His eyes leave mine when he stands and starts to pace in front of me on the porch. The music I hadn’t even noticed being so loud before vibrates through the wall of my parents’ house, but thankfully, the large group of my friends and other random kids from our graduating class have stayed inside during this conversation.
I force myself to watch him. His large body moves in choppy agitation and annoyed steps, so different from his normal fluid movements. He’s always moved in a way that looked almost like he floated. His large body always moves with a graceful silence that reminded me of a ballet dancer. Which in turn would cause me to giggle uncontrollably because just thinking of the manly man in front of me in tights is too much to imagine.
“You just turned eighteen, Em. Just. Turned. You might not understand what I’m saying, but dammit, you don’t even understand what you’re saying. It’s a crush. That’s it. All I’m saying is that you’re going to be able to make sense of that better when you’re older. Not to mention, I’m six years older than you are. Six years is a huge deal. Not just to everyone else, but our families would shit themselves. Not to mention, what your dad would do? Do you even have any idea what people would say?”
“I’m not a baby,” I snap, at a loss of what else to say, as I ease back down onto the swing’s seat.
He stops his pacing and turns to face me. One hand pushes through his thick dark hair in frustration. I watch in fascination as his overly long hair moves in a thick wave before falling back into the mess it’s always been since he decided to start growing it out. When he stops, his hand rests at the base of his skull and the end of his hair falls over a few fingers.
Finally, his words reach my lust-filled brain and a new burst of anger fills me. Making me feel even more the fool.
“I’m not a baby!” I repeat on a yell into the still night, my voice shrill, and I cringe at the emotional hit his words cause me.
“I didn’t say you were. You just don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“I assure you, I do.”
He shakes his head, his hand still resting on the back of his neck. I notice briefly that his grip has tightened to the point of his fingertips turning white. When he starts to move forward, closing the distance from where he’s standing and where I’m perched at the edge of the swing’s seat, I jerk back, making the chains holding the swing up rattle loudly. He narrows his eyes and lets out a long breath. Dropping to his knees in front of me, he pulls my hands from their death grip on the wood next to my bare thighs. He doesn’t speak for the longest time, and I foolishly let that flicker of hope light, thinking he must have realized he’s wrong.
“I’m sorry, Em, but I don’t feel that way toward you. I don’t want to hurt you or lose your friendship. You might hate me for it, but we just can’t be what you’re saying. You loving me would do nothing but cause your heart ruin.”
“You’re wrong.” I force the words past that damned lump in my throat.
“I’m not,” he says softly, a sad smile ghosting over his lips, gone just as quickly as it appeared. “We’re friends and always will be. One day, you’ll see that.”
Pulling my hands from his, I instantly miss the warmth of his skin as I stand and move around him. He doesn’t move from his crouched position, nor does he turn to look when I move around him.
“I know what I feel, and you’re going to be the one who has some grand understanding one day when you realize what you’re denying. Sure, I might be young, but I’m not a baby and I know what I feel. I also know that you’re using our families as an excuse. Especially my father because he also knows that I’m smart enough to know my own feelings and follow my heart. I thought you were someone different, Nate, I really did. I …” I sigh deeply, the one sound full of so much emotion. “You know what? Just forget I even said anything. We can chalk it up to me having some foolish, childish, drunk admission. After all, I’m just a kid … what do I know?”
It takes every ounce of strength I can muster to turn and walk away from him. Leaving pieces of my heart smashed on the deck at his feet while he just sits there and lets me go. The tiny sliver of my heart that had held on praying he would change his mind and stop me dies and joins the rest of the pieces on the ground.
Unfortunately for me, I’m so lost in my own pity party that I miss it. I walk away without knowing that the second my back was turned, he had silently moved, jumping to his feet. One arm started to reach out to me, only to drop heavily at his side after I moved out of his reach. I was so blinded by my own heart breaking that I missed the visible pain on his face as he felt the same pain with each step I took away from him.
Had I looked back, even stopped for just one second, maybe I would have heard his whisper, but instead, his words just floated away with my dying hope.
“I love you, too, Ember.”