Track 3 Magnetic #2
But he was adamant. He took me by the hand and pulled me toward the stairs behind everyone. He spun me around so his back was facing the living room and took my chin between his fingers and thumb in the gentlest manner. My heart fluttered as he brought my eyes up to his.
“I really don’t want you walking in the dark, Syd. It’s dangerous. If anything happened to you…” His eyes searched mine, and my throat got tight and hot. My hands came to his waist, and I remembered all the reasons I was attracted to him—this soft, protective side of him that he saved only for me.
“Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“Sydney.”
He kept his eyes on mine, and everything in me wanted him to kiss me. But when I peeked behind him and found E’s eyes on us, Enzo suddenly felt too close.
I broke away from him, and with a kiss on the cheek and a quick goodbye to the room, I was out the door.
I was stuck in my mind, conflicted thoughts and alcohol swirling in my head.
I liked Enzo. A lot. Even though I shouldn’t.
Maybe because I shouldn’t. He was tall and fit, a whole year older than I was, and his rebellious nature pulled me in like a moth to a flame.
He wasn’t afraid of anything, challenged every authority, every boundary ever set, and it made him that much hotter in my teenage mind.
He looked at me like I was trouble, like there was a wildness in me I didn’t know yet, and he was bound to set it free.
But E—I was drawn to him in a deeper way.
There was something in him I needed to know.
It was something in his eyes—those sizzling stolen glances that told me he already knew the parts of me I kept hidden.
It seemed as though he had already read the unwritten chapters of my life.
I didn’t know why, but it made me feel sexy—seen, stripped bare, and somehow not violated at all.
Just…safe. Like nothing could ever hurt me with him, or please me without him.
And that admission, that provocative little conversation of ours, had me questioning everything I thought I wanted and who I wanted it with. I was charged, and I could feel it pulsing off my skin.
I was thankful for the late-night walk, if only to clear my head. I was happy I decided to leave when I did—before poor decisions were made, one way or the other.
“Hey, wait up,” a deep voice called from behind me.
My heart dropped to my stomach when I saw it was E. I stopped and waited for him to catch up, and when his eyes landed on mine with a smile, I was suddenly embarrassed, as if he could read my thoughts from minutes before.
“You don’t have to walk me.” I disliked having anyone do anything for me out of a sense of obligation, so I offered him the out.
But he just smiled and said, “It’s alright. I could use the space.” I smiled back, excited that walking with me was the equivalent of “space.”
We walked in silence for a while. I tried my hardest to think of nothing at all, but liquid courage formed more words.
“Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Never really liked anyone worth making my girlfriend, I guess.” It simultaneously stung and relieved me.
“Why don’t you have a boyfriend?”
“I don’t know, I just…never have.”
“What about Enzo?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I answered too quickly.
“No?” He arched a brow at me. “What is he then?”
This time I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know.
Enzo and I had been hanging out for around a year.
He kissed me for the first time three months before my birthday, but it never became anything more.
And I wasn’t sure I wanted it to. It was my first real kiss, but it was clearly Enzo’s millionth, as was everything else.
Enzo was experienced, and while parts of that were exciting, most of it intimidated me.
It meant he had expectations, and I wasn’t sure I enjoyed the pressure of them.
And I certainly didn’t enjoy the constant sexual references and innuendos.
We also didn’t have very much in common outside of the wrecked home lives we had.
Enzo’s mom was angelic and passed away before her time, leaving him alone with his dad who became a drunk soon after.
While my guardians beat the shit out of each other verbally, his guardian beat him physically.
“Beat” may be a slight exaggeration, but one time his dad smacked him over the head with the landline phone because he didn’t bring him beer back from the liquor store.
He called Enzo a cheap asshole, and Enz called him a drunk prick. We were fifteen.
E’s family was more normal. They had moved out of East Ridge right before I moved to town. I didn’t know their dynamics well, but it seemed like he had a normal upbringing for the most part. By "normal," I mean that his parents loved each other and him, which is all I could discern.
E was between two sisters, and I thought maybe that was why he was so easy to be around.
He liked music and talked about it like it was sacred—like it had saved him once, and he never stopped being grateful.
He’d drum rhythms on the table with his fingers and hum under his breath when he thought no one was listening, and I always loved to watch him.
He never needed the spotlight, but somehow, he always had it. He wasn’t loud or flashy or obnoxious at all. He was magnetic. He exuded a serene charm. And I think that’s what pulled me in from the start. Not to mention, he was beautiful.
“Okay. So, Earth, Wind, and Fire. You ready?” His deep bravado broke my thoughts. I smiled and nodded, knowing exactly what game we were playing.
“Let me guess, you’re going with a classic.” He thought for a moment, then clapped his hands. “‘September.’ So obvious.” He rolled his eyes, playfully mocking me, and I laughed.
"Oh, because you know me so well," I teased back.
“I’m starting to think I do, girl.”
“I don’t know, boy. Might throw you a curveball.
” I nudged his shoulder, and he sidestepped into the street with a breathy laugh.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him back to me, nervous for him to be too close to the sidewalk’s edge.
My palm fell into his for a second, and the electric shock that surged between them stopped me cold.
It wasn’t just a spark; it was something that felt alive. Something that made the world around us not matter, not even a bit.
His laughter faded as he looked at me, the grin lingering on his lips, softer now, like maybe he felt it too.
I should’ve let go. I meant to.
But my fingers stayed right where they were.
“I’d Rather Have You,” I said, and he didn’t respond, trying to process if there was a double meaning behind my words.
And there was. It was a secret admission.
One that I didn’t know how strongly I felt until that moment.
Of all the things in my life I had wished, this one I wished the most—that I had met E first.
His eyes searched mine as his throat dipped with a swallow, and suddenly I lost all my courage.
Because the truth was, I hadn’t met E first. I met Enzo first. And so did E.
Before E was my friend, he was Enzo’s. And that came with certain restrictions.
There were unspoken rules that couldn’t be broken, and we both knew them.
So, I let go of his hand.
“That’s my pick.” I started walking again, and he followed me after a few steps.
“That’s a good curveball,” he said, the hint of playfulness gone from his voice, and now it was me who wondered about double meanings.
We were almost to my house. Next was to pass the nighttime burger joint, where neighborhood drunks and off-duty cops often grabbed a late-night bite. It was a dangerous route considering the town curfew, but it saved nearly eight minutes of the walk. I veered toward the shortcut, and E stopped me.
“Let’s go the long way.”
“Why? It’s like three in the morning. I wanna get home.”
“Because it’s three in the morning. You wanna get dropped off home in a cop car?”
This was a true concern. It happened to me once before.
I begged and pleaded for the officer to take me anywhere but home, a friend’s house maybe, just to avoid the wrath of my mother when she was woken up in the middle of the night to her daughter in the back of a police car.
He didn’t oblige. Luckily, my dad answered the door, and he was too high to care, so it all worked out.
But the memory made me shiver with fear nonetheless, so I followed E down the longer dirt path that went around the shop and into the small patch of woods.
When I hesitated just before the trees, he held out a hand. “Come on,” he said, and his confident, deep voice alone made me feel safer than I’d ever been. E led me by the hand through the dark brush and out onto the sidewalk. When we made it out free and clear, he looked at me with a cocky grin.
“See? Master planner,” he said, and I nudged his shoulder again, but he was right. We just had to pass the apartment buildings, and we’d be on my street.
“Shut up,” I teased. And just as we began to laugh, a bright spotlight lit our way.
“Shit!” E said, and the next three seconds happened too fast.
He grabbed my arm and pinned me against the side of the apartment’s brick wall. He pulled his black hoodie over his head and leaned in. It was him against me, me against the wall, and my heart speeding against my chest.
“What’s happening?” I whispered, but he just looked down at me and said, “Shhh.”
His hands held me at my waist, and I loved the secure feel of them on me, like they belonged there.
His eyes peered down into mine, but it was too dark to tell if they were saying what mine silently were.
I almost wondered if I was alone in those feelings, but the quick rise and fall of his chest and the thumping of his heart against mine told me what I needed to know.
Every part of me wanted him in that moment, and in many more to come. But I made a good choice that night. I didn’t kiss him like I wanted to. Because even though I was drunk, I knew it was wrong, and I didn’t want to be wrong when it came to him.
When the coast was clear, we parted and nearly jogged the rest of the way to my house.
I made it in safely and made him promise to text me when he got back.
I spent a good amount of time collecting myself afterward, dizzy from more than just the alcohol I had consumed.
When my phone dinged only twenty minutes later with a text from E, my heart caught in my throat.
Fall in Love With Me, it read. That’s my pick.
I smiled into my phone like the lovestruck teenage girl I was. I didn’t text him back, too afraid to ruin whatever it was I was feeling. I fell asleep on a cloud, drunk on the hope of something that hadn’t happened yet but already meant everything.
The next morning, I read the text over and over, giddy and excited.
I suffocated the feelings of betrayal that kept rushing to the surface because I was proud.
I was proud of my drunken self for not kissing E when I had the chance, and I was even more proud of myself for not texting him back when all I wanted was to talk on the phone with him all night.
I told myself these were good choices I had made, and I truly believed they were.
The thing is, the world doesn’t stop spinning because you made one good choice. It just gives you a little balance before the next fall.