Because why do I feel this way? Why do I feel trapped when I love Lucas so much?
“You’ve been dating him for two years,” his best friend snaps, his chest undulating on a sharp breath.
“I’m —”
“Two years that have felt like two fucking centuries.”
“What?”
“So which part of that is toogoddamn fucking soon?”
“I don’t know, okay?I don’t know.”
All I know is that I can’t do it.
I can’t marry the boy I love for some reason. I can’t say yes to him and I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t understand how I could’ve done something like this to him.
How I could’ve hurt Lucas like this.
“Maybe I can enlighten you then,” he says, breaking into my confused thoughts.
He inches even closer, his body bending forward.
His broad shoulders dipping, his sculpted face looming over me as he rasps, “It’s hard, isn’t it?”
“What’s hard?”
“This whole long-distance shit,” he goes on, his eyes flicking over my face. “It’s hard for him. I can tell. The fact that he doesn’t get to see you as much, or as often as he’d like. He doesn’t get to see your pretty dresses, all nice and tight up top but fluttering and flying around your creamy thighs. Doesn’t get to see your thick long honey-colored braids, always bound with a ribbon, sometimes a hairclip with butterflies. Or the way you tilt your face up whenever there’s sun out, like you want to absorb every inch of the sunshine, and you do, don’t you? Because your fucking skin glows, somehow both pale and golden at the same time. Or that you always have a tiny smile whenever you open a book. Doesn’t matter which book, your mouth always tips up. And that you never fucking watch where you’re going and so he has to put his hand on you, grip your elbow or your tiny waist, your delicate shoulders, so he can steer you away from trouble. He can protect you because you don’t have the common fucking sense to do it yourself. He doesn’t get to do all that now and he hates it. He fucking hates that you’re not close. Where he can get to you whenever he wants, touch you, smell you,” he breathes in deep then as if smelling me, as ifhe’sthe one who misses my scent, “or hear your voice. Your laugh.”
Somewhere along the way, while he was talking, rasping, my belly has bottomed out. It’s fallen through my body and it’s like I’m in the air.
I’m flying.
There’s wind beneath my feet and I don’t think I’m coming down any time soon.
Not with the way he’s watching my lips.
My mouth.
As ifhe’sthe one who misses my laughter and not Lucas.
“Reign,” I whisper.
His eyes snap up and as soon as they look into mine, his jaw clenches. “It’s hard for him. So I bet it’s hard for you too.” Then, after a pause, “Is it?”
“Yes,” I somehow manage to say even though I’m still reeling and breathless.
Another clench. “You miss him, huh.”
“A lot.”
“A lot.”
I nod.
“So maybe you found a way to make it easy.”
“What?”