Girl, I Think the World About You!
I smiled wholeheartedly into my phone, loving that he knew it was me, just like I thought he would. Once again, the lyrics played in my mental soundtrack.
Sweet little woman, can’t you see that you’re the one for me?... You make me feel good, so good inside… Stay by me, woman, for the rest of my life… And as I think of you more every day, there’s only one thing, girl, that I can say, and that’s—Girl, I think the world about you… always thinking of you… No words can say how much I need you, but oh my love, I want the world to know… I think the world about you.
My phone rang shortly after, and I answered on the first ring.
“Great pick,” I said through a smile. “But you used to be better at picking deep cuts.”
He chuckled. “Eh, someone once told me the classics are better.” I smiled at that.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Talking to you,” I said as I laid back on my bed, feeling very much like a young teenager.
“Wanna go for a ride?” His deep, rich voice vibrated through me, even through the phone.
“Always,” I said, way too eagerly.
“Be there in twenty.”
And he was.
I hopped into his Cadillac Eldorado and we drove down to the shore, parking at the end of the boardwalk so we could walk the whole way. We didn’t catch up or talk about the details of our lives. We just…hung out—played balloon dart games and shared greasy cheese fries and a funnel cake over a beer we were finally old enough to have. It was just like the old days, and it was refreshing in the exact way I needed it to be. Like the first breath of air after a long-time suffocating.
Everything about us was the same—our jokes, the easy way we clicked together. We fell right into where we left off as if we hadn’t spent a day apart. The only thing that changed was our age. We weren’t kids anymore. We were twenty-one. We were grown-ups now, and it showed.
It was in the quiet command of his gaze, the gravity behind his stare that pulled me in deeper than ever before. I was playing with fire, but I had waited so long to burn that I didn’t let it warn me like I should have; I welcomed it. He didn’t have to speak for me to feel it, that steady, unflinching presence that made my pulse stumble like it was drunk. There was something in his eyes—something older than he was, wiser than he should have been—that said he saw through every version of me I tried to hide.
Every locking of our eyes was confirmation of it. A soul-deep recognition that crawled along my skin with warmth. The knowing feeling low in my belly that told me I wasn’t just looking at him; I was falling, plummeting into a memory full of promise. Into the future I wasn’t brave enough to have. The one I was here to let go of.
We stopped at his house on our way back so I could use the bathroom. It was just an excuse for a few more minutes with him. For a proper goodbye. I locked myself in his bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror for a long while. I told myself;this is it, Sydney. This is goodbye. This all ends here,until I believed enough that it would. Maybe it would have. Maybe I would have gained enough courage and completed the mission I had set out for. But when I came out of the bathroom, there was a different look in E’s eyes, and for the first time ever, it frightened me.
“You’re moving to Texas?” His tongue grazed over his bottom lip before he pulled it in. My heart sank, and I looked down beside him, finding my phone on the table, his fingers just at the edge of it. He followed my eyes and motioned toward my phone. “Jake texted you. Said he got the place… that Texas is ready for you.”
I swallowed, wiping my hands on my hips. He shrugged, his shoulders tensing, and I could see the pain in his eyes as his brows creased. It was a hopeless look, and I knew it well—the one that comes after you think you’ve gotten them back but realize they’re already gone.
“When were you gonna tell me?”
“Today.”
“Is that why you finally texted me after a year? So you could say goodbye?”
“Yes.” My voice was small and shallow and did nothing to compete with the dread in his.
“Why?” he paused, and my heart raced frantically. “You were already gone.” His words dripped with anguish, like it had broken his heart that I never reached out for him. Like he had been waiting for me all this time.
“Say it,” he said, but my throat had closed up. “Say goodbye.”
My stomach was in knots. My lungs, tight, as if they would collapse within me. “I can’t,” I said, but it was barely a sound.
He moved closer to me, the pain in his eyes still there but changing. Becoming more defined. More… deliberate. Like he was choosing to feel it now, not just carry it. Like he wanted me to see it. Wanted me to feel it with him—the ache, the guilt, the truth I’d buried with silence and time.
“Why not?” he breathed.
“I don’t know.”
He continued toward me in slow steps, his eyes strong on mine. “Say it, Sydney.” He closed the distance between us, and suddenly I felt the wall on my back. His voice was deep and powerful, and it burned a raw desire in my core. “Say why you can’t.”
