“I love you,” I interrupt him. Calm. Even.

I think I hear him die. “Maya.”

“I love you.”

“No.”

“I love you. And you are my best friend.”

“No.”

“I don’t care that you’re older. I don’t care that you work all the time. I don’t even care if your weird brain wants to pretend that we’re just platonic pen pals until I hit thirty. I will wait for it. I will wait for you.”

“No.”

“The only thing I care about is: Are you in love with me?”

The sound of breathing. A hitch, barely audible. “That’s irrelevant, Maya.”

I laugh. And for a split second, I actually feel happy. Hopeful. Fucking elated. All that running he’s been doing, and he can’t even lie to me. He can’t bring himself to say the one untruth that would shut me up. “Nice try.”

He ignores me. Composes himself. “Everything you just said, that’s the exact reason this needs to stop. You need to be with someone your age. Someone who doesn’t come with sets of issues that span generations. Someone who—”

“Someone who’s in his original condition! Pristine! Someone who has never experienced suffering! I need one of those collectible action figures, the ones that never get taken out of the box! Shall we check eBay?”

He steamrolls me. “It’ll be good for you, some time away from me. You’ll have room to explore—”

“I have no interest in the Camerons of this world. I have no interest in anyone but—”

“You don’t know what you’re interested in, Maya. You are far too young, and our relationship is limiting your opportunities to fully grasp the extent and variety of your options. Whatever you think you’re feeling about me—”

“I’m in love with you, Conor.” The words slip out thick, watery, and I hate it. “So please, say that, instead of this whatever-you’re-feeling bullshit. At the very least do me the favor of acknowledging my words.”

An exhale. A ragged one. “I know you think that you are in love with me, but if you give it time, it will run its course. And the kindest thing I can do for you at the moment is to free you from me.”

He used the word kind. And I want to take it from him and use it to stab him. “And what about you, Conor? Will it run its course for you, too?”

A terrible silence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

That’s where my hope dies. Something selfish and dark swells within me—something murderous and cutting and vengeful, at the knowledge that he trusts himself and me so little, he’s not going to let us have this. He’s going to take it away. And he’s not even going to admit that he…

The anger is high up in my throat. And it always leads down the same path. “Conor.”

“Yes, Maya.”

“Genuinely, from the bottom of my heart…Fuck off.”

I hang up.

We don’t talk for the following ten months.