Page 40 of The Consequence of Loving Me

“I don’t do relationships. I do sex,” I say.

“Why won’t you do both?” His fingers brush over the ruffles of my comforter. It feels intimate—him, sitting on my bed, running his fingers over the covers I sleep in.

“Because I just can’t, Maverick. Now off you go!” I get up, grabbing his arm and pulling to get him off my bed. To get him out of my personal space. I’m reminded just how many tequila shots I took by the way I stumble, causing me to land right against Maverick.

Our bodies are flush. We’re eye-to-eye, my chest against his chest.

If he were to look down, he would see that goosebumps are starting to form on my skin. The way I feel right now pisses me off because I don’t want to feel this way. I’m close enough to see, when he looks down, that his eyelashes fan over his sharp cheekbones. I can see that scar, the imperfection that runs down his mouth. The one I can’t wait to paint.

His hands are steady as they sit on the small of my waist. They’re warm, searing completely through my sweatshirt. “Tell me about Connor.”

It feels like a punch to my stomach. I’m not ready for him—for anyone—to look at me the way I see myself. But maybe I need to be.

Because once he knows the truth, he won’t look at me the way he seems to be looking at me right now. The way he’s never looked at me before. The way a man with a girlfriend shouldn’t be looking at another woman. The way a girl like me doesn’t even deserved to be looked at.

Am I imagining this?

“I’m afraid,” is all I say. It’s vulnerable, probably the first time I’ve allowed myself to be in a long time.

“I’ll still be here afterward.” His hands tighten on my waist and I can’t help it.

I shouldn’t.

Dear god, I know I shouldn’t.

He has a girlfriend and I actually respect that. Or I thought I did, but this can be added to my list of Shitty Things Veronica Does in the Name of Being Selfish, because I lean even closer to him. Our foreheads touch. His breath hits my face every time he breathes out. I wish he would say something—do something—to stop whatever’s about to happen, but it’s clear he’s as lost in this as I am.

My legs shake underneath me. I would love to blame it on the alcohol, but it isn’t that. I want to collapse on top of him, crawl inside his body and live in his warmth forever. I’m nervous to look him in the eye, but I do it anyway. Those baby blues are pinned right on me, willing me to say something. Staring into his eyes is like staring into the ocean, and for once, I don’t hate it. The way his eyes roam over my face—slowly and with purpose—makes me feel more intoxicated than the liquor I’d downed earlier.

I think over his words to me. I want them to be true. I want him to still look at me like this after I tell him the truth. But I know he won’t. And I know it’s for the best that he won’t, but I hold onto the moment for a little while longer.

I pull away from him then—wanting to completely escape his warmth, this feeling—but his hands still rest on the narrow of my waist and it doesn’t appear he’s willing to move them. I make it so we have no point of contact except his arms on my waist and my thighs touching his as I stand between his legs.

“Connor and I were a love story that was never supposed to happen. We were so different, but somehow it worked. Growing up, I was a brat.”

My heart pounds in my chest.

I haven’t told this story in years. I barely even spoke of it after it happened. But here I am, wanting to pour out my soul to Maverick.

“I was a spoiled, entitled, rich bitch. I wasn’t abnormally mean to others or anything like that, but I was too wrapped up in my own head to care about anyone else. I had a lot of insecurities. Connor called me out on all of it, from the beginning. We were two very different people that came from very different backgrounds, but we met in the middle. Our version of the middle, anyway. It sounds cliché and I want to throw up even saying it, but he made me a better person. Not even just that, but he made me want to be a better person. Which was something I never wanted to be until him.”

Until now, I’ve managed to keep eye contact with Maverick, but as we get to the nitty gritty, I’m scared to maintain it. I want to look away when I dump all my baggage at his feet, but I also want to witness his reaction. I want to read every single line of his face to find what might run through his head.

“We were basically a year into our relationship when he died, and it was my fault.” I take a shaky breath in. I know Maverick has to feel me trembling beneath his hands. I’m terrified to show him how terrible of a person I actually am, for him to know completely what I did.

“Connor and I had gotten into an argument. I was being young and stupid and petty—basically my typical self, back then. I was convinced he was looking at one of our friends. In my mind, he obviously wanted her and not me. I was so insecure. But more than that, I loved to fight. Fighting with Connor was my favorite thing to do. I was so fucked up in the head that I felt like he showed me more love when we were fighting.

“So, even though deep down I knew Connor loved me with everything a seventeen-year-old could give, I dragged out our fight. I’m from a small town on the coast. We were always in the ocean. Our fight happened right in the middle of the crashing waves. I was being a stubborn brat and went into the water and he followed me in. It was deep, and it was night, and we both should’ve paid attention to the tide. But we were too wrapped up in our teenage relationship angst. He said something that pissed me off, so I lashed back out at him.

“He was so upset with me that he swam away from me, deeper into the ocean. The rest is a blur. I lost him in the water, and by the time I found him and pulled him to shore, he was pronounced dead.” I know tears are rolling down my face, but I let them. If I’m going to let Maverick dive into the fucked up abyss that is my mind, he’s going to get the emotion that comes with the trauma as well.

“The palms of my hands were bruised from trying to do so many chest compressions on him. I went off the deep end after that. I refused to talk to anyone, including my parents. The only person I even remotely talked to was my therapist, and even that was the bare minimum. It took me a year and a half to tell him the whole story. I was so shitty, I didn’t even go to Connor’s funeral. I was too much of a coward to even look his parents in the eye after what happened. They’ve reached out over the years, even going as far as staying friends with my parents, but I still can’t look at them without wishing I was the one who drowned.”

My lip trembles. “I was the reason he died, Maverick. Me. It was me and my fucked up head that doesn’t know how to accept love from others. I don’t know anything other than living in my own selfish insecurities. And he died because of it. I didn’t hold him underneath the water until his lungs quit, but I might as well have. Because we were in there for the most bullshit of reasons and I can’t even look myself in the mirror because of it.”

It’s silent for so long.

I stare at him as if I have a magnifying glass to his face. Every single tiny movement is one I don’t miss.

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