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Such idiots.
“What’s swoon-y?” he asks after a bit.
“Uh, something that’s swoon-worthy. That makes you swoon.”
“Yeah, no. What you think is swoon-y is probably the sound of my balls climbing up inside my body.”
“Ew,” I scrunch up my nose. “That’s disgusting.”
“Truth often is.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, it doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t read romance novels anymore.”
The only reason I know I’ve said something of significance is because he goes still. All the lightness, the amusement vanishes from his features and they draw up tight.
Even the bulges of his biceps strain and his veins stand taut like strings.
“You don’t read romance novels anymore,” he repeats in a low voice.
My muscles go tight as well. “Uh, no. But that’s —”
“Why?”
“It’s not important. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why?” he insists, his voice going even lower.
“I —”
“Why don’t you read romance novels anymore?” he asks again, a tic forming on his jaw.
“Are you really asking me that?”
He doesn’t answer, simply watches me with undisguised intensity and yes, anger.
Like he’s mad at me.
For giving up on something that I loved.
“Because they’re not real, okay?”
A muscle jumps in his cheek at my answer but I keep going. “They’re a lie. They’re fantasy. They give you wrong expectations. They make you dream about things that don’t exist. Things that don’t happen in real life. Because…”
My voice is shaking now.
And I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I can keep going.
I want him to leave.
I want him to go away because this is too much. His presence, his nearness. All these encounters when I’m only used to seeing him maybe once every three to four months. And even then in passing where we either keep our distance from each other or argue and move on.
“Because what?” he prods, his face still carved out of stone and looking strained.
“Because real life is made of thunder and thorns.”
A flinch goes through him.
Small but I know it’s there.
And I know that my words have hurt him. Because I know that he knows they’re for him.
That I’m saying he’s made of thunder and thorns.
“And not candies and cream.”
This time, I flinch. Because I know he’s talking about me. I know he’s calling me that. It’s in his dark eyes, all penetrating and intense.
So that’s what we are then.
A boy made of thunder and thorns. And a girl made of candies and cream.
No wonder we weren’t meant to be together.
Not in this life at least.
“No,” I tell him, unable to look anywhere else but him. “Real life isn’t made of candies and cream. Because in real life when you see a boy in a crowded stadium at a soccer game and fall in l-love with him, he doesn’t do the same. In real life when you chase him around, he doesn’t stop and let you catch him. He doesn’t call you. He doesn’t text you, no matter how much you want him to. No matter how you jump at every little beep your phone makes, hoping that it’s him. Finally. But it’s not. It’s never him, is it?”
I don’t know why I said that.
Why I had to show him further how desperate I used to be back then.
I mean, is it not enough that I did call him like a junkie almost every night? Or that I did follow him around and show up at almost every party and every game?
“Yeah,” he rasps as if agreeing with me, and I squirm in my spot. “It’s never him. Because in real life, he’s an asshole with an ego bigger than his head. In real life, he’s a selfish motherfucker focused on his game, his career, his rivalry. Because in real life, he’s incapable of focusing on anything else, and that’s okay. Or it would’ve been, if he — I — hadn’t dragged you down with me. If I hadn’t done what I did. Or what I wanted to do for years. All the things that I wanted to do. To you. For years.”
I think I have a pretty good idea of what he wanted to do to me.
But even so, I can’t help but whisper, “W-what things?”
He gnashes his teeth, staring at me, as if he doesn’t know if he should say. But then he decides to do it anyway. “Take advantage of you.”
I freeze.
As if this is the first time I’m hearing of it.
Which is not true at all but still, it’s a shock.
He ignores it, however, and keeps going, “To use you against your brother. And you made it so easy too. You made it so goddamn tempting. Because you were everywhere, weren’t you? Everywhere I turned, there you were with your blue-gray eyes and your flowing dark hair. Smiling at me, mooning over me, worshipping the ground I walked on. It was enough to give me a hard-on for days.
