“What’d you just say?” he asks in a low voice.
In the most dangerous voice I’ve ever heard. A voice that causes my hickey – the very first love bite that he gave me – to burn and throb.
I swallow, pressing my hand further into my stomach, feeling chilled. “I-I…”
“You love me.”
I swallow again. “I didn’t mean it.”
“So you don’t love me.”
“No, I do. I…”
His eyes narrow. “Well, which is it?”
Oh God.
Why does he have to look so intimidating right now? So tall and big and dark, his sun-struck hair all wet and brown.
I don’t know how to handle this.
But I have to handle it, right?
I just said it. I can’t take it back.
Iwon’ttake it back.
Just because it’s scary doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it.
Just because it was only a half-formed idea in my head to tell him, doesn’t mean it’s not true.
So I take a deep breath and say, “Okay, let me just start at the beginning. I write you letters. Not the ones we’ve been exchanging these past few weeks but others. Like, really long ones where I tell you about my day and I tell you what I did and who I talked to and who I saw and you know, where I just make general conversation with you. And I’ve been doing that for the past eight years.”
I take a pause here to look him in the eyes; they’ve turned inscrutable now, his gaze along with his smooth, unruffled features as the snow falls around us.
“Since I was ten,” I continue. “Since the day I saw you in the kitchen and you told me not to tell your mom about the juice thing and you asked me if I was cold. I… I wanted to answer you. I wanted to tell you that I wasn’t. I mean, Iwas. But then you came in through the door, all sweaty and panting and the room was all yellow, you know? Because the sun was streaming through the windows and you appeared so… sun-struck. And as soon as I saw you, I felt this strange warmth flowing inside mybody. And it made me feel so good and I wanted to tell you that. But then…”
I part my lips and my breath comes out all foggy and white and I bite my lip to compose myself. I bite my lip because he’s all frozen now.
Frozen and smooth and listening.
He’slisteningto me, to my story. As if he’s riveted.
Or maybe I’m imagining things because I wanna make it easier for myself.
“But then, I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell you that I wasn’t cold. That you made my cold go away. And I couldn’t talk to you like I wanted to. So I started writing you letters. Every night I’d write you a letter and I’d fold it and put it in an orange envelope, and then I’d put that in a shoebox that I hid under my bed. When I moved to St. Mary’s, I brought that box with me. It’s a couple, more than a couple of shoeboxes actually because I’ve written you a lot of letters. And I had them with me the night I was running away too.”
I sniffle and rub my chilled nose with the back of my hand before straightening up my spine and beginning the awful,awfulpart of the story. “You asked me why I was running away that night and if there was a boy involved. There was and that boy is you.”
My confession wrings out a tiny reaction on his part.
A very tiny, one-syllable word that he says in a flat tone.
“Me.”
I jerk out a nod. “Yeah. I was running away because of you. Because you were gonna marry her. Because the day I saw you and you asked me if I was cold and I could never answer you? It was because Sarah came in that very moment and you looked at her and… you never looked away,” I whisper, thinking about all the times I wanted him to look at me but he’d stare at Sarah.
“I think you forgot I was there. A tiny, messy, blanket-wrapped ten-year-old. And then you never remembered me after that. Never really paid any attention to me, even when I was there.” I shake my head, wishing things could be different.
