She felt awful.

Kyndall couldn’t imagine feeling worse about herself as she did right now, waiting for Dave to show up and meet her at the park as she asked. She didn’t think he’d take the news well; he seemed to like her a lot. And she knew even before she’d said yes to the first date that she was only doing it to prove how not into Tony she was. It was part of the reason she had said yes, to try to make sure she wasn’t going to let her heart get stuck on someone she couldn’t have. But circumstances had changed and fair or not she felt she and the sweet librarian were getting closer and even if they never got a chance to make things romantic she couldn’t lie to Dave and pretend her heart was free. It wasn’t.

When he moved to hug her in greeting she let him, only patting his back gently instead of really embracing him. He gave her a quizzical look, blue eyes studying her with budding apprehension. He could sense something was wrong all too easily and she didn’t like it. Instead she tried to smile and led him toward a stone table in the park, climbing up to sit on top of the table’s surface. He came to perch beside her, looking out over the park with all of the random passerby and people engaged in normal healthy winter activity.

She didn’t know how to approach it. Thankfully, he did it for her, looking sideways at her and folding his hands together in an all too calm way that reminded her of her father when she’d been bad as a child. He never yelled or raised a hand to her or her sister. He simply rubbed his hands together and calmly asked what she’d done to upset her mother. Saying he was disappointed in her was enough to put her to tears and she felt them pricking her eyes now, against her will.

“What’s wrong, Kyn?”

That was a huge question to answer. The enormity of it felt large. She immediately wanted to duck out of this and move on to something else but she steeled herself to do it.

“Dave, you’re a great guy.” She began, feeling like those words had to be the final tip off for him that this wasn’t going to go well. “and I love spending time with you…” she trailed off, willing herself to say the rest.

“but?” he prompted, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“but I think we should go back to being friends.”

“Why?”

Of course he’d have to ask that. He was a reasonable adult, after all, and reasonable adults want to know why they’re being told something they enjoy has to end. She smiled and slid from the table to pace back and forth while she thought of how to answer. Should she tell him the truth and explain to him that she’d basically used him to escape her unrequited feelings or should she just pass it off as one of those things? Selfishly, she wanted to try and retain as much of a friendship as she could with him once this was over, however hard that may be, so she opted to just make it one of those things. It wasn’t like she could say she wasn’t ready to date. If she and Tony did somehow manage to make a decision together it would make it around school somehow even without Harmony’s help.

“Because…” but she didn’t want to lie to him. He needed to know. “I’m in love with someone else. And it isn’t a new thing. I’ve been in love with him for a while. And, until recently, he couldn’t return the feelings and I agreed to date you because I didn’t want to be tied to someone when it couldn’t go anywhere. But then I realized I couldn’t be fair to you, either, knowing my heart wasn’t free. It won’t be until these feelings fade or until he can return them.”

“I see. The librarian, right?”

Dave shoved his hands into his pockets, looking at her the way a puppy looks at its owner when denied a treat. He didn't wait for confirmation of his suspicion and moved away from her and shook her off when she tried to stop him from leaving. She felt awful, her heart twisting. She tried to take comfort in the idea that she’d done the right thing but Kyndall couldn’t be consoled about hurting a good guy. “Dave…” But he was already several paces away and didn’t look like he was going to turn around just to soothe her.

“I’m sorry.”

Kyn sank onto the stone bench and leaned back against the table, sighing. She didn’t hold much hope for a friendship of any kind after that, let alone any sort of working relationship.