Page 134 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8

“He didn’t say he didn’t want you. And anyway, I don’t know. I think people should be willing to be a little bit pathetic for love. Isn’t that the point of it? I mean, I certainly wouldn’t bother with it if it wasn’t. So maybe I never will. But...”

“No. Everyone is supposed to be balanced and healthy and not ask too much of each other, and not need each other too much.”

“What a boring reality.”

Auggie found she couldn’t disagree. She didn’t want quiet or reserved. She didn’t even mind this breaking her open, because it had helped her find new parts of herself.

She didn’t want to end up without him, however. But at the same time... She just wanted him.

And she wanted to be this version of herself that had blossomed with him.

So maybe there was something in all this.

“He’s going into surgery soon. I won’t be able to make it to the hospital in time to see him beforehand.”

“You should probably go anyway. Because the way you feel about him isn’t really contingent on how he feels about you, is it?”

With that truth, Auggie took her bruised heart down to the hospital. She was informed that he was in surgery. But told that she would be updated when he was finished.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she pulled it out, seeing that she had a text from Irinka.

Was this your doing?

She frowned, and opened up the link that Irinka had sent.

It was a statement. From Matias.

He must’ve dictated it to someone last night after she left. Before he went into surgery.

She sat there, holding the phone, her mouth agape as she read.

Augusta Fremont encouraged me to make this statement before she left me in the early hours of the morning. She is another person that I have failed. But that is not the point of this statement.

By now rumors, planted by my father have run rampant that I am responsible for the death of my sister.

I have spent my life feeling that I was responsible. It is why I live the way that I do. But always, always I wanted to destroy my father with my success. I blamed us both for her death. My own harsh words that I spoke to her the last time I saw her, but also him, because he raised me to be that harsh, and because he raised her to feel so much shame.

It was the perfect counterpoint. I was the match, and she was gasoline. I have walked in guilt all these years, because it was more comfortable than grief. And it was not until I had an accident two weeks ago that forced me to sit and recover...it was not until I spent that time with a woman who showed me what life could be...that I began to see things for what they were. There were fences in my mind. Roadblocks that I was convinced were the real truth. She made me see that they weren’t.

But I was not able to change my opinion on that truth until it was too late. I’m writing this ahead of brain surgery. I don’t know how I will come out of it. The doctor made it sound as if it would be easy, but if I have learned one thing about life it’s that things are rarely easy. Perhaps I did cause my sister to overdose. Perhaps she would’ve done it anyway. All I know is I live with the grief either way. And blame and revenge felt active in a way that the loss of her doesn’t. Living in anger and regret has felt much more manageable than living in hope. Than wanting to find a joy and love that I never truly had in my life.

I manufactured fake joy and kept it all around myself. I cultivated a persona in the media that allowed me to bask in the warmth of fake flames, so that I could know at least a fraction of what it was like to be cared for. After having someone give me love for real, I recognize that it isn’t enough. She told me to be real. And I am. I have no answers. Only pain. I cannot bring my sister back. I can only grieve her. If I destroy my father, nothing will be rebuilt. And that too is pointless. The only thing that has not felt pointless is the hope that it gave me to have someone love me.

To begin to fall in love with her. I’m clinging to that hope now, because now that I’ve got a taste for it, I fear it might be the one thing I have ever been well and truly addicted to.

And that is all thanks to her.

Whatever this means for my future, for my company, for my place in the tabloids, I don’t care. I care about Auggie and the truth, in that order. The truth is that I love her. The truth is that I’m still figuring out what love is.

And so, however I come out of my surgery tomorrow, with my sight or without, having lost motor skills or not, it is the one thing that will be true about me. I am not a creation of my father’s. I am not a man who has everything. I am not the best beloved playboy in the world. I am not a golden retriever. All of those things are fake.

But loving Auggie is real.

A tear splashed down on her phone screen. It was a statement that wasn’t going to do anything for him. It was a personal revelation, and nothing more. There were no neat bows. And the public didn’t like that.

But it mattered to her. It echoed inside of her. As real as anything had ever been.

Irinka sent another text.