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"And I still do now," he replied. "Love you, that is. In case it wasn’t clear."
"It was," I breathed. It had been so long since someone had said that to me that I had almost forgotten how I was meant to react. I smiled first, giggled, felt a little giddy, like my head was going to pop right off there and then. My brain was all fizzy, like it had suddenly been filled with carbonation. I propped myself up on his chest, looked him in the eyes, and spoke those words that I had been longing to say to him all this time.
"I love you, too," I murmured back. He cradled me softly in his arms, and slowly leaned forward to plant a kiss on my lips. It was a gentle gesture, one to seal our exchange of love, everything I needed right now.
In that moment, I could fool myself into thinking that everything was going to be just fine. Of course, I knew that was a lie; it seemed like the whole world was set against us right now, and there was nothing I could do to change their minds without just making myself look worse than I already had.
But I loved him. I loved him, and he loved me, and now that we had shared those words with one another, something solid had sealed between us. It didn’t matter what his mother thought, or his sister – it didn’t matter what the school imagined of me, what Jonah had to look into, what those men who had been flirting with me had decided to declare about my personality and the truth behind who I was. None of that mattered. Because we had each other.
I wrapped my arms around him and closed my eyes and tried to hang on to that feeling as tight as I could.
I knew that I was going to need to remember it. Whatever happened, it all came down to this – down to love.
And I wasn’t going to let anyone on Earth take that love from me. No matter what.
Chapter fourteen
Would you still want me?
"Idon’tknowifI should talk about this stuff with you..." Mallory remarked, pulling a face where she sat opposite me at the coffee shop.
I grimaced. I knew how she must be feeling, but I had to hear this from her. Maybe I was just torturing myself needlessly, but I felt like I had to hear the words out of her mouth, to make me feel like I had any connection at all to the life I’d lived before.
"Just tell me what’s going on at the school," I pleaded with her. "It doesn’t have to be anything to do with me, really. I just want to know that everything is running as normal, right?"
"Right," she replied, eyeing me with some obvious nervousness. "Are you sure you’re up to hearing this? I don’t want to let you get down on yourself for no reason..."
I sighed and sank back in my seat. These days, I wasn’t sure that it was so much no reason. I had managed to convince myself, for better or for worse, that all of this was just what I had deserved. After all, I had been the one to sleep with Joseph, even after I’d known what he was to me – I had been the one to fall for him. I had been the one to invite him along to that class outing. That was probably what had landed me in the most trouble, to be honest. People just assumed that we had been sneaking off and having sex in the bathrooms while the kids run amock with pointy objects and lit candles, and nothing I could have said was going to change anyone’s mind. Everyone had already decided what kind of person I was, and that person certainly wasn’t allowed anywhere near their children.
I wasn’t sure how I was ever going to be able to go back there. Thing was, it wasn’t even the kids that I was worried about – they had no idea what had happened and even if they had I doubted that they would have cared much, too young to bother with thinking much about the vestiges of adulthood that came with being a grown-up and everything that they might mean. But the thought of standing around at the gates with those parents, knowing that they were all judging me – no, knowing that they had all already judged me and that they were ready to write me off for good...it was that I couldn’t cope with, not a moment of it.
The damage had already been done now.
Mallory was probably risking a whole lot just by being here with me, though she had been the one to stand at my side the whole time during all of this without a word of questioning as to where all of this had come from. She was a good friend, the best, and I wondered if she was nervous about being seen with me now that I was persona non grata around the entire school system in the area, it seemed.
"There’s nothing going on there, anyway," she told me gently. "Nothing that really matters."
"I guess life’s pretty boring without me there, huh?" I remarked, trying to play all cocky and fun, but it sounded more like the air being let out of a balloon. I wished I could have gathered some of the confidence that I had put together since I had been with Joseph, but it felt like all of that was just uselessly leaking out of me at every turn. I had wanted to change my life, to change everything about the way I lived, but this was hardly how I had expected it to go down.
Mallory sat there for a moment opposite me, and there was something to the way she was looking at me that raised questions in my gut.
"What’s wrong?" I asked, and she shook her head.
"No, no, it’s nothing-"
"Come on, the last thing I need is anyone else keeping secrets from me," I told her bluntly. "What’s going on? Is everything okay?"
"Yes, it’s fine," She replied at once, on instinct, the way all the women I knew had been trained as long as they could remember to just soothe anyone who asked for their soothing. But then, she flinched, as though that was the last thing she had wanted to do.
"Actually, I did just need to ask you," she confessed. "I mean, I trust you, I do, but I never – we never talked about this specifically..."
"Mallory, we’ve been friends for years," I reminded her. "You can just come out and say it, whatever it is."
"Did you know who he was? Before you got together with him the first time?" She asked.
I stared at her in silence for a long moment; I could hardly believe she would so much as think me capable of something so heinous. I didn’t want to get mad at her, that would achieve nothing, but the sting of knowing that she had begun to question it was enough to make my stomach turn. She was the one who had been on my side all along, and now she was beginning to question that. How could I expect anyone else to stay solid and true when even the best of my best friends couldn’t?
"I didn’t know who he was, Mallory," I told her, and there was a pleading edge to my voice that I hadn’t intended to have there. "I didn’t, really. I never knew – if I’d known, I never would have done anything with him."
