Chapter 13 #3
“No,” I blurt sternly. It comes out really harsh, but I have to stand my ground with this. I can’t let myself fall into that trap again. “There’s no way.”
Lucy doesn’t seem intimidated by my tone. She shrugs and says, “Come to the game and find out.”
Mila says, “What’s going to the game going to do?”
Gianna says, “Nothing really. It’s after the game where something might go down.”
I look to Mila again.
Lucy says, “There’s no party this weekend that I know of.”
Mara says, “The boys are probably beat from raging every weekend.”
“The Halloween party was a lot,” Lucy adds.
For a long time, there was a very bright flame inside of me.
I carried it inside my chest since I was in sixth grade, and every time I would see Blue, the flame would burn brighter and longer, like he was the fuel for my soul, like he was my will to live in some specific way I’ve never been able to articulate to anyone, not even Mila.
I looked forward to school days because of him. I looked forward to certain classes because of him. I paid extra attention in those classes in case he ever needed help with the work, in case the universe arranged for one micro-moment for us to collide.
I always made myself available.
I always put my interest in him first.
Right now —
Lucy just dropped a tank of gasoline on that fire.
It’s almost like the moment you’ve been waiting for your entire life is finally in reach, and you don’t know what to do with it.
You don’t know how to act. You don’t know how to feel.
You don’t know whether to run toward it or run away from it.
You don’t know whether the moment is real or whether you have, in your years of waiting for it, manufactured a version of it that’s going to crumble the instant you reach for it.
I wish I could turn back time and reframe the last few years of my life.
I wish I could go back to fifteen and tell the girl who got called stalker in front of his friends that he didn’t mean it.
I wish I could go back to seventeen and tell the girl falling asleep with her hand on his chest that he was going to leave at five in the morning, but he was going to feel it, and she was never imagining it.
I wish I could go back to nineteen and tell the girl sending him a text message that he was, in fact, thinking about her too.
Mila and I were so convinced of the opposite.
And right now, in my living room with my new friends looking at me, I can’t believe how wrong we might have been.
Mila knows.
I’m just staring at her, and she’s staring back. I tune the girls out, and I keep trying to apply the math.
One plus one doesn’t equal eight.
How the hell is this happening?
I was done with him. For good. And now, there’s a searing hot emotion in my throat that is begging to be released. I can’t release it here. Not in front of these girls.
“Mila,” I murmur.
She nods, so I stand.
“Where are you going?” Mara asks when Mila stands up.
“We just need a second.”
We walk into my bedroom in a rush. Once we’re inside, I close the door and turn to her.
“What the fuck?”
“What the fuck,” she says back.
“No, seriously. What the fuck, Mila?”
I start pacing. My hands don’t know what to do with themselves. I have them in my pockets. I have them out of my pockets. I have them at my throat. I have them in my hair. I have them at my face.
“Do you really believe that?”
She shakes her head. “That’s hard to believe.”
“It can’t be real.”
She shakes her head again, agreeing with me. “No. How can it be?”
I stop pacing and turn to her. I almost shout it. “Right?”
Mila sits on my bed and shrugs. “Maybe we were wrong. Maybe he was a dick to you because he really liked you. I mean––” She lifts her hands up. “He did sleep with you.”
“Yeah, but you and I both said he did that hoping I’d leave him alone.” My voice has gone high. I sound hysterical. “Right? Like he just wanted to give me what he thought I wanted, and then he disappeared.”
She takes a moment to think.
“I don’t get it. If he’s been in love with you this entire time, why would he — why would he treat you like shit?”
I throw my hands.
“He just ignored me, more than anything.”
She thinks about that. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “What are you going to do?”
“I —”
I open my mouth.
I close it.
I don’t have an answer.
My chest is in a thousand knots. My fingers won’t stay still. The breath in my lungs has gone shallow, and I’m breathing through my nose.
I stop and take a deep breath in. It comes out shaky. The kind of shaky that means the tears are right there at the edge.
“I can’t do this.” It comes out of me half a cry. “I can’t do this again, Mila. He’s never wanted me.” I stare straight into her eyes. “You know out of everyone how much he led me on.”
Mila stands. She crosses the bedroom in two steps. She wraps her arms around me, and her chin lands on my shoulder, and the smell of her shampoo and perfume fills my nose.
This is too heavy for my heart to withstand. The gates swing open in my chest, and I start sobbing. “I’m so fucking pathetic.”
“You’re not.”
“I am.” I pull back, wiping my face with the back of my hand, and my mascara is already gone. I have nothing left to ruin, so I let the tears keep coming.
She shakes her head.