What If

Without noticing, she dropped her pen. It tumbled to the old, carpeted floor of the high school. I grabbed it up from the ground and turned to her. Her back was towards me as she walked the opposite direction than me.

“Hey,” I exclaimed. She turned around with that constant smile still curving her lips.

“Yes?” she asked.

“You dropped your pen.” I held out the pen for her and adjusted my backpack on my shoulder with the other hand.

She looked down at the black ballpoint pen and then back at my face. “You can keep it.”

An irrational amount of joy filled me. I felt like she had just given me some tremendous gift when in reality… it was a pen.

We didn’t speak again until that party. I didn’t even want to think about the douche who had Briar backed up and planned on taking her against her will. When I walked out there, I saw red. I wanted to murder that guy, but more than anything, I wanted to make sure she was okay. I threatened him and watched as he ran off and didn’t look back. Then I made my way to Briar who looked scared to death and like she wasn’t breathing. After comforting her and introducing myself, we really started talking. Somehow we ended up in an empty bedroom.

That’s when we really sat down and got to know one another. The more I learned, the more I liked. Interesting people aren’t the ones who agree with everything that you say. They don’t have to be wild and crazy. Interesting people are the ones that clearly have some deeper thoughts rolling through their brain. Briar had that. The comments she would make or the opinions she had on subjects were well thought out, but if she didn’t have an answer for something, she didn’t make up one that she thought would be similar to my thoughts. Instead she’d sit there quietly and mull over in silence, or she’d ask questions to help her understand further.

Of course, we ended up on the subject of sex. That always seems to get brought up when you’re having a conversation with a truly stunning girl. Honestly, it was me that brought it up because, well, when I had Briar lying next to me on the ground and an arm resting across her waist, how could I not bring it up?

Briar blushed bright red, but then she giggled lightly.

“I’ve only kissed a couple of boys.”

I was shocked. Briar was the type of girl guys definitely wanted to kiss. Her only being kissed by a few of them, and the fact that’s as far as she’d ever gone, dumbfounded me.

“What’s that look for?” she asked.

“Just a little hard to believe,” I answered truthfully. I began rubbing my fingers back and forth over the shirt covering her hip. I wasn’t going to try and kiss her because, I was sure, she’d want to know me better before that happened. That didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy flirting with her. She didn’t seem to mind.

“What part is hard to believe?” she asked, her eyes closed, her eyelashes touching the tops of her cheekbones. Her head was resting on her right arm.

“That you haven’t gone further.”

Her brown eyes opened and met mine. “I’m waiting until I really love someone.” Her eyebrows drew together as she thought about what she wanted to say. I waited patiently, wondering what she’d come up with. “It’s not what you think. I’m not on some moral high, preaching that anyone who has sex is wrong or immature or not ready,” she started. “I just know me and I know that for me it’s going to have to mean something for me to really enjoy it. And honestly, I’m in no hurry to fall in love. So I don’t see my v-card being deactivated anytime soon.” She laughed softly, “That doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy all the stuff that comes before sex. I’m a teenager after all. I have to make some mistakes at some point, right?” she teased.

“Yeah, just be careful with those mistakes. Some you can’t take back. Sometimes you think you’re just having fun with someone, but then one or both of you ends up getting hurt because of miscommunication,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t have to explain further but knowing she was going to ask for more.

“Hold up, you didn’t answer your own question. Are you a virgin? Then after you answer that, I want to know what that little spiel was about.” She poked her finger into my chest.

Closing my eyes and huffing out a lung full of air, I began, “Well lucky for you the answers to both of those questions are related to one another.” She perked up, resting her head on her hand. “I had sex this past summer for the first time. It was with a friend of mine. She’d been my friend for a while; we live on the same street. She told me we were just having fun. That’s all I wanted, and she agreed that’s all that it was. Things went further one night. We slept together; we were both virgins until that night. Afterwards, it was weird. It was like a friendship just disappeared. We didn’t know how to act around each other. Eventually, we just stopped talking. I didn’t call her, and she didn’t call me. Now we go out of our way to not see each other.” Briar watched me closely, listening intently to every word.

“That sucks,” she proclaimed. “So, you lost a friend all because of sex?” she pondered.

Just like that, I came to a decision. It was the most ignorant decision I’d made to date. When she said those words, I saw our friendship ending horribly all because I selfishly wanted to act on lust-filled feelings that could’ve ended up going away with time. I promised myself that I wouldn’t allow Briar and me to ruin this friendship all for a little bit of fun and one big, massive mistake.

She fell asleep next to me. Her chest rose and fell, every once in awhile she’d scoot an inch or two closer. I watched her for a long time, wondering what we could’ve been like together, but knowing that a friendship with Briar would be better than not having her at all. Someone knocked on the door to the room we were in. Standing, I made my way to the door, cracking it open. It was Josh, the guy who threw the party.

“You coming out here, man? We’re about to play truth or dare. The girls have all been begging to play all night,” he said.

I looked over my shoulder at Briar.

“Yeah, sure,” I muttered and closed the door behind me as gently as I could.

As idiotic as it sounds, I had no idea that Darcy was Briar’s best friend. If I’d known that when Darcy sat in my lap, I would’ve pushed her off. However, I didn’t have that knowledge. Instead, I imagined Darcy was Briar. When she kissed me, I kissed her back.

Darcy and I started dating that night. It shoved me deeper into Briar’s life. We were forced into seeing each other nearly every day since she was Darcy’s best friend. Normally, I wouldn’t complain about spending time with Briar because I wanted to be with Briar as much as possible. But being around Briar when I was supposed to only be thinking about Darcy in the ways I was thinking of Briar was really damn hard.

Looking back later, I’d realize the mistake wasn’t acting on my feelings for Briar; it was not acting on them.





After that Saturday when Arrow came over after my break up with Kai, there was shift in our relationship. It was akin to our friendship before my year of numbness and lack of emotion, yet there was this new charge. It seemed as if all the feelings I’d been pushing down for the past year were all boiling over at the same time. Some days Arrow made me laugh harder than I could ever remember laughing in the past. My stomach would clench so tightly my eyes would sting with happy tears and my loud giggles would become that silent laugh where your mouth is open but your vocal chords can’t seem to rub together like their supposed to in order to produce a sound. Other times he’d make me so mad that I wanted to just scream and cuss at him for days, most of the time over something small and inconsequential. Everything was coming to a head, and the difficulty to hold back everything that I wanted to say was getting out of hand. I feared that at any moment I would burst and just announce in front of anyone in my path that I was in love with Arrow Donovan.