Where I Learn From My Mistakes

7: Where I Learn From My Mistakes

Lily's lips tightened, but she didn't say anything. I didn't know what I had expected. Of course, Lilly wasn't going to start spilling her heart out to me in the middle of an argument. And this was, for all purposes, the beginning of the end of our friendship.

"Fine, whatever." Lilly made a furious, impatient gesture with her hand. "If you want to be with Alex, be my guest. It's not going to last, anyway. He gets bored way too easily."

My eyes narrowed. "You mean, he got bored with you? That was why you broke up?"

She sniffed. "He has no taste."

He had probably gotten sick of her constant demands. Now that the blinders had been ripped off, I could see the truth for what it was – Lilly was high-maintenance. And she wasn't a very good girlfriend. Neither was she a very good friend, apparently.

"And he's so unnatural," she went on. "I've never met a guy who was so uninterested in sex. Maybe he's gay."

He wasn't interested in sex with you, I thought to myself. He had seemed plenty... up for it, the day we had slept together, right there on the floor of his room. I bit my lip to stifle the grin that was threatening to emerge.

He hadn't wanted Lilly, not even after three months together. But he'd wanted me.

Even if he'd blown up at me afterwards, I still had that, at least.

"Just because he wouldn't sleep with you doesn't mean he's not interested in the entire female species."

She slung the night bag she had been haphazardly packing across her shoulders. "Whatever."

"Off to your boyfriend's?" I asked, deceptively lightly.

She pursed up her lips, as if considering whether to take the bait. "I won't be back for a while," was all she said, in the end.

Her evasion had been unnecessary, as it turned out. I had barely moved out of the way to let her pass before I saw another figure heading down the hallway towards us.

Lilly muttered an expletive under her breath. "I told you to wait downstairs," she hissed at Bernt, when he came to a stop beside her.

"You were taking too long," he replied. His gaze landed on me, standing a feet away, leaning against the door frame.

"Hi," I said. The first word I had ever spoken to him – and it had been after my crush on him had dissipated. Go figure.

He looked surprised that I was acknowledging him for the first time after so long, but he responded, "Hi."

He still had that melodic accent and those dazzling blue eyes that had sent my heart rate soaring so long ago, but now... Now my heartbeat remained steady, rhythmically thumping away – waiting for something else, someone else, to set it off.

Alex had been wrong – my heart didn't beat for Bernt anymore.

And that, I thought as I watched Lilly loop her arm through Brent's as they walked away together, was that.

***

He wasn't here.

This was a first – for every night since that first time he'd reluctantly invited me to wallow in his office instead of alone at the gazebo, he had been here. Every time I had come, the light had been shining in his office.

But not today.

I tried the door, out of habit, even though I knew it would be locked. It was. I leaned my forehead against the cool, smooth surface for a while, then slid down to sit on the floor. He always had work to do, didn't he? He would have to show up eventually.