Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Ever since he went away and left me with a note, I’ve been thinking about Sarah.
A lot.
She said she’d be waiting for him when he came back.
Was she?
I bet she was.
She said that eight years’ worth of love is bigger than her one mistake. Honestly, I thought so too.
Until I found out about her mistake. About what she did to him.
To my Arrow.
I know he’s not mine but still.
Still, I’m so mad at her.
I mean, I’m not in her position, okay? I don’t know what went through her mind when she did what she did, when she slept with Ben.
But surely there was another way. A better way.
A better way than lying to the man you love and making him think that he failed, making him beat himself up like this.
So this past week I thought about it.
About the mistake she made and how angry I got over that, and how I still struggle to understand it and I wish I could call her.
I wish I could talk to her.
Because even though I never understood their relationship – I admit that now after that disastrous Friday dinner – I do understand something about making mistakes.
I’m in love with her ex-boyfriend.
I fell in love with him the exact same time she did.
Although I know now that I never would’ve done anything to hurt their relationship, it still wasn’t right.
You don’t do that to your own sister, and I’ll always be regretful of that.
Not of my love for Arrow but what he was and still is to my sister.
So maybe we should talk and figure things out.
Maybe. I don’t know.
I don’t know anything except that he’s gone and he might be getting back together with my sister.
Which is great because everything will be right in his world.
He won’t feel like a failure. All his anger will go away. He will be like the old Arrow, calm and collected, unruffled by anything around him.
So why do I wanna cry?
Why do I wanna dissolve in my sheets at night?
Why do I wanna tell him to never ever change? To be like this forever.
But that’s not all I want.
I also wanna tell him.
I wanna tell him that I love him, which is crazy. I went to great lengths to protect this secret. I was running away because of it.
I don’t know what I hope to accomplish by telling him because we’re completely opposite of each other.
He’s this great perfectionist who hates making mistakes and I’m anything but perfect.
He has all these rules and I love breaking them.
He’s a soccer superstar and up until recently, I hadn’t even played on an actual team.
And even though I have this little dream of applying to the youth program for next summer, I’m still not a fit girlfriend for a celebrity athlete.
Besides, for all I know, he’s back together with Sarah and if my sister makes him happy, then so be it.
I’ll never stand in the way of his happiness.
At least it’s Friday and I’m out with the girls at Ballad of the Bards, and I don’t have to think about all these things.
Plus Miller has been particularly nasty to me all week so I really need a little break.
I’m not dressed up or anything though. I have my regular clothes on, my cargo pants and a simple t-shirt with my chunky sweater over it.
I’m not wearing any lipstick either.
There’s no use wearing it if I can’t pout my lips at him and get punished for it.
Oh and tonight I’ve chosen to not dance as well.
So I’m sitting by the bar with Wyn, who has a sketchbook out, while Poe flirts with a guy at a nearby table and Callie is off somewhere.
With Reed Jackson.
He was already here when we all came in and since his dark eyes were pinned to the door, he spotted Callie right away. And since Callie already knew he was going to be here, she flirted with her bartender friend and danced with a few guys before disappearing.
As friends, we should be more worried about the fact that she completely vanished from sight.
But as friends, we also know that there’s something between her and him. Something crazy and volatile and well, epic.
And then there are her nightly outings, which only she and I know about, but still.
So we’re not as worried as we should be.
But anyway, my no-dancing-tonight rule breaks when Callie’s bartender friend, who I’ve come to know by sitting close to him for the past hour is a great Lana Del Rey lover like me, asks me to dance while on a break.
He doesn’t even give me the time to refuse him but picks me up and spins me around to the tune of one of the most depressing songs, which I happen to love, “Pretty When You Cry” by Lana.
Surprisingly, I laugh.
It’s the first time I’ve laughed all week, I think. I can’t believe I’m doing it to the song that I’ve most cried to while pining over the guy I love.
That’s how he finds me a few minutes later.
The guy I love, I mean.
Out of nowhere he’s here and he finds me laughing and dancing, swaying in the arms of another man.
For a moment, I think I’m imagining him, which can’t be so far-fetched because while I was dancing with Will, who’s burly and bearded, I was picturing him. My Arrow.
But then I get a good look at him.
He’s wearing a suit jacket – a wrinkled thing now, something that I know he only wears during his events with the team. Plus his hair looks messy too, messier than I’ve ever seen before. All the sun-struck strands have fallen into disarray.
Not to mention, he doesn’t have his baseball cap on, the one he usually wears to public places.
He looks so different than the usual and yet so familiar at the same time that I know he’s here.
He’s back from LA and somehow, he knew to find me at the bar. Well, it’s Friday and I have a habit of sneaking out. So it’s not really far-fetched.
But still.
He’s here.
I stop dancing as soon as the knowledge sinks in and the heaviness and chill of the past week lift from my body.
I’m warm now. And happy and…
I realize something is very wrong when he begins to move toward me.
Because while my lips are stretched into a wonder-filled smile and my eyes are wide with happiness, Arrow looks the exact opposite.
He appears tight and unforgiving.
His lips are pinched and his eyes are slitted. And instead of them being pinned on me, they’re glued on Will as he marches toward us with lunging, violent steps.
Holy fuck, I understand why.
Because I was dancing with him, with another man and because Arrow told me not to.
He told me to never let another man put his hands on me and I broke his rule, and now he looks like he’s going to kill that man.
Oh God.
I’m an idiot. He’s an idiot too because nothing was happening anyway and I have to go stop him before he does something crazy.
I break apart from Will, who looks at me with astonishment.
But I don’t have the time to explain. I have to stop the bulldozer of a guy who’s very quickly coming upon us and who’s sitting out the season because he did something similar.
And if his words from the night he took my virginity hold any truth to them, no one will be able to pull him off Will until Arrow actually murders him.
So I rush over to intercept him and we meet a few feet away from the bar counter.
I put both my hands on his stomach, palms wide open, and I swear it’s like stopping a giant boulder.
“Arrow, stop. No,” I tell him, hoping and praying he listens to me before anyone else gets wind of the fact that The Blond Arrow is among them and he’s very angry.
His jaw tics at my voice but he hasn’t looked away from Will.
I fist the gray-colored dress shirt he’s wearing. “Arrow. Please. He’s just a friend.”
At this, finally, he looks at me.
It feels like he does it in slow motion. His eyes shifting away from Will, his spiky eyelashes flicking down and his gaze, so dark and intense, coming to rest on me.
“Friend.”
He says that word in a low growl and I flinch.
Oh shit.
That’s the worst thing that I could’ve said.
I shake my head and dig my knuckles into his body. “I didn’t mean it that way. You know I didn’t. Arrow, he was just –”
My words get cut off when he steps away from me.
It happens so suddenly that I can’t quite believe it. Wasn’t I holding him tightly? Weren’t my fingers fisting his shirt?
How did he break that hold so easily?
Like it meant nothing, me holding onto him.
Like I meant nothing.
And then he takes one last look at me before spinning around and leaving.
He’s leaving.
He’s just… walking away. He just came back from LA and somehow appeared at the bar and now he’s leaving.
Because I was stupidly dancing with a guy who meant nothing.
Oh God.
I rush after him when I see him stepping out the front door. I come into the night and frantically, look around.
He’s walking around the bar, probably headed to the alley that connects to the parking lot in the back.
“Arrow. Stop,” I call out.
But he doesn’t.
I didn’t expect him to, honestly. So I pump my legs harder. He’s taught me a lot about running in the past couple of weeks and I use that to my advantage now and reach him just as he gets past the row of big black dumpsters.
I go around him and put my hands on his stomach again.
“Arrow, please. I didn’t… I didn’t do anything,” I tell him, getting close to him, fisting his shirt once more even though I know it won’t make a difference.
But that’s all the more reason to do something because he’s just so harsh and sharp right now.
“You let him put his hands on you,” he says, roughly, tightly.
The light in the alley is questionable.
There’s a little bulb somewhere a few feet away from him, though his shoulders that seem to have grown overnight are hiding it.
And the moon is reddish as always in his presence but it’s so far away tonight that it leaves Arrow in shadows and mystery.
Which I totally hate.
“Arrow, listen, okay? Listen.” I pull at his shirt, looking up at him. “I was just sitting there at the bar and this song came on. And Will, the guy you saw me dancing with, he told me he was a Lana Del Rey fan and he just pulled me up for a dance, okay? You know how much I love her and –”