“It’s beautiful,” she whispers.
“It is,” I say, staring at her and only her.
The paintings in here are gorgeous, sure. They took years of perfecting. Months of making sure each stroke was made to perfection. Weeks of staring at a blank canvas to create something so beautiful. With her, she only gets more and more beautiful over time. God only had one try and she made her perfect in every way that counts.
She stares at the painting while I look at her side profile, watching her truly take it in. She’s still staring, so I don’t even realise that she’s moved her hand, settling it right into mine.
Her small hand clasps over mine, squeezing it gently, not looking at me. Her warmth and her touch are like something I’ve never experienced before. It’s so soft yet anchoring, like it could keep me alive. It has that underlying strength like it could move mountains while also bringing about a strong sense of calm and tranquillity. It just feels safe.
When I’m with her, I'm not worrying about what could happen tomorrow. I’m not thinking about stupid compulsions that tell me if I don’t do something by a certain time I'm going to die. I just exist. And she exists with me. Together but separate.
“What are you doing?” I choke out, hoping she can’t feel how hard my pulse is hammering.
She sighs. “Don’t make this weird.”
I ignore her. “Why are you holding my hand, sweetheart?”
“Because it’s upsetting that you’ve never been on a date before. You might piss me off,butyou've been more bearable than usual and the fact that you’ve never been able to experience the fine art of handholding is just downright sad,” she explains smoothly.
“Since when do my feelings matter to you?”
“They don’t.”
I groan, throwing my head back. “This thing that you’re doing, Scarlett, it isn’t cute anymore. Cut it out. We’renotdoing this. Got it?”
The second things start going somewhere, she says shit like that. It doesn’t usually piss me off. Most of the time I hope she’s joking, but it gets to a point where I can’t tell anymore. She can tease me all she wants. She can tell me how much I annoy her just by breathing and I’ll take it. But I thought that something shifted the other day when we spoke. When she told me that she knew I wanted her.
She turns to me now, her eyebrows scrunched together. She seems a little taken aback from my sudden seriousness. “Doing what?”
“This,” I say, gesturing between us. I try to keep my cool. We’re in a goddamn museum for God’s sake. “You hating me. Pretending you don’t care about my feelings. What is so bad about me, Scarlett, huh? Tell me. Tell me what you don’t like about me because I’m going insane trying to figure it – you – out.”
She drops her hand from mine now and it feels empty, like a piece of my heart has been ripped out. “Stop acting like you don’t know, Branson.”
“Scarlett, sweetheart. Tell. Me,” I warn, needing an answer.
She scoffs. “Why are you getting so serious about this?”
“Because itisserious,” I retort, my voice slightly climbing up. I sigh, walking to the other side of the room where a white bench rests against a wall. I sit down, running my hands through my hair as I hear her heels click until she’s sitting beside me. “Angel, I can’t do this. I really can’t. I can’t have you hating me every day. I can’t have you looking at me like I disgust you.”
“You don’t disgust me,” she whispers. I take my hands out of my face and turn to her.
“Then tell me. Tell me what I’ve done wrong so I canfixit,” I press, rubbing at my temples. She blinks at me. “I don’t want to keep going on like this. Jesus, I just want to be your friend.”
“You want us to be friends?”
“Hasn’t that been obvious?” I ask exasperatedly. She shakes her head a little, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth. “At the very least I want us to have a conversation where we’re not screaming at each other. It’s exhausting.”
“It is?”
“Yes. Now tell me what I’ve done wrong.”
Scarlett sighs, pushing her back against the wall, tilting her head up to the ceiling. I can’t tell if she's trying to blink back tears or if she’s trying to compose herself. She opens her mouth multiple times before closing it again. I could wait for her all day if she’s finally going to tell me what I did so we can move on from this weird stage in our lives.
“You said that I would never amount to anything,” she says finally. Her words sound like a punch to the stomach. I’d much prefer that than the words that come out of her mouth, knowing that it was me who said them. “That I’d never be more than a stupid girl in her brother’s shadow.” She turns to me now, her eyes filled with angry and upset tears. “And I already knew that, Evan. I’ve known that since the day I opened my eyes. I thought starting NU would be a fresh start and it wasn’t. What you said to me felt worse than all the years at high school. So, I resented you for it and it led me to trying to one-up you in every class game and you played right along. I thought you hated me too and kept going. I know, it’s stupid and pathetic, but at first, it felt better than letting you get under my skin, so I made it a mission to get under yours.”
This is definitely worse than a punch to the gut. Hell, it’s worse than a punch to my crotch. What hurts more than hearing the strangled sob in the back of her throat is that what she’s saying is what I said to her.
Those first few days at NU were hell for me. I was bitter and miserable because my dad had cut me off. I had to move in with the boys. I had lost my girlfriend, and I was embarrassed for embarrassing my family and myself in the process. I should never have said those things to her. I knew that I remembered her from our childhood, but she didn’t seem to recognise me. I forced myself to erase it from my memory as soon as I started to get better, and I must have forgotten about it. But she didn’t.
