It wasn’t. I meant what I said. I wasn’t a liar.
And the more I looked at her, the more I realized that I couldn’t just say goodbye to her. Everything I’d told her wasn’t only in the heat of the moment, the romantic atmosphere of the walk; I meant it with all of my heart and soul, as sappy as that sounded.
Usually, I wasn’t one for sap, but Bree brought it out of me. I wanted to tell her everything she wanted to hear, I wanted to make her at ease, to wrap my arms around her and let her relax. To push the world and its horrors away, to protect her. I wanted to do all these things for a girl I’d basically just met. How bad would I be in a month, if I still talked to her? If I made the drive out here every weekend and saw her, kept dating her?
If…if I made her my girlfriend?
Would she even want to be my girlfriend? It was hard to read her sometimes, even more difficult to know what she wanted. She was the epitome of shy and reserved, though those green eyes were the windows to her soul.
“How was your week?” I asked, reclining back and setting my arm on the back cushion. She didn’t sit directly beside me, so it wasn’t like my arm touched her back or her shoulders or anything. I kind of wished they did. I wished I could pull her in close and just breathe her in.
“Okay,” she answered. “I had a pop quiz in sociology, and I worked more on my group project, but that’s pretty much it.” Bree toyed with the corner of the pillow. “How was yours?”
“Good,” I said, shrugging. There really wasn’t much to tell, since I hadn’t really done anything. “I thought about you a lot.”
She blinked, as if she hadn’t been expecting that. “You did?”
Nodding once, I scooted closer to her on the couch, needing to be nearer. “I did,” I whispered, reaching to touch the pillow on her lap. Now my other arm finally grazed her shoulders, and I dropped it until it sat around her. “You’re on my mind a lot, Bree.”
Her hands gripped the pillow hard, and she asked, “Why?”
“Because I like you, and I want to take you out more,” I told her, meaning every word. “Because you’re sweet and gentle and kind—and pretty.” Yes, though I might’ve claimed she wasn’t my type during our first meeting, the more I thought about her pink hair, the more I liked it. No one wore a mop of pink hair quite like her.
Bree looked away, biting her bottom lip. “I am not.”
“You are,” I whispered, running my thumb along her arm. “Whether or not you believe it, you are.”
She said nothing for a long time, and I wondered if she wrestled with herself. It was obvious she didn’t have confidence in herself, that she didn’t believe she was pretty or anything like that. I hated that she thought along those lines, but I also knew that only meant I had to tell her it more often.
When Bree finally spoke, she said something I wasn’t expecting: “I thought about you a lot, too.”
Hearing that made me smile. “You did?” There was nothing better than hearing the girl you liked was thinking about you, too. Maybe this girl would want to go at it long distance. I knew she’d changed my mind about the subject; I didn’t want to simply stop seeing her once I went back home.
No. No fucking way.
“You confuse me,” she added, those green eyes meeting mine. Bree hugged the pillow even closer to her chest now, and I wondered if I tore that pillow away from her, if she’d cling to me like that, instead.
But I wouldn’t take away her defenses like that.
“I confused you? Why?”
“You make me want things I never wanted before,” Bree whispered, her voice the softest I’d ever heard it. “You make me feel…” Her eyelids fell. “Real.”
Her words made me ache inside. No one had ever said anything remotely close to that to me, and I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t want Bree to ever feel like she wasn’t real, like she wasn’t really living a life, and I couldn’t help but wonder right then if that’s how she felt every day of her life. If so…God, that was depressing, and I hated that she felt that way.
“And I don’t know why you feel all these things for me,” Bree added. “I’m not special. I’m not anything.”
She really didn’t think much of herself, did she?
I did the only thing I could: I wrapped my other arm around her and hugged her to my chest, letting her hold onto the pillow all the while. I held onto her like she was the most precious thing I’d ever gotten my hands on…and I supposed she was. Fragile, so close to breaking, constantly. Bree thought herself less than nothing, and that was no way to live a life, no way to spend your days, your years.
Fuck. This girl broke my heart, and we weren’t even together.
Her mom seemed nice, and I knew enough about Michelle to know about her, too. If Mr. Stone was a shitty guy, I would’ve heard about it from Kyle. Bree came from a good family, so I had no idea why she was like this, why she constantly put herself down and never believed anything good about herself.
I held onto her for a long time, and our embrace was only interrupted by the doorbell. The pizza delivery.
Bree was slow to lean away from me, and even though I didn’t want to let her go, even though my body felt a coldness everywhere she’d been touching, I got up and accepted the delivery. Her mom had paid online, so I didn’t have to worry about tipping or anything.
Her mom stayed upstairs; apparently the pizza was for us. Bree had got up and gotten out plates, and I watched her take the tiniest slice she could from the box and wander back into the living room.
I made a vow to myself that night, that I’d stay by her side as long as she would have me, and while I was there, I would do my damnedest to make her believe that she was worth everything in the world.
And, because she’d made me so sad, I neglected to tell her that I was leaving the next day.
That just meant I had to stop over again on my way home.
After I left, I dreamt of her. Which, of course, made it ridiculously hard for me to get up the next morning, realizing I had to leave and go back home, that I would no longer be a short drive away from her.
Hours. I’d be hours away.
Fucking sucked.
I lay in bed for a while, wishing I could close my eyes and go back to sleep. I’d dreamt of taking Bree on another date. I was pretty sure we went to the zoo, because I swore I remembered seeing tigers or something—that part was probably only because I’d just watched that documentary on Netflix.
Yeah, if there was one good thing about taking an impromptu vacation away from your life, it was the fact you could finally catch up on all of the shows the entire world had already seen.
But, anyway, back to the dream. After the zoo, we’d somehow wound up at my apartment. All alone, no Trent to be seen. Just me and her, and my greedy hands and mouth. The only thing that would beat that dream would be reality, but I knew, if Bree and I ever got to that point, it would be different. She was a virgin, after all, and I bet she’d feel the most self-conscious she’d ever felt in her life.
I shouldn’t let myself think about that. That was getting way ahead of myself, almost outrageously so. What I should do was get up, pack my car, take a quick rinse in the shower, and leave. Tell Mom and Kyle goodbye, and then head to her house to tell her the same.