On My Knees by Periel Aschenbrand Page B

just couldn’t let it go.
    We’d be out, having a great time, and we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. And I would always think that tonight—whatever night tonight was—would be the night that he would tell me how in love he was with me. But it was the same story every time. At the very last second, Nico would make up some nonsensical excuse about how he had to go home or be up really early or he had a meeting or he was really tired or he had a hangnail. One night I actually pulled him aside and was like, “Listen, I know that you’re in love with me and you’re just scared.”
    And he was straight up like, “Uh, not really, P. To be honest, I’m not really sure what I want.”
    You would think that with all the advice I had been doling out to Hanna that I would have been less of a fool. You’d be wrong.
    The debacle started a few months after Noam and I broke up. Nico and I went to a big industry event together. There was a photo booth there. And in the pictures of us we’re sticking our tongues out; we’re laughing. In one of the photos, he is biting my nose. The sexual energy is almost tangible. This was typical behavior.
    After the event, we went back to my apartment and were lying on Grandma’s couch playing around when suddenly something switched. He looked at me and touched my face in a way that he never had before and seconds later we were kissing. In that moment, I remember feeling something I hadn’t felt in months—hope. It was the first time since Noam and I had broken up that I felt something other than utter despair. In that moment, Nico became my life raft. I would have fucked him right then and there but he slowed me down—which, incidentally, was also fairly mortifying.
    Nico, like Noam, was a good deal older than I was. And he had the foresight to know that I was in a very dark place. He also knew that unless two people have a conversation to ensure that they are on exactly the same page, hooking up with your best friend is usually not a good idea under the best of circumstances. He also knew that hooking up with your best friend who you work with and who just broke up with her boyfriend of ten years is just plain stupid.
    For my part, I had replaced all of the misery that goes along with a breakup with total mania. I was elated. In other words, I pretty much went off the deep end. It was much easier to be obsessed with this new “relationship” than it was to mourn the loss of my last one. The problem, of course, was that there was no new relationship. Nico had made it very clear that the last thing he wanted to do was to be my boyfriend. But I wasn’t interested in pesky things like facts. I was certain that he was the solution to all my problems. And so each time he would call me and tell me he was in town, I would jump like a small lapdog, convinced that sooner or later he would see the light.
    It was pathetic.
    I was pathetic.
    I began writing him the kinds of letters psychologists recommend you write but never send. The only difference was I was actually sending them .
    Nico,
    There is no other way to say this . . . I’m leaving.
    It’s an incredibly difficult decision, but I think it’s the right one. Or maybe it’s not the right one, but it’s the only one. Most simply, around you is not a healthy place for me to be. I don’t want to, but I’m leaving. A few months ago, when you said you don’t know what you want, I told you I didn’t believe you. I said, I think you do know what you want, that I believe you know exactly what you want, but that you’re scared. Now, I’m not sure I was right. I think I may have overestimated how well I know you, or, more likely, I was blinded by belief—in you, in me, in us. I see now, that you were telling me the truth—you really don’t know what you want. Or, you do, but it’s not me, it’s not us, it’s not the vision I’ve had in my head. I think I’ve filled a very important void for you. And you filled one for me,