He answers on the third ring. “Yo, what’s up?”
“Matt,” I rasp, voice trembling. “The girl—it’s Tilly. It’s her. She just told me she loves me.”
There is a long, stunned pause.
“Wait. What? The girl you’ve been talking about all this time is Tilly? Like, our Tilly?”
“Yes! She said it, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. I feel like my heart’s being ripped out of my chest, and I can’t even–” I press a hand to my sternum, trying to force air in. “I can’t even breathe right now.”
“Okay, whoa, whoa,” he says, his voice steady while mine is falling apart. “Slow down. Start over. She told you she loves you. And you… You love her back, right?”
I laugh—a hollow, broken sound. “I do. Of course I do. I’ve always loved her. There will never be a day I don’t love her. But what if this is wrong? What if he regrets everything?”
“Luca,” he says firmly. “You’re spiraling.”
“I always spiral when it’s about her,” I snap, then immediately regret it. “I thought I was over her. I told myself I was. But then she walked in like she didn’t have an ounce of sleep, and she said that, and I, I don’t know.”
There is quiet for a few seconds. Then Matt sighs softly. “Listen, you can either run again or finally stay put and face this.”
“I can’t even look at her without breaking, and it physically pains me to see her without a smile.”
“Then fall apart,” he says simply. “But do it in front of her. Let her see it. Stop hiding behind logic and guilt and all that crap. Just be real.”
The moment I hang up, I run out, and when I don’t see her in the hallway, I run to her room.
I knock on her room, and hear some shuffling.
My heart feels like it’s about to bang out of my chest.
The moment she opens the door and locks her eyes on mine, time stops.
I can hear my heartbeat in my ears, feel every regret clawing up my throat.
All I want is to reach out—to pull her closer, to tell her I love her too, that I never stopped—but I don’t do it, because I feel something pulling me back.
So I just stand there, drowning in her gorgeous eyes.
She doesn’t move, just stands there by the door, fingers twisting in the hem of her sleeve like she always does.
It always hurts me when I see her hurting her hand.
I realize that it’s her own way of letting some of the hurt out, but I would rather give her my arm to hurt over hers in a million lifetimes.
Because it hurts more when she hurts herself than if she were to hurt me.
At least when I’m hurt, I can deal with it. When she hurts herself, all I can do is watch as the corruption spreads.
I want to tell her to come closer.
I want to make her stay.
But my body is frozen in place, and all I can do is look at her and drown in the sight.
Her eyes are red, lashes clumped from crying, and her nose is pink in that way that used to make me tease her just to get her to laugh.
There is nothing funny now.
Just two people standing in a room too small for everything between them.
