17

Marianna.

"I'm not interested."

Three words. Delivered with the emotional temperature of liquid nitrogen.

"Excuse me?"

"In you."

The words hit me like physical blows. Each one a separate, brutal impact, bruising something deep inside my chest that I didn't even know was exposed. The air in the home gym suddenly feels paper-thin. The heat radiating off his skin seems to evaporate, replaced by a suffocating vacuum.

"I wasn't—"

"I'm not blind," Duane cuts in, his voice low and devoid of any warmth. He steps into my space. He leans closer, and for one insane, heart-stopping second, my treacherous body thinks he's going to kiss me. 

Instead, he said. "But you need to understand something. You're not my type. You never have been."

You're not my type.

The room starts to spin. Or maybe I'm spinning. Everything is off-axis, tilted, fundamentally wrong.

He steps back, putting distance between us, and the cold rushes in to fill the gap. He looks at me with those dark, unreadable eyes, standing there with his bare, bruised chest, and all I can hear is the echo of his rejections.

Because it wasn’t just the letter, was it? The letter was when I was fourteen. Fourteen is an age built on stupidity and dramatic mistakes.

But four years later, when I was eighteen, I gave him another piece of my soul to crush.

The memory crashes over me, so vivid I can almost smell the salt water and the rum. It was at a summer party. I had slipped out to the docks, my head spinning from drinking way more than I should have. The wooden floorboards of the dock creaked under his weight as he approached. Those floorboards have always been informants, giving away his whereabouts.

"Hey," I had said to the darkness.

He turned around. He didn’t look startled—he never looked startled. "Marianna." He said my name the way he always does, that "r" rolled slightly, colored with that faint hint of a European accent. "You shouldn’t drink more rum than you can handle."

But the rum had given me courage. I had said all I needed to say to myself in the mirror before walking out there. All the heavy "furniture" in my chest—the anxieties, the fears, the doubts—were lined up neatly against the wall; the floor of my heart was completely empty, cleared out for this one moment.

"I have something to tell you," I told him, my voice surprisingly steady over the sound of the water. "And I want you to look away while I say it."

He didn't look away. He just kept staring at me, his face an impenetrable mask in the moonlight.

"I’ve loved you my whole life, and I needed to say it once. That’s all."

And then, because the dam had broken, the rest of the words came pouring out of my mouth like cargo unloaded from a truck: "Well—all right, there’s more to it than that. I looked up your qualifying results. I know you were staring at the flag, not the crowd. I’m not asking anything of you; I know you’re racing on Sunday. I just—I needed to let this feeling out of my body at least once. That’s all."

It wasn’t until the last four words that my voice had finally begun to tremble. I considered that a victory. I wanted to engrave it on my tombstone.

For a long, agonizing moment, the only sounds in the world were the dark water lapping against the wooden pilings, the buzzing of mosquitoes in the humid air, and the faint, rhythmic voice of Marc Anthony drifting over the fence from the oblivious party next door. And Duane Richter, staring at me expressionlessly.

When he finally spoke, his voice was soft. His tone was perfectly, devastatingly steady, as if he were reading the terms and conditions of a software update.

"You’re Marco’s sister. That’s all. That’s all it will ever be."

With that, he walked past me, leaving me standing alone on the dock with the rum burning in my veins and my heart shattered on the wooden planks.

The memory bleeds away, slamming me violently back into the present. I'm twenty-three now. Standing in his high-rise gym. And he is preemptively rejecting me all over again.

A deep, hollow ache blooms in my chest, heavy and suffocating. True, visceral regret settles into my bones. Why did I do this? Why did I touch him? I had sworn long ago—sworn on that very dock—not to let this man break my heart ever again, hadn’t I?

Why did I give him the chance to push me away time and time again?

I swallow hard, forcing the lump in my throat down. I find my voice. I pull every ounce of steel I possess from the wreckage of my pride.

"I don't know what you think is happening here," I start, my voice cracking once before I force it into a rigid, unyielding line. I step forward, meeting his eyes. Refusing to look away, even though every cell in my body is screaming at me to run and hide. "But let me be very clear. I know that in your eyes, I’ve always been a pathetic secret admirer. I know my life is a mess right now, unlike yours, which is full of trophies and championships and spectacular achievements. But you really didn’t have to reject me over and over again."

Duane's jaw tightens slightly, a microscopic shift in his rigid posture, but he remains completely silent. He just stares at me, those dark eyes boring into mine with a heavy, intense gravity that I refuse to shrink away from.

"Remember how I told you four years ago that I wouldn’t obsess over you like a fanatic anymore?" I demand, my hands balling into fists at my sides, my fingernails biting half-moons into my palms. "I kept my word. I haven't. I'm not pining for you. I'm not imagining things. I'm not some pathetic fangirl hoping that if I just massage your shoulders enough, you'll suddenly realize I'm the love of your life."

He doesn't interrupt. He takes the verbal lashing like a statue, his broad, bruised chest rising and falling in a slow, controlled rhythm.

"I never wanted to move into your apartment in the first place," I push on, the words burning like acid as they leave my throat. "I'm here because I had nowhere else to go. Because the airline lost everything I own and I have exactly fourteen dollars to my name. I helped you today because you were injured, and I have the clinical skills to fix it. That's all. As soon as I make some money, I’ll move out right away. You won't even know I was here."

I pause, gasping quietly for air, my chest heaving. He is staring deeply at me now. The silence between us stretches, thick and electric, pulsing with the weight of nine years of history, of unspoken resentment and humiliating rejections.

I take a step backward.

"So you can stop flattering yourself," I continue, momentum carrying me forward. "I'm not pining for you. I'm not imagining things. I'm not some pathetic fangirl anymore." I take a step toward the door. Then another. "I'm a person who needed help, and you provided it, and in return I tried to provide help to you. Nothing more. Nothing less."

I'm at the door now. My hand is on the frame. All I have to do is walk through it and this will be over.

"Mari—"

"And for the record?" I turn back one last time. "You're not my type either. I prefer men who are capable of basic human emotions. Men who can have a conversation without making it feel like a hostage negotiation. Men who don't look at me like I'm a problem to be solved." I force my mouth into something that might pass for a smile. "So don't worry. Your virtue is safe."

I leave.