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Like he wants to smooth things out for me simply based on instinct.
I know better now of course.
It was just something he did and there was no hidden meaning behind it.
But the fact that he’s doing it now, in this moment, is making it very hard for me to remember why I shouldn’t be anywhere near him.
Not to mention what he just said.
“Are you saying that you went batshit crazy after I went away?” I ask.
I’ve already said that I’m not proud of the way I’ve behaved with him in the past thirteen months. Along with arguments and fights, I’ve also tried to make him jealous. I’ve tried to flirt with guys, smile at them, talk to them with the clear intention of getting back at him.
But of course he never showed any outward reaction to that, and so I always thought that my schemes, if you will, never worked.
“Yeah,” he says, pulling me back to the moment.
My heart’s in my throat when I croak out, “W-what did you do to them?”
“Fucked them up.”
Now my heart’s on the tip of my tongue. “Even your… brother, Shepard?”
Because yes, I’ve flirted with him as well.
Just once though.
It made me feel really icky when I did that.
He grits his teeth again. “Yeah, you really know how to do it, don’t you?”
“Do what?”
“Aim for the heart.”
I flinch, oddly feeling apologetic. “I didn’t —”
“And yeah, even my brother Shepard.”
My eye pop wide. “Will you apologize to your brother for me?”
“No.”
“But —”
“He’s my brother. He grew up with me. He knows how to take a punch.”
I swallow. “I never meant for those guys to get hurt. I was just —”
“Trying to hurt me.”
I flinch again. “I’m —”
“And you did,” he says, although I don’t see any anger on him at this, only a weird sort of satisfaction. Like he liked it, hurting for me. “More so today when you smiled at him than any time before.”
“But it was just a smile and —”
“It was a smile you always saved for me.”
I’m so taken aback at his statement that I almost bang my head against the wall. “What? What does that mean?”
His dark-as-night eyes flicker down to my mouth. “It means that you smile a lot. And you’ve got a smile for every occasion. A tight-lipped, sarcastic smile. An angry smile. An amused smile, usually for things that no one finds funny except you. And then are times when you smile and your eyes shine like little blue diamonds. Your cheeks go pink like cotton candy. Your pulse, that freckle over it, flutters like a hummingbird or something. Your entire face goes soft, dreamy. You light up, like a firefly. And you do it for me.
“You did it when you’d see me. Back then. Either on the street. At my house when you’d come to see Callie. On the soccer field when you went to my games. Sometimes you’d do it even after you’d seen me only an hour before. It was like I lit up the world for you. For my Firefly.”
Firefly.
The nickname he gave me.
Sometimes late at night, I think about his last words to me. They were ugly. Those words. They always make me cry. But like a lunatic what makes me cry even more is the fact that he punctuated them with ‘Firefly.’
I know he gave that nickname to me mockingly, with malice in his heart.
And revenge.
Or maybe he gave it to me without much thought, I don’t know. At this point, it’s a toss-up but it certainly wasn’t out of what I initially thought.
Love.
It wasn’t because he secretly liked me or adored me and couldn’t live without me.
He didn’t give it to me because he felt what I felt.
And so before I can really think things through, I whisper, “I loved you.”
His body goes still then.
For a few moments, I don’t think he breathes.
I don’t blame him. I’m not breathing much either. Or at all.
Of all the scenarios that I pictured in my head over the years, telling him in the bathroom of a five-star restaurant thirteen months after he broke my heart, while my fiancé sits outside waiting for me, is not something that ever made the list.
And that list was long. Because I imagined it a lot.
I imagined it day and night, telling him.
Instead of letting him think that I’m some crazy girl with a major crush on him, his rival’s little sister, I’m the girl who’s in love with him. I’m the girl who can’t live without him. Who wants him to love her back. Who wants to be with him for the rest of her life.
Many times, I came close.
But I never could because I was so afraid that he’d reject me. I was so afraid that he’d look at me like I was crazy. Like the rest of the world did. For someone who’s always been so brave and reckless and so out there, I acted like a coward, I admit that.
