I even walk over to the tree. The tree.
Just by the side of the road. Where he kissed me.
I’m an idiot for doing that. I know.
But I just wanted to see it. I just wanted to touch it.
As soon as I do though, I snatch my hand back, disgusted with myself, and walk away, ready to go back to my dorm room, when I hear something.
Tires screeching. Bang of a car door shutting.
Footsteps.
Loud and thumping.
I can hear the crunch of the leaves. I can feel the force of the heels stomping the ground right in my chest.
Strangely, I know it’s him.
I already know it so I dive for the tree just by my side and hide behind it. I hunch my shoulders and try to shrink my body, try to make myself smaller because I don’t want him to see me.
I don’t.
What is he doing here? Why has he come?
He’s looking for me, isn’t he?
He’s come to find me when he promised. He promised he wouldn’t.
Yet he’s here on a Thursday at midnight.
God, Reed.
I ignore my fluttering heart. I ignore that it soars in my chest, that a rush goes through me. At the fact that he’s here.
I slowly look over my shoulder from where I’m hiding. I dig my nails into the bark when I see that he’s striding down the path that I take to and from the fence. He’s going to that spot, the spot from which we sneak out.
I showed him that spot the other night.
That night.
He actually carried me to that spot. After. In the rain.
Like I was his doll or something.
And I held on to him like I’d never let go. I burrowed my nose in the side of his neck, in the triangle of his throat, trying to fill my lungs with his scent for the last time.
He kept smelling me too, pressing his hot mouth on my forehead, breathing me in and breathing out.
I want to do that right now.
Jump into his arms so he carries me. Rub my nose in his hoodie, smell him, have him smell me.
Kiss me.
But I stay put as my stomach churns.
As I watch Reed march over to the fence, that I can only partially see through the trees.
As I feel dizzy.
Pressing my spine to the tree to keep my balance, I put a hand on my stomach and God, it feels so warm.
I don’t remember my belly ever being so heated.
Why is it so hot?
But I don’t have the time to think about it right now because he’s come to a stop. Right at the spot in the fence where I asked him to let me down and where he watched me scale it and leave him to go back to my dorm.
Like he was really my Romeo and I was really his Juliet, sneaking back to my room.
In this moment, my Romeo is watching the fence, running his hands through his hair. His shoulders and back are shifting with what I think are agitated breaths and his stance is wide, battle-ready. As if he’s going to tear the fence apart, take it down brick by brick, demolish it, all with those hands that are messing up his overly-long hair.
My belly lurches and churns and bile rises up my throat.
And oh my God, I think I’m gonna throw up.
I think…
Reed turns around then and looks in my direction, or rather where I’m hiding.
And quickly, I duck even more behind the tree.
I clench my eyes shut, put a hand on my mouth to muffle the sounds of my breaths. The hand that’s on my stomach, I press it even more as if I’m trying to stop whatever the heck is going on inside my body.
Whatever the heck makes me want to throw up right now and all the time, and that repels bacon and coffee and that makes me…
Wait a second.
Just wait a freaking second.
I’m throwing up all the time. I’m tired and I’m depressed and I smell everything and everything makes me nauseous.
And I can’t remember the last time I had my period and wasn’t I supposed to get a period a few days ago?
But maybe that’s fine. Maybe I’m just a little late.
It doesn’t mean anything, right?
My stomach churns and roars and I can feel him running his eyes frantically over the area. I can feel him looking for me, hunting for me, and it’s getting harder and harder to stop this chaos in my stomach.
Oh God.
Please, Reed. Please, please, please.
I’m not sure what I’m pleading for. Am I pleading for him to leave or to find me or to tell me that whatever I’m thinking, whatever I’ve discovered about my body is false?
Maybe I want him to tell me that it’s not right.
That it can’t be.
There needs to be some other explanation. That it can’t be what my body has been trying to tell me for the past few days.
But he doesn’t do any of that.
He doesn’t find me and tell me that it’s all going to be okay, no.
He leaves.
Just as he’d come, out of the blue, almost jogging up to the fence, he walks away from it. I hear him leave. I hear his footsteps thumping and retreating.
Until I can’t hear them anymore.
Until I open my eyes and fall down to my knees.
Then I throw up on the ground, my heart rebelling over letting him go and my body rebelling over what we did three weeks ago.
He’s the first thing I see as soon as I enter Ballad of the Bards.
I’m not shocked to see him though.
It’s Friday and he knows where I go on Fridays.
Even though I haven’t been here in three weeks, ever since that night. And I would’ve skipped tonight as well but I’ve already worried my friends a lot and I couldn’t skip without telling them something, everything, I don’t know.
But I can’t.
I can’t tell them anything. Not yet.
Not until I figure things out myself. So when they asked, I said yes and I did it with a huge smile on my face to make it look convincing.
But anyway, he knows where to go to find me.
The shock comes from the fact that he wants to find me in the first place. That he wanted to find me last night as well when I hid from him.
When I figured out that…
That I am. I know I am.
My body has been trying to tell me this for days now and I’ve ignored it. I can’t ignore it now.
So I know.
I’ve known it for about twenty-four hours now.
I’ve known it ever since last night when I threw up in the woods. I knew it when I got back to my room and first hugged my pillow to my body because I was so scared — I still am — and then cried in it.
I knew all through breakfast this morning, through trigonometry, geography, history, biology. I knew it when I went to see my guidance counselor and she asked me how my week had been and I told her it was fine. Everything was the same.
Even though it was a lie.
Because everything is not fine. Everything is not the same.
I don’t think it will ever be the same after what I’ve known for the last twenty-four hours.
And now he’s here.