Finally, I come to a stop.
My butt hits something. It’s the edge of his desk that’s laden with his books.
His new hobby.
Despite the fact that I want to go back, that I want to see my friends and especially be there for Callie, I am really nervous.
I’m nervous about the gossip, the looks I’ll get from the girls, from the teachers. By now everybody must know that I have a thing for him. By now everyone must hate me even more, if possible. So his promise to me, spoken in such an authoritative and possessive tone, makes my body all lazy and heavy.
Cozy.
But I can’t give in to it. I can’t.
It’s dangerous.
He is dangerous.
Hope is dangerous. At least for a girl like me.
A girl in such hopeless love.
“And then what?” I ask hesitantly.
“What?”
“Once you’ve dropped me off, and made sure that I’m taken care of, will you leave then?”
That’s when he reaches me, at my question.
And my heart jumps into my throat.
Especially when he dips his face and bends his body and cages me in like he always does.
“No,” he rasps, looking me in the eyes, his hands on either side of me.
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve got other things on my mind.”
“Other things than… soccer?” I ask, clutching the edge of his desk.
“Yeah. Soccer can wait.”
“Y-you’re kidding.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “Fuck soccer. There are other things that I’m thinking about.”
God.
God, I’m so scared.
“Like what?”
Something happens to him then.
A strain comes over him and his arms flex, his fingers crinkling the pages of the open book that they’re pressing on.
“Like a girl with witchy eyes and thirteen freckles,” he replies.
"What?”
“Yeah, and how fucked up I am over her. So much that everything hurts.”
“Everything hurts?” I whisper, digging my nails into the wood and clenching my stomach.
“Yeah. Everything.”
“Why?”
“Because I was an asshole who didn’t have his shit together when I met her and so I made her cry. And because even when I decided to stop being an asshole and get my shit together, I made her cry then as well.” Then, “They had to sedate you, didn’t they? The day I showed up. Because you wouldn’t stop crying. That’s why I stayed away. For two whole weeks. That’s why I didn’t see you. I didn’t deserve to see you because they had to inject you with a drug to put you to sleep. Just because I was there. Just because I came to tell you.”
“Arrow –”
“I wanted to tell you the night you snuck out to see me too,” he continues, his words rough and guttural, cutting mine off, his fingers abusing the pages of the book. “But you ran away from me. So I thought, I’ll tell her tomorrow. I’ll go to her in the morning and pull her out of class. I was even making plans and thinking of scenarios where you’d refuse me and I’d make you listen. I’d beg you to listen.” He swallows. “But then Mom called me. And I never got the chance. But I was going to take my chance tomorrow. I was going to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“That you’re that girl for me.”
“What girl?”
He licks his lips before saying, “The girl who haunts me.”
“I-I haunt you?”
He nods. “Yeah. You’re the girl who keeps me awake at night. The girl who makes me look out the window and count the stars in the sky. I not only count them. I look for patterns. I look for shapes that match the freckles on your nose and under your eyes. You’re the girl I wait for at midnight because she wants to go for a ride and she has a thing for speed. But she’s always late and when she does show up, I complain about it because I’m an asshole. But the truth is that you’re the girl I’d wait hours for. You’re the girl I’d wait and wait for just to get a glimpse of you in my leather jacket. Just to see what color lipstick you’re wearing and just to hear you say the weird fucking name of it in your sweet voice.
“You’re the girl whose notes I waited for like a junkie back at St. Mary’s. And some days you’d write me two notes and I’d be over the moon. But I’d hide it. I’d hide it because again, I’m an asshole. I’m an asshole addicted to your words. To your letters. That’s why I stole them. I stole your letters just so I could read them over and over and write you back. Just so I could write to you every night.
“You’re the girl, Salem, who makes me want,” he bites out, the tendons on his neck standing taut. “I want. So many things, you understand? And I don’t know what it means. I don’t fucking know. I don’t understand and it terrifies me. It shakes me right down to my soul but still I want to find out. I want to know. I want to know why it hurts to see you cry. Why it hurts when you’re in pain, when someone upsets you. Why the thought of you in that godforsaken place with barred windows makes me want to break something. Break the world. Why it makes me sick to my goddamn stomach, whenever I think of you walking away from me like you did that night. I want to know what it all means. Because I’ve never felt this way. I’ve never felt this… need. This craving. Not until you. Not until you walked up to me that night at the bar like a vision of some sort. A vision that haunts me. That haunts my body, my soul. My heart. So yeah, you haunt me, Salem.”