Ignite Me

THIRTY-SEVEN

“You didn’t tell me what you thought of my plan.”

Warner and I have just stepped back into his room and he still hasn’t said a word to me. He’s standing by the door to his office, his eyes on the floor. “I didn’t realize you wanted my opinion.”

“Of course I want your opinion.”

“I should really get back to work,” he says, and turns to go.

I touch his arm.

Warner goes rigid. He stands, unmoving, his eyes trained on the hand I’ve placed on his forearm.

“Please,” I whisper. “I don’t want it to be like this with us. I want us to be able to talk. To get to know each other again, properly—to be friends—”

Warner makes a strange sound deep in his throat. Puts a few feet between us. “I am doing my best, love. But I don’t know how to be just your friend.”

“It doesn’t have to be all or nothing,” I try to tell him. “There can be steps in between—I just need time to understand you like this—as a different person—”

“But that’s just it.” His voice is worn thin. “You need time to understand me as a different person. You need time to fix your perception of me.”

“Why is that so wrong—”

“Because I am not a different person,” he says firmly. “I am the same man I’ve always been and I have never tried to be different. You have misunderstood me, Juliette. You’ve judged me, you’ve perceived me to be something I am not, but that is no fault of mine. I have not changed, and I will not change—”

“You already have.”

His jaw clenches. “You have quite a lot of gall to speak with such conviction on matters you know nothing about.”

I swallow, hard.

Warner steps so close to me I’m actually afraid to move. “You once accused me of not knowing the meaning of love,” he says. “But you were wrong. You fault me, perhaps, for loving you too much.” His eyes are so intense. So green. So cold. “But at least I do not deny my own heart.”

“And you think I do,” I whisper.

Warner drops his eyes. Says nothing.

“What you don’t understand,” I tell him, my voice catching, “is that I don’t even know my own heart anymore. I don’t know how to name what I feel yet and I need time to figure it out. You want more right now but right now what I need is for you to be my friend—”

Warner flinches.

“I do not have friends,” he says.

“Why can’t you try?”

He shakes his head.

“Why? Why not give it a chance—”

“Because I am afraid,” he finally says, voice shaking, “that your friendship would be the end of me.”

I’m still frozen in place as his office door slams shut behind him.