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I saw a boy, looking out the window in the detention room, watching the water fountain. I saw him with his shirt untucked, his hair messy, his tie loose and flipped over his shoulders.
And I thought: him.
I thought we could be friends.
But when I found out he was an obnoxious, mean jerk, I was hurt.
I was hurt that the guy I’d chosen for myself was such an asshole. That he wouldn’t be nice to me. He hurt me by rejecting me and I hurt him back, and we kept going.
Until now.
Maybe hate is just love wrapped up in a barbed wire. Or at least, mine was.
I love you, Zach.
Abruptly, he stops in the middle of the pool with his back to me as if he heard me.
“You gonna stare at me all night?” he asks, plowing his fingers through his wet, slick hair.
With a pounding, bleeding heart, I walk closer to the edge. “You’re not sleeping.”
Zach turns around to face me. Water’s running down his lashes, sluicing down the hard features of his face, and he scrubs a hand over it.
“Neither are you.”
He looks tense, agitated, water lapping at his defined pecs. Probably like me but I don’t know his reason. He’s not in love, is he?
“So what did she tell you?” he asks.
“Who?”
“The fortune teller.”
Oh.
I lick my lips. “She told me that everything happens for a reason. And that something is going to happen to me.”
Zach frowns and drifts closer. “Something like what?”
The pool is illuminated by underwater lights, making it look like a soothing blue. A tempting blue. A blue I’d like to dip into someday. Tonight, maybe.
I take a few steps back and Zach tracks my every movement. I pull off the hood and unzip it. “Something like life.”
“What?”
“Something with too many heartbeats and too much air. Something red hot and passionate.”
I shrug off my hoodie and toe off my boots.
He looks like he wants to say something, but I cut him off. “Zach?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m scared.”
His frown gets even bigger. “Of what?”
Of you.
