Authors: Mandy Hubbard
“Oh, come on, you get what I mean. I invited him in for a movie, and he just stared at me, and I was, like, what, it’s just a movie, and he laughed and was all
right
…” She’s rattling off their conversation so fast it’s hard to follow as she talks with her hands and rolls her eyes. “And then he didn’t come in!”
I scrunch up my nose. “He said
no thank you?”
“Yes!”
Her shock is amusing. “You know, he could just be taking things slow.”
“If he doesn’t want to make out,” she says, sighing in exasperation, “how do I know if he likes me?”
I shake my head. “Well, considering he just walked in and is heading this way, and he supposedly hates dances, I’m guessing he really likes you.”
She whirls around so abruptly she knocks into me, elbowing me straight in the stomach. “Ooof,” I say, rubbing my belly.
Bailey can’t take her eyes off Adam as he pushes through
the crowd. It takes only one glance at the way he’s looking at her to know he’s just as into her as she is into him. He doesn’t even seem to notice me standing next to her, because his eyes are trained on hers. I’m not sure why Bailey hasn’t figured out that whatever he feels, it’s real, and it’s just as strong as her own feelings.
“I’ll catch up later,” I murmur to Bailey, and pull away from her just as he gets there, and the two are grinning like fools at each other.
I slip into the crowd as the music kicks up a notch, from an easy line dance to a couples’ dance. I thread my way between the ebb and flow of the dance floor, trying to get to the other side, where I can grab a soda and people watch, but I’m only halfway there when a hand finds mine.
I look up and Landon’s staring down at me, his eyes dark, his hair pushed back off his forehead with gel or something. My mouth goes dry and I swallow hard, staying silent as he pulls me toward the middle of the floor, until we’re standing under the swirling lights.
And then without warning, he spins me, and we’re dancing, the beat of the song bleeding into the background as we find our own rhythm.
He leads, pushing and pulling until we’re doing something vaguely resembling a swing dance, and I remember him talking about the lessons with his mom. He obviously hasn’t forgotten a thing.
“You weren’t lying when you said you could dance,” I shout over the music as he turns with me, our bodies together then apart, together then apart.
“There’s a lot about me you don’t know,” he says.
And for a second it reminds me of that first day in the river, before he fell from his horse, when all of his words seemed to have double meaning. But he’s grinning, enjoying the dance, not thinking of regrets.
“Oh,” I say.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got all the time in the world to share my secrets,” he says.
God I hope that’s true. I hope we have so much more time to get to know each other. He pulls me to the side, guides my arm over my head, then lets go, and I’m sliding away before being twirled back at him, and then we’re touching again, his hands on mine.
Around and around we go, until I’m breathless and the song transitions to a slower one, and he pulls me against him. I rest my head against his shoulder as we both breathe, in and out in time with a Taylor Swift song, one about losing and last kisses.
And the longer we sway, the longer he holds me against him, the longer I inhale the scent of soap and something else, something distinctly him, the more I hurt.
I’ve gone and done it.
I thought I loved him before, and I did, but this, what I feel now, it’s all-consuming. Maybe it’s because now I know what it’s like to lose him. Maybe it’s because things feel different this year. Less artificial, somehow, which seems so insanely stupid since it was supposed to be fake all along.
But the conversations we had, they dug deeper. Despite that I was supposed to pretend to be someone else … somehow I ended up showing him the real me. Those stupid pranks that
had me laughing, horror movie quotes, those heated debates I discovered I actually
enjoyed
. … I can’t not think we’re perfect for each other.
And suddenly it’s hard to breathe, and I can’t dance with him for another second.
“You okay?” he asks, his voice low in my ear. I nod my head but don’t speak. He rubs a soft circle on my lower back.
I don’t think I have it in me anymore—the lying. I can’t handle it.
“Do you think we can get out of here?” I ask, pulling away from him.
“Are you sure? You’ll be all dressed up with no place to go. …”
“I’m sure. Let’s go down to the swimming hole so we can talk. While everyone’s here we’ll have it to ourselves.”
“Okay. Yeah,” he says, eyeing me a little sideways. I didn’t do this last year. Last year, we spent all night here, laughing and dancing until our feet hurt. He leads me off the floor, and near the exit, we see Bailey and Adam, both leaning against the wall, staring at each other. She’s more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her. She beams whenever she’s looking at him.
“We’re heading out,” I call to Bailey. Confusion crosses her face for a split second before she masks it.
“Um, okay, have fun?”
“Yeah, uh, see you at the cabin later,” I call to Bailey, letting Landon pull me through the door.
We walk down the pathways, my despair growing, building, bubbling as my arms swing against my little tulle skirt. Even though the summer heat is still oppressive, I can’t help but think
about how in a few more weeks, the heat will break, fall will barrel in, and we’ll all be gone.
Landon slings his arm around my shoulders, and I lean into him, breathing him in again. I need him close to me right now, because this could be the last time he wants to speak to me.
I’m telling him the truth. And when I do, he’s going to run from me, just like he did last time, but I can’t not tell him what I feel.
And so I want this last touch, his skin hot on mine, before I ruin us.
We get to the river, and I kick off my shoes, glancing back at Landon before stepping into the water, ankle-deep.
“You’re going to wreck your dress,” he calls out as he slips his T-shirt over his shoulders, the moonlight catching the contours of his muscles.
I’m going to wreck so much more than this dress
. But instead I say aloud, “I know.”
I step deeper into the water, until the river reaches the hem of my skirt, and it flares out farther, floating up around me. The water is cool against my skin, but I feel hot, dizzy, out of touch. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to say good-bye to him again.
I want to have forever.
I stand there in silence, staring out at the water, in so much pain it’s hard to speak. Then I turn back and wade until the water is a little more shallow, and I sit down in the water, near the banks, so that the cool liquid swirls around my hips and waist, but so I can pull my legs up close to me, hugging my knees to my chest. He finishes stripping off his jeans, and then he sits down next to me, his legs stretched out in front of him. Under
the water, he finds a rock and lifts his hand to toss it across the river. The
plunk
is loud in the darkness.
I grind my teeth, trying to figure out the exact way to do this. How can I say these words when they’re lodged firmly in my throat?
He scoots over, so we’re close, hip to hip, side to side.
“I have to tell you something,” I say, my voice coming as a whisper in the night.
“Okay.”
I take in a ragged breath. “I’ve been lying to you.”
I can nearly hear the sounds of my words falling around us, like rocks breaking the surface of the river.
“About?” His hand finds my back, rubs up and down, up and down.
“Everything.” I stare out at the water, at the places it ripples around the rocks and boulders. “When you hit your head … when you got that concussion … we weren’t together. We broke up a year ago.”
His hand stills, but he doesn’t speak. All I can hear is my heart as it bangs painfully against my ribs. But then his hand slides off of my back, and I ache for the loss of his touch.
“You hurt me last year. Deeply. It took me weeks to pull myself together, and even then, I missed you. And I wanted you to feel that. So I manipulated you.”
“I know.”
The world goes silent as his words swirl just like the river water. And then all at once, the silence turns to roaring, like a freight train blasting through my ears.
He knows? How could he know?
“What? No.”
“Yes.”
“No,” I say, unable to believe that he knew what I was doing.
“Yes,” he repeats.
“How?” My chest heaves, and I wrap my arms more tightly around my legs. “When?”
“When did I remember that we’d broken up already?”
I purse my lips and nod.
“A month ago. Maybe a little longer. It didn’t happen all at once. Bits and pieces sort of clicked into place. I was confused at first as to how we were together again when I remembered us being apart … but then I realized that meant even
you
knew we weren’t together, but for some reason were acting like it.”
“And you didn’t say anything.”
He doesn’t respond, just watches the ripples of light dancing on the surface of the water. Why isn’t he angry? He should be telling me off right now, infuriated. Yet he played along.
“No,” he says, slowly.
“Why?”
I twist toward him, staring into the darkness of his eyes, and he finally meets my gaze. “Because it was the only way I could be with you.”
I blink, stare, then blink and stare some more, somehow unable to move, to function, to create coherent thoughts. “You chose her. Why would you want to be with me now?” I snap my jaw shut because I have no right to be indignant, not when he knows I’ve spent almost two months playing an elaborate game with him.
“Look, let me explain it all, okay?”
I swallow down the emotions screaming in my throat.
“Last summer … was amazing. I was afraid to be with you at first, because I’d just broken up with Natalie, and … I don’t know. I was confused. I’d been with her for three years and we were best friends, and I love her.”
I feel a little stab to my heart.
“But I never really fell
in
love with her. The problem is, I didn’t know it at the time.”
His hand finds mine, where it sits against the muddy river-bank, and he covers it with his own, giving it a squeeze. “Me and Natalie, we grew up together, you know? She was the girl next door. My first kiss, my first girlfriend. She was the only thing I’d ever known, until you.”
I wait for him to go on, because I don’t know where he’s going with this, and too many possibilities are spinning in front of me.
“When she broke it off … it destroyed me. I thought I’d lost everything.”
I know exactly how he felt.
“She wanted to stay friends, and I guess I really clung to the idea that we’d somehow patch things up. That I could have my girlfriend back and my world back and everything would be perfect, like it had always been.”
Underwater, his free hand finds a rock, and then he’s skipping it across the river one, two, three times. We watch it disappear, watch the ripples spread across the water, before he speaks again.
“Sometimes things feel perfect because they’re easy. No friction. No fights. No
problems
. Last year, I guess I hadn’t figured out
there was a difference between that kind of perfection and being in love. So when she broke up with me, I didn’t want to let go.”
He frowns. “When I met you, I wasn’t ready for another relationship, but I guess I sort of threw myself into one anyway. It just … it felt good, to be around you. To forget about her for a while, you know?”
“I was your rebound?” I ask, cringing.
“I know that sounds terrible. But you have to understand how long I’d been with her. Three years, we were dating. We’d been best friends before that. I just didn’t know who I was without her.”
“So you used me to get over her.”
He sighs. “That’s how it started out. You were my escape. A way to forget her.”
I don’t reply.
“You have to have noticed the difference this year. Last time around, I was holding back. I wasn’t ready to be with you. You were the right person at the wrong time.”
“I would’ve understood, if you needed to take it slow. You could’ve told me you weren’t over her,” I say, my voice cracking.
“I couldn’t, though. It was hard enough to admit it to myself.”
“But I would’ve understood. I would have gone slower if I’d known you weren’t ready for a serious relationship. I mean, I told you I loved you,” I accuse. “And you kissed me. You made me believe what we had was real.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
He worries his bottom lip. “Because … I don’t know. At the
end of the summer, I was just coming around again, looking forward instead of back. Thinking maybe you and me had a real chance, you know? And you’d started getting under my skin. You started making me think of things that had nothing to do with Natalie.”
“Then what happened in September?”
“She called me two days before we left the ranch,” he says. “She wanted to get back together. She told me she’d made a mistake.”
“And you went running back to her.”
He doesn’t refute it. Doesn’t even move. I fight the lump growing in my throat. Nothing he’s saying changes anything. He picked her. She won, I lost.
“I was a fool,” he says, when he finally breaks the silence. “I found it impossible to choose, and by default, that meant hurting you. But the way it felt to lose her was nothing compared to you. And this time it was my own fault. I should have realized how much I cared about you.”
“You’re still the one who made the choice. You kissed her. You knew I’d find out.”
“I know. But I didn’t realize it until it was too late. I went back to what was familiar, instead of what was right. You. Us. We were always right, when we were together. I was just too stupid to see it.”
He stares into my eyes with such intensity that I believe he regrets the decision. I just don’t know if it matters. “I broke up with her three weeks later.”