10. Allie #3
“I’m such a loner,” she admits softly, as if the words are difficult to say.
“I never go to school functions because I don’t have anyone to go with.
I’m tired of feeling like a fucking loser, especially during my senior year.
I just wanted to experience something for once, but I only wanted to do so with you. ”
Her words tear me right open, and I’m suddenly afraid my ruptured heart is going to bleed all over her sheets.
I’ve always known Allie had a hard time making friends.
It was almost as if Willow, Zander, and I were her first—literally, in infanthood—and she decided she wasn’t going to try for any others as she grew up.
Though, I never knew it was this bad. I didn’t know how isolated she felt at her school, and how much she was relying on me, and this dance, to break out of that.
“Fuck, Allie…” I crawl toward the front of her bed, sitting beside her against the headboard as I wrap one arm around her shoulders. “I had no idea. How can I make it up to you?”
She curls into my chest, resting her arm over my stomach. “Don’t worry about it. I just need to survive another six months and I’ll be done here for good.”
I hate the idea of her living out her last year of high school like this. Missing opportunities and traditions because she doesn’t feel like she fits in. I drop my chin atop her head, inhaling the sweet floral scent of her shampoo.
“Let me take you to prom,” I murmur into her hair, planting my lips there. “We’ll go to the one at my school, with Willow. We can all be together.”
She tilts her head, cheek brushing against the fabric of my dress shirt as she peers up at me, eyes glistening through long lashes. I grasp her chin, tilting it upward, swiping a thumb beneath her eyes as a tear spills over.
“What’s wrong, Amor?” I whisper.
Her chin quivers as she shakes her head. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Archer. I… I think we should probably just be friends now.”
My ribs ache when her rejection funnels through me. My heart seems to claw itself out of my chest and make its way up my throat to escape her cutting words.
It’d hurt far less if she’d punched me in the gut instead.
Now, I’m choking on dismissal, only capable of spitting out a fractured, “Oh.”
She takes a shaky inhale, scrambling out of my arms and up on her knees before she throws her leg over me and straddles my hips.
She takes my face between her palms, eyes withdrawn and devastated as she offers me a trembling, closed-lip smile.
The new position does nothing to dull my pain—it reminds me of that night she was mine.
Of the way she felt beneath my hands when we claimed each other in a way that can’t ever be replaced.
She breathed life into me the last time she sat atop me like this, and now, with my hands on her hips and her chest against mine, she’s destroying me too.
“I was so mad at you tonight, Archer. I wasn’t seeing you as my best friend, I was seeing you as my boyfriend, and I was so mad.
It was breaking my heart.” She chokes on her tears.
“I… I can’t risk us messing up and ruining everything.
We can hardly handle living two hours apart without getting hurt, how the hell are we going to handle it if you go to school in Texas? We can’t do this to each other.”
I shake my head rapidly, slipping my hands beneath the hem of her tee so I can feel her bare skin. I sink my fingers into her hips, holding her against me—refusing to let her end this. “I don’t have to go to school in Texas. I can stay here. With you.”
“No, Archer,” she whispers, a tear dripping off her jaw and landing on my cheek. “You can’t. You need to go where it is best for your future. If that’s Texas, or Alabama, or Florida—you go.”
My nose stings, eyes heavy as the weight of this conversation presses down on my emotions. “But, I—”
“I know.” She nods. “Me too.”
My inhale is fucking ragged as she drops her face into my neck and her tears drip into my skin. I cradle the back of her head, sliding my other hand up her spine, holding her against me.
“Can I still hold you tonight?” I ask, my voice a fractured mumble.
“Yeah,” she whispers.
She lifts off me, falling onto her side as I lift out of her bed and strip out of my clothes, leaving only my pants on before I crawl back in beside her.
Allie throws the duvet over us, curling onto her side and burrowing against my chest as she fits one of her knees between my legs and I wrap her in my arms.
She cries against my heart, and my tears fall into her hair as I drag my knuckles along her spine—attempting to soothe the heartache we’ve created tonight.
I don’t know how to make sense of it—holding the person you love, knowing they love you back, and still being unable to make it work.
I’ve always believed in fate—that Allie and I were born to love each other. Now, I wonder if it’s a curse instead. To have the one right in front of me, yet always out of grasp. To be handed my dreams on a fucking platter, but know I can only take them if it means letting go of her.
I can’t let my mind wander that far, not when she’s right here, right now.
I hold her tighter, closing my eyes, savoring the sound of her breathing as it carries me to sleep, because I know it’s the only time I’ll ever experience her this way.