He looks away from me, but I see his cheeks redden and I know it’s from embarrassment and not because he’s crafting a lie.
“What do you want me to tell you, Ravenna?” he whispers as he stares down at his feet and kicks a stray rock away with the toe of his work boot.
“I want you to tell me the truth!” I shout at him, throwing my hands up in exasperation. “My parents have done nothing but lie to me these last few days and I’m sick and tired of it. I guess I just assumed that you were different. I figured that someone who would save a girl from drowning herself might actually be a good guy.”
He runs a hand nervously through his hair and puffs out a huge breath of air through his lips. I’m immediately hit with a memory of kissing him. It was dark outside and we were on the front porch. There was lightning off in the distance and the night was hot and muggy. His lips were soft and like nothing I’d ever felt before. I remember doing it because I knew it was wrong and that excited me. I was angry. So angry. Filled with so much hatred that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hit him or kiss him. I went with the kiss and instead of it making me feel better, it only made me madder because I liked it so much. I didn’t want to like it. I did it to prove a point and it all backfired. I remember slamming the door in his face, laughing at the shock on it.
“Jesus,” he mutters, interrupting my thoughts and pulling my eyes away from his lips. “Okay, fine. You want to know the truth? The truth is, I’ve had kind of a thing for you for two years and you’ve never given me the time of day that entire time. That is, up until two weeks ago. All of a sudden, you started seeking me out when I was working. I should have known something was off, but I was too damn happy that you were finally talking to me. You were so different from the girl I’d been watching from afar for two years. Different from the rumors I’d heard and the things I’d seen with my own eyes.”
“Different how?” I whisper, unsure if I want him to answer since I’m starting to realize that I might have been a really awful person before all of this happened.
“I don’t know, just different. Your hair was always perfectly done and your dresses were always perfectly pressed. You walked around with your nose up in the air like you were better than everyone,” he informs me.
“Well, that explains why you had a crush on me. I sound like a wonderful person,” I reply sarcastically.
“Ravenna, I’m a guy. And you are very, very beautiful. My crush was only skin deep, believe me.”
That makes me feel so much better.
“Until two weeks ago,” he continues. “Then you were just…completely different than what I thought. You wore your hair down whenever you came to see me and you always had on jeans and a t-shirt, like right now. For the first time, I didn’t feel like I was a complete loser not worthy of your time. It was definitely weird that you started doing this out of the blue, but I wasn’t about to question it. I liked spending time with you. I guess I was pissed that day I dropped off the flowers because, all of a sudden, you were back to being the snobby girl with the perfect hair and the perfect clothes. And you clearly wanted nothing to do with me all over again.”
I can’t even be happy about the beautiful comment or that he liked spending time with me. I’m too busy being stuck on the fact that I was a huge snob. I was mean and I was a snob.
“And so you just naturally assumed I was faking a brain injury so I wouldn’t have to own up to treating you like a human being for the first time in two years,” I reply sarcastically. “That’s just wonderful.”
He takes a step toward me and he’s so close that I have to crane my neck to look up at him. His eyes are the most gorgeous shade of blue I’ve ever seen and I have a hard time looking away from them. I feel like I’ve waited my whole life for someone to look at me like I mean something to them and it makes my stomach churn and fills me with anger that I never got what I deserved. I deserved a good life, I deserved to be loved, and it’s not fair that the only thing I ever got was pain.
That thought…those words ringing in my head are so familiar that it makes my chest ache. I know those thoughts are true and something I believe with all of my heart. Something I cried and screamed and raged about for so long that it became my mantra, my way of life, and something I knew I would spend the rest of my life feeling because there would never be any escape from the pain.
I take a step away from Nolan and close my eyes, trying to picture myself saying these things. Trying to envision my surroundings and what would make me feel so desolate, but all I see is the darkness behind my eyelids.
“If it makes you feel any better, I definitely prefer the way you look right now,” Nolan says softly as I reopen my eyes to look at him.
“And how is that?” I whisper.