okay and that she’s marrying the right person.
"Henry?" Liam asks, walking over to me.
I’m sitting on the most uncomfortable couch in the world, thousands of miles away from my home, watching the woman I love tell a reporter how much she loves her fiancé.
"Something is wrong here," I say, taking off my headphones and pointing to the screen. "They just started dating. I mean, we just broke up. How could this be happening already?"
"Okay, I don’t want to be an asshole, but have you considered the possibility that maybe they didn’t just start dating?"
I snap my head back to face him.
"What are you talking about?"
"Think about it. You were out here for a long time covering different stories. You guys weren’t talking much, you said so yourself."
"Yeah, we were drifting, so what?"
"Well, have you ever thought that maybe she just drifted into his arms a little bit before you broke up?" he asks.
I stare at him in disbelief.
Is he really saying this?
What does he mean exactly?
I shake my head and repeat "no, no, no over and over again."
"Listen, you have to consider the possibility that she was cheating on you. I mean, of course, it’s possible that they met and fell in love after you broke up, but they knew each other beforehand, right?"
"So?" I ask.
"Well, if he was a family friend of her parents, then they've met before. They've known each other and who knows what else happened?"
His words feel like little stabs to my heart.
Each breath makes the cuts deeper and deeper until my chest contracts and I can’t take a single breath.
We watch the rest of the interview in silence. I had already watched it twice, but I turn up the volume so that Liam can see it.
In the end, the reporter brings up the suspiciousness of the engagement being so close to the time when the charges against her father are dropped.
Aurora denies a connection, but there’s something in her face that tells me that she’s lying.
It’s hard to explain what that is exactly. It’s the way that she moves her jaw and readjusts in her seat.
Despite everything that has happened, I know the real Aurora. That’s the woman that I fell in love with and that’s the one I’m going to get back.
Later that evening, I walk back-and-forth in my hotel room trying to figure out what to do. I just got back and I'm not entirely over what she said to me outside that bookstore, but I know that I have to talk to her again.
I have to find out the truth.
It would be a lie to say that Liam did not plant an idea in my mind about what may or may not have happened when I was away.
I thought that Aurora and I were just growing apart from the distance, but now I wonder if it was a lot more sinister than that.
Was she seeing Franklin behind my back?
Was he lying to me the whole time when I called him to talk about the stories I was working on?
Was I a joke that they shared between themselves?
I can’t possibly know the answers to any of these questions, but they keep me up all night nevertheless.
Around two in the morning, after I’ve had more than a few beers, I can no longer resist making the call.
I regret it as soon as I dial but I don’t hang up.
Instead, I wait.
"Answer, please answer," I whisper alone into the dark.
"Why don’t you answer the phone?" I ask louder when her voice mail comes on.
I’m tempted to leave a message, but I wait too long.
Then before I know what I’m even doing, I dial again.
This time, it goes straight to voice mail.
"Hey, Aurora, it’s me," I say. My voice is shaky and full of pauses. "I just heard that you got engaged to Franklin Parks, of all people. What's that about?"
I wait for her to answer as if I’m actually talking to her.
"How could you do this to me? I thought that we had something special. Are you really going to marry him?"
I want to hang up and try to physically force myself to do it but I can't stop myself from talking.
"I really loved you, no, that’s not accurate. I really love you. I don’t know how everything went wrong so quickly. I really thought that you were going to be the one. I thought that after you graduated, you’d come out and work with me or I would come back to New York and