Out of My League

Chapter 30 (Noah)

At every sound that resembles a phone vibrating, at every ring, despite me having never taken my phone off of silent, I bound to my bedside to see if it's her. 

And every, single time, I'm met with that same, disappointing drop in my stomach when it isn't. 

I don't know what went wrong. 

Since she'd walked out, I'd replayed those minutes in my head over and over again, trying to figure out what I could've done differently, how I could've made things better for her. 

All I can really remember, other than the devastated look on her face, was her insistence that she wasn't good enough for me. 

As a professional baseball player, I'd heard many lies, had told many lies myself, but I'd never heard something so untrue. 

I wish I could tell her that. 

Numbly, seven hours after she'd left, when the afternoon bled into evening and I'd yet to leave my bed where I'd gone immediately after she'd left, I stand up, ignoring the blood that rushes to my head and walk, blindly, down the hall and into the living room. 

It's still in disarray, just how I'd left it, just like Bella and I's relationship. 

Completely and totally in shambles. 

I want to clean it up, but I have no energy, so I don't. Instead, I collapse onto the couch where she'd sat twenty-four hours ago, where she'd always sat while I cooked dinner and she'd mock me for the look of concentration on my face. 

I pick up my cell phone to call her again, not caring how desperate I sound, knowing that whatever amount of desperation she conjures up in her head is only half of the true level I've reached. As I'm dialing her number, though, a knock resounds on my front door. 

Ignoring, yet again, the blood rush to my head, I race to the door and throw it open, feeling defeated, once more, when Bella isn't standing on the other side. 

"What are you doing?" Connor asks, "I've called you two thousand times." 

"I know," I deadpan, "I've declined your call two thousand times." 

On the off-chance that Bella wanted to get ahold of me, I didn't want to miss the call, so I'd declined everyone's call, even my mom's. 

"Why?" Connor asks, "What's wrong with you? You look sort of like you did when you and Allison broke up." 

"Thanks for that painful reminder," I say, to which Connor replies, still completely oblivious, "Where's Izzy? Reagan was looking for her earlier, but couldn't get ahold of her." 

"She wouldn't be the only one." 

"So, then-," Connor, who had been in the process of walking into my house, pauses halfway in and whirls on me, eyes wide. 

"No," he says, "No, don't tell me that-" 

"She ended it," I reply, ignoring the constriction in my throat as I speak the words, "We broke up. It's over."

"But you were going to propose," Connor replies, dumbly, like he just can't wrap his head around what I'd just spoken. 

He wouldn't be the only one. 

"You were going to be together forever," he adds when I still haven't spoken. 

At his words, I swallow hard and pull the ring from my pocket, handing it over to him. 

Connor, ever the comedic relief, grins, "I love you, too, buddy, but I can't marry you." 

I don't even crack a smile, but answer instead, "Take it. You can use it for Reagan."