“That’s not what I mean, Al.” Dana took a deep breath wishing that just this once she could find the words to say exactly how she felt. Wishing that she could just be eloquent for this one moment in her life, she knew that everything that she said in this moment would affect Alice’s decision on their relationship. She had to get it right for once. So she took a deep breath and tried to start over, breaking eye contact with Alice to stare at a spot on the ground. Dana shook her head and then finally found the words to say what she needed to say. “Alice I have loved you in some form or another since the moment that we met. At first it was just this amazingly intense crush. And then you just turned into my best friend.” Dana paused and took a deep breath, but then dove back in quickly, not wanting to give Alice the chance to interrupt. “You have been there for every important moment in my life. You’ve been there holding my hand through things that I never would have made it through without you. I never would have found the courage to become who I am now if it wasn’t for you. And somewhere, in the middle of all of that, I fell in love with you. Beyond a crush, beyond a best friend, beyond anything that I couldpossibly dream of. And that, is very scary, Alice. Because I know that I don’t know how to show it, but I don’t know what I would do if you were ever gone. And when we leapt across that stupid, invisible line, that became a very real possibility. A possibility that scared the ***** out of me. And so I did what I always do. I ran. I went for the easiest way out. And it happened to come in the form of Lara.” Dana looked at Alice trying to make her understand why she had been so confused. Why she had went running to Lara In the first place. “Alice there was a time when Lara would have been the harder choice for me, the right choice, but that time is, and was, gone before we ever got together. This time the hard choice, the one that I didn’t want to makewas you.”