland