Track 5 To You
“To You”
SCHOOL STARTED BACK up, and we all found a new routine.
It was our senior year, and we were excited to be in the final stretch of high school—everyone except for Enzo.
He had barely scraped through graduation the year before, and was being forced into a dorm-style trade school for a few months by his father.
It was only a three hour drive away, but he referred to it as ‘the prison sentence,’ since none of us would be able to visit much.
Lara and Kasey became my only close friends in school, though Kasey tended to skip a lot. E went back home during the week now that summer was over, so I didn’t see him as much anymore. I missed him, but after everything that happened over the summer, I was also relieved.
Enzo and I made things official shortly after that night, but it didn’t make me feel better about its events.
I actually felt like it was just an excuse to ‘practice’ now that he’d conquered his mountain, but I didn’t see him much before he left, so there wasn’t much practicing that went on.
Things were different with everyone, but we adjusted.
E and I found a new normal, too. Things weren’t how they used to be, but sometimes there’d be a flash of what was—the moments we’d end up in our own little world in the middle of gatherings.
We still debated about music and who made the best pizza in town—it was Atelio’s, hands down.
And when my spiral notebook was with me, it was still E I wanted to read it to—I just didn’t anymore.
There was a silent understanding among us. One that kept us captive between who we once were and who we would become. I’ll never forget the day we broke free of that mold.
It was an unseasonably warm day in November—and by warm, I mean it was sixty-eight degrees and sunny.
I was lying in the grass at the park we used as a second home when E showed up.
I couldn’t make out his face from a distance, but I knew it was him.
It was that swagger. That walk of complete confidence—like he owned the whole world and he knew it, but it never went to his head the way it would with anyone else.
I tried to deny it, but the truth was I liked everything about him.
I liked the way his voice vibrated through me and his throaty laugh.
I liked the way he held a cigarette rolled within his index finger instead of between two, like everyone else.
I liked the way he never laughed at the asshole jokes or made fun of anyone less cool than him—which was everyone in my book.
I liked the way he saw right through people—right through me with this quiet kind of defiance that made me want to be more, even if I didn’t know how. I liked the way he looked at me like he already knew the parts I tried to hide, and he didn’t flinch. He just… stayed.
“What’s up, girl?” he said, his voice low and warm.
“I don’t know, boy, what’s up?” I shot back with a smirk.
He plopped down next to me and my spiral notebook. Not too close, but close enough for me to feel the charge.
“What’cha writing?” he asked, nodding at my notebook.
I closed it quickly, suddenly embarrassed. “Just words.”
“Let me see.” He reached for the book, and I pulled away.
“No,” I said too quickly.
“I thought it was just words,” he teased, his eyes glinting with mischief.
“It is. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Then let me see,” he said, snatching the book from my hands before I could stop him.
He flipped it open to the page I’d scribbled in a moment of weakness, and my heart stopped as he read the words to himself:
Pretend.
Remember that game we used to play
When we were innocent and young?
I want to do it all again, so please
Let’s play pretend—
Pretend I don’t want to feel your lips,
Or know the warmth of your hands.
Pretend I don’t want to breathe
The way you breathe,
Like only a lover understands.
Say you don’t feel it too,
So we can play pretend.
Go back to what we know we should,
Pretend that this will end.
Let me stop searching for the answers
To the ache that’s in my soul.
Tell me it was never real,
That the thoughts are mine alone.
Say what I crave was never true,
Never ours to own,
Then whisper that you love me,
And let me die alone.
He stared at it silently, and I felt my heartbeat in my toes.
“Who’s it to?” he asked, his voice quiet, serious.
I swallowed, afraid to answer. He looked at me, his eyes boring into mine, and I lied. “No one. Just thought of it.”
He nodded, but I could tell he didn’t believe me. Then his eyes moved to the pen in my hand, and he gestured for it. I passed it to him without a second thought.
He turned a few pages before finding a blank one.
The pen hit the paper in perfect, sweeping motions of his wrist, and I marveled at him—at the mark he was leaving in the book that held the deepest parts of my heart.
He tapped the end of his writing and closed the book quickly with a crooked smile, placing the pen on top.
When his eyes found mine again, there were a thousand unspoken words inside them.
There was a long pause, us just watching each other, and my heart thudded loudly in my ears.
I could feel the expansion of my lungs with each breath I tried to control.
I could feel the leaves turning colors in the autumn air.
I could feel the gravity pulling me into him with a force I could never overpower.
“Come on. I wanna show you something,” he said, breaking the silence.
He passed my book back to me and pushed against the ground as he stood. I wanted to see what he wrote, but I was too high off his presence to look. He held his hand out to lift me up, and I took it. I followed him through the grass and down the small hill that led to the parking lot.
And then I saw it.
“You got a car?!” I screamed excitedly.
He turned around and leaned against it, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “Pretty cool, right?”
“Insane cool! I love it!”
It was a 1998 white Cadillac Eldorado. A convertible with a black top and the sickest rims I’d ever seen.
“I mean, it screams pull me over because I’m up to no good, but I think that makes me love it more!”
He laughed, a deep, throaty sound, and I felt it run all the way through me. “It would.”
He turned and opened the door, holding his hand out for me to climb in. “Let’s ride, baby.”
I all but swooned. He was the coolest person I’d ever met, and he wanted to spend his time with me.
Everything he did was cool. Even the way he called me baby was cool.
It wasn’t desperate or manipulative like when Enzo said it.
It was effortless—like the word belonged to me before he even said it.
Like he designed it himself and gave it to me for safekeeping.
The way it slipped from his mouth on instinct had me spinning.
And damn, the way it sounded on his lips made me want to follow him to the ends of the earth.
We rode in his car all day long, going everywhere and nowhere at all.
E drove with one hand, his left elbow propped on his window, his hand covering his smile.
The Sacred Souls’ Can I Call You Rose played while I air-surfed the autumn wind.
It was beautiful and freeing and everything I needed it to be.
When the sun began to set, we turned around and started our trek back from the highlands, almost an hour away from home. I turned the music down.
“Can I ask you something?” I said, my voice timid, hesitant.
“Always.” He said it so matter-of-factly, and I believed him. I believed I could ask him anything, and he would answer me honestly, because that’s who he was.
I waited a moment, testing my confidence, allowing myself time to reconsider; to ask a different question than the one that was on my tongue. But I asked it anyway. “Why’d you sleep with Cashman?”
He didn’t look at me as he readjusted his position. “Why are you with Enzo?” he countered.
“That’s not the same thing.”
“Isn’t it?” His voice was soft, but there was an edge to it.
I didn’t have an answer for that. Because in a way, it was the exact same thing. I was with Enzo because he was there. Because he wanted me. Because he said all the right things at all the right times. Because needing someone and being needed back felt enough like love when you were lonely.
I swallowed. “It’s different.”
He looked at me then, and whatever softness lived in his eyes before was gone now, replaced with something colder. Not mean or angry. Just… honest. Like he knew he was going to hurt me, but he couldn’t lie to save me.
“I slept with her because I was angry and… upset that you were…” He didn’t have to finish because I already knew.
I knew Enzo had lied and said we were together before we ever were.
I knew E thought he was coming home to me, but instead came home to me belonging to someone else, and even though it wasn’t true, he thought it was, and it killed him, just like it would’ve killed me.
“I did it because for a minute, I wanted to forget you.”
My throat clenched tight. His words were a weight on my soul, like the truth always is— heavy and unavoidable. Something we wish we could take back, wish we could change, but never can.
“I guess we’re both pretty good at pretending,” I whispered.
He nodded once. “Yeah. I guess so,” he said, and a moment later, he turned the music back up.
We sat in silence the rest of the way home, lost in the weight of all we didn’t say. All we couldn’t say. The air felt thick and heavy, like if either of us dared to speak, it might all come spilling out—every buried feeling, every reckless mistake, every aching want we’d tried so hard to ignore.
So we said nothing.
And somehow, that said everything.
We pulled up to my house just after nightfall. He lowered the music as we came to a stop, and I turned to get out.
“Syd?” he said, his voice soft.
I turned around. “Yeah?”
I thought he was going to say something more, but he didn’t. Maybe he lost his courage, or maybe he decided it wasn’t worth the breath. Or maybe he was waiting for me to say it first. But I wouldn’t. I never could.
“See you tomorrow?” he said instead, and my heart felt sad for a reason I couldn’t place.
“Obviously,” I said with a sarcastic smile.
I climbed out and watched him drive away. He held his hand out the window in a motionless wave as he turned the corner, and I did the same.
My heart was heavy with the weight of his admission that mirrored my own. I hated how much I wanted to escape it, and felt no way out. I hated how much I wanted more of the boy I knew I could never have. I hated how much I wanted to know if he felt the way I did.
I went straight to the shower and tried to calm my nerves. I tried to focus on the easy parts of the day that I enjoyed: the music, the ride, his sweet crooked smile that found mine the whole time. I threw my notebook on my bed the second I got to my room.
Then I remembered his writing.
I searched every page until I found his perfect handwriting in solid black ink. There, with nothing else around it, were seven words that would change my life forever…
To You — I don’t want to pretend.