And deep down, I’d known that.
Suddenly, I felt fragile, like a cheap glass teetering at the edge of a counter, only a nudge away from shattering. I knew I was headed into a vicious cycle, and fast: unmitigated sadness I had no right to feel, followed by self-loathing, because of course I still felt it. I sat down on the sun-warmed stone of the garden path, tucking my knees to my chest and watching the dark splotches of my tears splash and spread on my jeans. What was wrong with me? It was like Tabs had said. I didn’t love Frederick, and he hardly liked me. I was too brash for him, too unpolished. He wanted a poised, political wife, and I had been willing, for a while, to flatten myself to fit that mold. And for what? Eight-year-old Angie had dreamed of white coats, not white weddings, and instead of focusing on studying for the last major hurdle in the way of that dream, I had let myself be distracted, anguishing over how to fix a relationship with a man I didn’t even want.
“Excuse me,” a voice said.
I yelped in shock, my hands flying instinctively to cover my face. The cords of my earbuds caught on my arms, sending my earbuds flying and cutting my music off halfway through “In Fantasia.”
Okay, so the guy kneeling in front of me was cute. Real cute. I hadn’t gotten a particularly good look, as I was presently trying my best to disappear, but it had been enough for my body to know that it was attracted to his and that alone made me want to push past him and go flying out the garden gate.
Cute Boy laughed good-naturedly as I swiped at my tears, trying in vain to gather the scattered fragments of my dignity.
“Kishi Bashi?” he said. “You’ve got good taste.”
It took me a moment to realize that he was talking about my music. My volume had been turned all the way up; no wonder I hadn’t heard him approach. I sniffed, accepting my earbuds back as he handed them to me.
“Thanks,” I said numbly, finally letting myself look at him. Good god, was he hot. Maybe not to Nia, who would probably say he was too lean, but he was exactly my type—tallish, with thick, black eyebrows and an unabashedly sunny smile. He was some kind of brown, maybe South Asian, probably Latin, and dressed simply in black joggers and a burgundy hoodie that was, embarrassingly, almost the exact same color as my shirt. He had his longish hair pushed back and secured with a thin headband; his inevitable girlfriend was probably desperate to cut it.
“Are you okay?” he asked, and I winced. “I don’t mean to bother you, but . . .” His smile became sympathetic. “You looked like you needed bothering.”
“I’m fine,” I said, stretching to my feet.
Now that the initial shock had worn off, I was wary. That a boy had approached me in the wild was not particularly unusual. I was still my mother’s daughter, after all. Men finding excuses to stop me in the street had ceased being a compliment and become more of a nuisance not long after I hit puberty, and I had since perfected the art of wheedling myself out of unwanted conversations. Every now and then, though, I wouldn’t want to escape. I would find the guy charming, and we would banter and flirt, exchange numbers, and talk for a good length of time before he abruptly ghosted, or worse, I discovered that he wasn’t actually on the market.
This was not one of those times. Cute Boy was attractive, but he had atrocious timing.
“It’s okay if you aren’t fine,” he was saying. He stood up too, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “I won’t judge.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“So is this what you do?” I asked. “Hide out in the bushes like some kind of troll, and then pop out to offer comfort to all the crying girls who come into this garden?”
He laughed.
“Who’s hiding?” he said. He pointed at a bench a few feet away, only somewhat obscured by a row of delphiniums. Blood rushed to my ears; how had I missed him there? “I was just sitting there, minding my business. You’re the one who came barging into a public garden to have a cry.”
“You’ve been here this whole time,” I said, my stomach sinking.
“Well, yeah,” he said. “I was going to leave you alone, but you sounded pretty miserable. Though, I will admit, the whole thing was pretty cinematic, what with this backdrop.” Just as I was about to sink into the earth, he added, “Nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve had a couple good cries here myself.”
That gave me pause. Not just because he was making light of my breakdown, but because he’d offered up his own. I couldn’t remember the last time a man had told me that he cried without shame.