“Love is like lightning. You never know when it’s going to strike until it hits you right here.” Bailey touched her chest and smiled as I looked back to my coffee cup. I ran an index finger around the rim as I pondered their answers.
“What do you think love is?” Janel asked me, and I turned my eyes back to her. She was frowning in concentration with her chin balanced on her palm. I’d never seen her look so focused, not even in class.
“For me, love is…” I mumbled awkwardly. I was always embarrassedwhen I had to talk about my thoughts on such personal subjects, but I was the one who had started this conversation, and talking to my friends could only help me.
“It’s when you see the one you love and your hands start to sweat and your legs get weak and your heart starts beating. You like everything about him, even the little things. Even the flaws. Love is when you can see a whole universe in his eyes. It’s when you can smell his scent even when you’re sitting on a park bench and you look up from your book because it suddenly feels like he’s right there, all around you. Love is when his face is constantly sneaking into your thoughts. Love is when he makes himself at home in your head with no intention of ever leaving it and, for the microscopic bit of time, you get to go somewhere else. Love is when the days pass slower because he’s not there. When you look for his eyes in other people’s faces, but his color is too special, too rare, so it could never belong to anyone else. Love is when, for better or for worse, you can let go of all the bitterness and hate. Love is when you’re willing to shoulder your beloved’s baggage from the past and ease some of the burden as he moves into a better future. It’s when you accept him unconditionally because you just…love him.”
I opened up and gave voice to everything I was feeling in that moment. The emotions were so powerful, so intense, that I couldn’t control them. Talking them out should have felt like a weight off, but instead it did nothing but confirm something I’d been suspecting for a long time: I didn’t just have chemistry with Neil; my feelings for him were strong and inevitable.
“Wow,” Janel whispered as though she’d just witnessed some dazzling spectacle.
“If that’s the Neil Miller effect, I’ve got to meet this guy,” Bailey put in. What neither of them knew, however, was that there were a lot of Neil Miller effects, and most of them weren’t positive.
Like the bonfire, for example, where he’d made me feel two inches tall with his condescension and cutting “jokes” that would have made anyone lose their cool. We’d gotten into a heated argument and then I’d cried in front of him because I realized that Neil was struggling. He was struggling with himself.
It had taken me too long to really understand, but, now that I did, I couldn’t really get angry at him. Even if it did make me look like a girl devoid of pride or dignity to outsiders. I had finally figured out that if I wanted to break through the shadows that surrounded Neil, I couldn’t use rage or distance from him to do it.
We needed to take to the skies together, united against adversity, just like Peter Pan and Tinkerbell.
Quickly, before I could overthink it, I got out my phone and typed a text to him.
I figured out the answer.
That night in the bedroom of the beach house, Neil had asked where I would be if I could be anywhere I wanted, and I had finally, if belatedly, understood what he’d been getting at. Neil was unusually deep as well as complex and he always hid a part of himself in the things he said. That was why he never wasted words. I often felt inadequate, unable to keep up with him or immediately intuit his meaning.
I stared uncertainly into the darkened screen of my phone. Neil might not even reply. On the beach he had rejected the possibility of any sort of relationship between us, after all. But I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt certain things when we got too close, when our eyes communicated wordlessly in a way others couldn’t understand.
Janel and Bailey had started talking again by then, and I heard Tyler’s name. Apparently Bailey was still obsessed with him. I just kept checking my phone and imagining Neil getting that text and thinking it was from some crazy person or, even worse, from a girl who had a crush on him.
When my phone vibrated against my thigh, I jumped. Then I immediately unlocked the screen to read his text.
And what’s that, Babygirl?
He had responded to me with the nickname that I loved. He usually called me that when he was in a good mood or when he was trying to seduce me. So maybe he wasn’t mad at me? Had his meltdown on the beach simply been a moment of…weakness? Confusion?
Mr. Disaster was a mess of contradictions, and I was getting to be the same way.
A faint yearning made me clench my legs at the memory of all the times I’d given in to lust with him, but the guilt that usually followed was gone.
Gone completely.
Neverland. I would want to be there with you, and I know that you would too.
I smiled slightly because I loved to tease him.
Aren’t you mad about the things I said to you?
There he was—the childish version of Neil who tried every trick he knew to get away from me. But now I knew his game.
If he were living another life, he would have fought for someone like me. In this one, he didn’t have the strength to fight another impossible battle. He thought I was going to judge him. He thought all women were like Kimberly and would only ever use him as an object. He lived his whole life confined by these beliefs and deprived himself of the most beautiful parts.
And those parts did exist. Happiness was for everyone, after all; one just had to know where to look for it.
I am, yes, but I’ve also forgiven you, I wrote.
I’m not going to apologize, he texted back immediately, like he’d just been waiting for my message. Maybe he was glued to his phone just like I was. Maybe his heart was beating hard too. Maybe he was missing me, though he never would have told me if he were.
I don’t expect you to, I tapped out quickly. This was a clear sign that I was starting to get him: I didn’t need his apologies. Neil knew that I wanted to dig deeper into him, and he was trying to protect himself.
