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Maybe love is something that changes you.
It gives courage to the cowards and steals it from the brave.
I don’t know.
All I know is that I never said it. I never explicitly told him that I loved him.
And now that I have, he isn’t breathing.
As if my confession has killed him. Strangled the life out of him.
Well, what a great reaction, isn’t it?
Every girl wants this in return. To tell a guy that she loved him and for that guy to look like he’s seen a ghost.
“I did,” I confirm, wedging the knife deeper in his heart. “I never told you because I was afraid. I was scared that you wouldn’t say it back. Every time I convinced myself to say those three words, to tell you the truth, I’d back out. I’d think maybe I needed a little more time. A little more time to make you fall in love with me. A little more time to make you see who I was. The girl in love. So I did everything that I could to make that happen. I did everything that I could to convince you, to show you what was in my heart. The way I chased you around, the way I kept calling you, driving down to see you. The way I kept smiling at you with hearts in my eyes. The way I kept asking you to open up to me. It was all because I loved you and I wanted you to see that. So one day when I did tell you that I loved you, you’d say it back.
“But I’m glad I never said it. I’m glad that I have at least a little bit of self-preservation left in me. Because I was a fool, wasn’t I? Because no matter what I did, you never would’ve looked at me as a girl you could love. To you, I was always your rival’s little sister. A pawn. A chess piece. Someone to use against my brother. Someone to abuse for your revenge schemes.
“You asked me last night if I remembered about your revenge schemes, didn’t you? I remember. I remember how you came to my dorm room thirteen months ago in the middle of the night. I remember how after two years of chasing you, you at last chased me down. Not to mention, I remember why you did it. What exactly was going through your head when you knocked at my door and kissed me for the first time. It was my very first kiss, did you know that? And God, it was beautiful. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever experienced in my life. Until you turned it into something ugly. Until you turned my first kiss into a kiss of revenge.”
Tears are streaming down my face and I don’t have the wherewithal to stop them. And neither can I stop my words as I continue, “So now you don’t get to come in here and ask me about the guy I was smiling at. You don’t get to be angry about it, or jealous. You don’t get to remember the way I used to smile at you because you’re the one who destroyed it all. You’re the one who changed what could’ve been our love story into a story of revenge. So it’s best that we stay away from each other. From now on, if you see me on the street or at a get-together or anywhere at all, you pretend that I’m not there. And I’ll pretend that you aren’t the guy I used to love who ended up breaking my heart.”
Chapter Ten
Her Beautiful Thorn
She thinks about it too.
Doesn’t she?
Every day.
Every second of every goddamn day.
Like me.
She thinks about what I did to her. She thinks about how I broke her heart. But she’s not angry about it.
Well, she is.
Of course she is.
But she feels other things too.
She feels the pain. The heartache. The fucking trauma that she had to go through at my hands.
Jesus.
Why didn’t I figure this out before?
Why didn’t I see it?
For the past thirteen months, the only way I’ve been able to live with myself is to know that she had moved on. That whatever I did to her that night didn’t leave a lasting impression. That she bounced back. And finally, she realized that chasing after me wasn’t something she should do.
It’s something that I’ve been wanting her to understand since the get-go. Since the night of the party where she was hiding behind the bushes.
And I have to admit that it pissed me off.
That she was able to move on so easily when all I could do was think about her. All I could do was think about that night thirteen months ago.
And yeah, I’d deliberately provoked her because of that.
I’d deliberately rile her up so she’d give me her attention like she used to.
