Page 38 of Still Love You

I keep quiet because I don't know what to say. It's true. The life I have planned for myself is not the life Silas wants, so he can't be part of it. It's as simple as that, and yet it hurts my heart to admit that, even to myself.

"Your dad's right," he says. "If you decide you're going to do something, you do it, even if it's not really what you want to do. You're very stubborn."

I jab his arm. "I am not stubborn."

"You're one of the most stubborn people I've ever met. You're also obsessive. Compulsive. Unpredictable. And have a bad temper." He puts his hand on my leg and smiles. "And yet I still love you."

"I am not any of those things. You make me sound like a crazy person."

He parks in front of the coffee shop, turns the truck off, unhooks his seatbelt, and looks at me. "You searched every square inch of your dorm room three times before we left Camsburg. Everything was packed, and yet you still had to search your entire room three times."

"Because I didn't want to leave anything behind. That's not being obsessive."

"You labeled each and every box with the contents. Instead of just writing 'desk stuff' you listed every single item that was in the box. In alphabetical order. That's obsessive."

I huff. "You have flaws too, you know."

He smiles. "So what are they?"

I knew he'd ask that. Now I have to think of some. "You squeeze the toothpaste from the middle."

"And why is that a problem?"

"Are you kidding? Silas, everyone knows you squeeze from the bottom and work your way up."

"There aren't any rules to squeezing toothpaste."

"Of course there are. If there weren't, everyone would be tossing out half empty tubes and that's just wasteful."

"What else do I do?" He's watching me, smiling.

"You rip the sheets off the bed when you sleep. Specifically, the fitted sheet, which doesn't make sense because it has rounded corners and elastic to keep it held to the mattress."

"I move around a lot at night."

"And rip the sheets off?"

"How do you know I do this?"

"Because I've seen your bed when I've come over in the morning. It's a disaster. I can't even look at it. I just want to put it back together." I bite my lip, feeling anxious just thinking about his disaster of a bed. "The strange thing is, the night I slept over you didn't do it. We woke up and the sheets were still in place."

That was the night both our parents went out of town for an organic foods expo. They assumed Silas and I were having sex so they didn't feel the need to stay home and keep watch over us.

"Then I guess the only way to fix that problem is to have you in my bed."

"That's not what I—" I'm interrupted by a kiss.

He undoes my seatbelt. "Let's go inside."

We spend the next hour at the coffee shop, going over his accounting homework. It's an introductory class and way easier than the one I had at Camsburg. My classes there are even harder than I thought they'd be, but it's good. I find I learn more when I'm being challenged.

After the coffee shop, I assumed we'd go home but instead he drives the opposite direction.

"Where are we going?"

"Someplace quiet."

He turns down a small dirt road. "The farm?"

---