“I asked you to allow us to be real last night and you walked away. Explain what’s going on to me?”
Although his voice was soft and non-threatening, she could see the intensity burning in his eyes. He not only wanted an answer, he expected one.
“Listen, Tomasso. I know I didn’t fulfill my end of the contract, and I want you to know I don’t expect you to deliver on anything you promised me as a result.”
His gaze was hard and unyielding. He wanted her to feel its heavy weight.
“You think I’m here because I give a damn about some verbal contract we had?”
“Are you?”
The muscle at the corner of his jaw ticked as he moved closer to her.
“He lifted his hand toward her cheek and once his skin made contact against hers, he mellowed. The tension bleeding out of him as he looked down at her.
“I’m here because I want my heart back, Sweetness. You took it when you left me.”
She saw real hurt etched into the lines of his face, and it pissed her off.
“Well, since you not only took my heart when you left me, but threw it on the ground and stomped on it right in front of me, I’d say I’m still ahead in this broken heart game.”
“Najah—”
She pulled away from him. “No. No, Tomasso. You don’t get to tell me about your broken heart when you intentionally destroyed mine.”
His eyes widened and his jaw tightened. He was surprised and pissed about her refusal of him. Good. She was sick of him ignoring their history to make their past easier to swallow.
“I was a poor kid on scholarship at that preppy ass school for rich kids. For four years I took the abuse of your fellow entitled classmates. I took the mean pranks, the whispers, and the taunting laughter as I walked down the halls.”
He took a breath to speak, but she held up her hand. “Yes, your buddies minded their p’s and q’s when you were present. But you couldn’t be with me every single moment of every day I spent in that hell hole.”
She pulled a hand down her face, turning around before she removed her jacket, hanging it on the banister before sitting on the bottom step.
“As terrible as the hazing was, I never let those people touch me. What they said couldn’t hurt me because I knew who I was and why I was there. And knowing that my boyfriend…my best friend knew me and loved me too, nothing they could’ve said would ever have mattered.”
Her eyes began to burn, and she could feel the unshed tears trying to spill, but she refused. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“And that’s why when you were accepted into your dream school all the way on the West Coast, I didn’t think twice about turning down the acceptances and scholarships I’d earned to follow you across the country. You, the boy who’d loved and respected me on sight. You, the boy who’d done all he could to protect me from my tormentors. You, the boy who’d stolen my heart. And then two days after graduation, you, the boy who had my heart and devotion, you broke up with me, and told me it was because I didn’t fit into your world. That we were too different. That I was too different.”
She trembled from the memory of that day and the quaking allowed fissures in the emotional fortress she’d spent years fortifying. And this time when she tried to fight the tears, she couldn’t.
They poured hot and fast down her face. While she could see his body poised to try to comfort her, he refrained, and she was grateful. Because when he touched her, she lost sight of reality, of the way things were. She only focused on how good he made her feel in the moment.
“It didn’t matter when those other kids said I didn’t belong, Tomasso. But when you said it, it mattered more than anything else in the world.”
She wiped her face, but the tears kept coming, and she didn’t know how she would ever make them stop.
“I can’t just forgive and forget and allow us to be real again, Tomasso. No matter how badly I want to. Not when you cut me so deeply.”
He stepped in front her, kneeling so that they were eye to eye. Sadness and what looked like remorse cloaked him. Whatever he was about to say, she knew he really meant it. Yet, she still couldn’t see how any words could change what was between them.
“A week before graduation, you went out shopping after school with your grandmother, and I came home to find your dad and my parents sitting in the living room waiting for me.”
He placed his hands over hers, and at first, she thought it was to calm her. But when she felt trembling in his hands, she wagered the reassurance was for himself.
“They told me they love us and loved us together, but we were too young to make the kind of commitment we were headed for. You were giving up everything to follow me to the West Coast, and I was gonna let you because I wanted you with me. But they pointed out that the scholarships you were being offered on the East Coast would make a life-changing difference in your world. That I had a million and one opportunities in front of me because I came from money. This was your only shot.”
Najah thought back to that day. She was so happy about graduating and over the moon fantasizing about her and Tomasso’s future together.
