Lust flashes on her face and the color of fresh roses tint her cheeks.
Checkmate, Vallie baby.
“Stop staring at me like that! Jesus, you are infuriating!”
She brushes her hair over her shoulder, chewing on the inside of her cheek. The wind blows, brushing a piece of hair in front of her face. I run my tongue across the front of my teeth, reaching forward and tugging on the lonesome curl.
“I can’t not stare at you, Valor. Even when I’m not looking at you, I still see you. I see you, just like you saw me in that car four years ago. We don’t have to look at each other to see.”
She steps back like I tried to stab her. “I’m leaving now,” she mumbles. Valor turns and starts to walk towards the exit, fleeing from me as quickly as possible. I can’t let her leave again without apologizing. It was physically killing me.
“Wait, Valor, wait!” I call out walking quickly to catch up and grabbing her wrist. I turn her to face me, and I notice the redness in her cheeks. Her eyes are softer, and they look glassy. I swear if she cries I’ll break down in front of all these people.
“I need to say something, just let me say this and I’ll leave you alone.”
I watch as she bites her lip, pulls her arm from my grasp, and looks at me with so much sadness in those green eyes I love that it breaks me even more. The people around us walk past us, like my world isn’t being tilted on an axis, like we aren’t two souls clashing together for what feels like the hundredth time.
“No, fuck you. Whatever you’re about to say isn’t to make me feel better, it’ll just make me feel worse. You only want to make yourself feel better for being a shitty boyfriend or whatever the fuck it was. So don’t sit there and act like whatever you’re about to say is for me, it’s for your guilty fucking conscious.”
One tear falls from her eye, and she wipes it away. Once again she starts to walk away from me. Fuck this shit. Her back is to me as my voice carries across to her.
“It was never about telling people about us! It had nothing to do with you, Valor!” I yell this out, in front of all these random people in California. People who were enjoying their night, and are now pulled into a real-life Days of Our Lives episode.
But I didn’t care.
I was tired of hiding how I felt about her, not from everyone else, but from myself.
She freezes, turning around to look at me as do all the rest of these people. I walk towards her, ignoring the stares.
“Christ, Bishop, keep it down, will you? People are going to sell this shit to the press for a slice of pizza. I don’t want to be on the front page of the Chicago news with you.” She tries her best to hide her face from the surrounding audience, but it doesn’t faze me.
“I remember a time when that was all you wanted.” Saying that out loud takes a piece of my soul I won’t ever get back.
As she looks around nervously, she chews her cheek. “Yeah well, shit changes.”
I smile, tilting my head to the side. “Not you. You’re a creature of habit, Valor Sullivan.”
My eyes look to her neck, seeing the golden chain hiding beneath her hoodie. I reach forward, pulling it out, and holding the pendant. My thumb swipes over the engraving; the familiar metal feels good underneath my fingers.
“You still use the same shampoo.” I know because I can smell it and it reminds me of when she went to bed with wet hair. My voice is soft, almost a whisper. All the fight in me is gone.
“You have the same warm-up playlist as you did when you were twelve.”
I know because I’ve listened to it over, and over, and over again. I laugh softly, letting go of the necklace.
“I bet you flamingo suit still hasn’t noticed that you count the cracks in the sidewalk on the way home. But let me guess, pretty boy doesn't walk anywhere, he has a personal driver who lubes his ass for─”
She places her hand over my mouth.
“Please, just…” She shakes her head, and I can tell she is trying not to cry. “Shut the fuck up and say what you have to say. I want to get this over with.”
I nod, removing her hand from my face, letting it fall and she wraps her arms around herself for comfort. I take a deep breath trying to figure out a way to start this, and just settle with what I think feels right.
“I didn’t tell anyone, because you scared the fuck out of me.”
It’s the truth, but I see she doesn’t believe me. She scoffs.
“I didn’t know you scared so easily.”
I run my hand through my hair, then down my face,
“Valor, I saw my father become a zombie after my mom died. That’s what love did to him, to me. Love has never equaled happy endings for me. I never wanted anyone to have that kind of control over my heart. Then you, you grew up, Valor, and you tasted like lemons and your laugh sounded like a song I once heard and had spent forever trying to remember…” I stop talking, knowing I’ll talk for hours if I don’t stop there. I look at the ground, then back up.
“I was afraid of the person I’d become if I allowed myself to love you, and then you left. You left and I realized that I was already in─”
“Stop, please. Please, B. Just stop. Don’t finish that sentence.” Her voice is cracked and wispy. I want to scoop her up and hold her. But that isn’t my job anymore, it’s douche nozzle’s. He is the comfort she seeks, not me.
I nod, clearing my throat, looking around to see that most of the people have gone back to their own conversations. Drama wasn’t a novelty in California.
I open my mouth to end this on a good note, but she beats me to it.
“I waited. I waited for years for you to come after me. To chase me, to tell me the exact words you were about to say. I waited for you, Bishop. And now, I, I just…” She stops, taking a deep breath and wiping the tears from her eyes.
“I got tired of waiting, B. Now? Those words just are not enough anymore.”
If I had a mother, I wonder what advice she would give me right now. Would she approve of Preston? Or would she have preferred Bishop? I needed someone to tell me that walking away from him the other night on that roof was the right thing to do.
No, stop. Stop, Valor. You know it was the right thing to do.
Okay, then why did it hurt so fucking bad?
My eyes cut to Preston, who is sitting beside me in the backseat of my dad’s car like we are teenagers. He had offered to provide a car and driver for the night, but my dad laughed and told him, “I’m a grown man. I’ll drive my own car.”
If I didn’t know my dad didn’t like Preston before, I know now. Preston’s freshly pressed dark purple suit sits on his body, including a color-coordinated tie and pocket square. His hair is gelled back out of his face, his perfect jawline on display. There isn’t a single thing about him out of place.
Everything about the Huntington family was pristine. I seriously think his father could be a serial killer and no one would know. I was a circus clown compared to them. They were always nice to me, but I knew as soon as I left that house they talked about how I was just a ‘phase’ for him. Soon he’d fall for a pretty brunette, looking to be a trophy wife and own one of those poodle dogs rich people have.
Maybe they were right.