Page 27 of Our Final Encore

My lips twist nervously. “You’ll never lose me. We’re best friends, we always will be.” My words come out in a rush, almost desperate sounding. I don’t want to sound desperate. I want to sound breezy and nonchalant, but I’m learning quickly that’s not how I react to situations like this.

He lets out a shaky breath. “I’ve been thinking about leaving.”

My heart speeds up again, but this time it doesn’t feel good, it feels panicky. “What do you mean? Leaving to go where?”

“Just…away. I’m going to be seventeen this fall, I could legally quit school and get a job somewhere.” He blinks a couple of times, his eyes focused on the tree line in the distance. “Maybe find a way to play music for people, I don’t know.”

My stomach sinks, and it makes me wonder how only a few seconds ago I felt like I was flying. Now, I feel like I’ve fallen from the sky and I’m six feet underground.

“Oh,” is all I can manage.

“But I want you to come with me. I don’t want to be without you. I figured out what that was like and it sucked.” His eyes shut tightly, almost like he’s wincing in pain. “I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”

“I can’t imagine not graduating together,” I throw back. The thought of it makes me slightly sick, we’ve done everything together since we met. Well, minus his time spent with Brooke. Other than that, we’ve been attached at the hip. I can’t imagine going through the next two years of high school without him by my side. “I can’t just quit school, Alex. What would I do, leave my family? Why would I even want to do that?”

He looks at me again, his eyes bearing a broken expression. Rays of sun shine down on his tan skin, his brown freckles already look a little darker than they did this morning. “You’re right,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m sorry.”

What exactly is he sorry for? Kissing me? Making me feel like he actually cared before telling me he wants to move away and drop out of school?

Tears begin to sting my eyelids, but I refuse to let them fall, I’m not that weak. Not over a boy who’s just supposed to be my friend anyway.

“It’s fine,” I clip. “Don’t worry about it.” I push myself up off the blanket and start walking across the field toward my house. I wait for him to stop me, call out my name, something. But he doesn’t.

My heart crumbles in my chest, weighed down by massive, crushing disappointment.

SIXTEEN

Opal

Istill haven’t shed a tear over what happened this afternoon, and I have to say I’m proud of myself. I’ve always promised myself that I wouldn’t let a guy play with my emotions. It’s why I’ve never allowed myself to get too close to one. Well, other than Alex.

Now that I’m laying here in the dark, nothing but a faint sliver of moonlight slipping through my window, it’s hard not to replay the entire scene in my mind. Even if it didn’t end how I might’ve hoped, it was still my first kiss, and that part was pretty wonderful.

I hear a light tapping on my window, and I’m so deep into imagining the memory, that it startles me. My whole body jolts at the sound. I roll over onto my other side to see Alex peeking through my blinds.

I’m still mad at him, but I can’t say I’m not happy that he showed up.

I slip out of bed and unlock the window, opening it for him. “Be quiet, my mom might still be awake.”

He sits down on my bed and I plop down next to him, keeping a couple of feet of space between us. It feels weird after how close we were today, after touching him the way I did. My heart screams out, begging for him to touch me that way again, but my brain wars with it, telling it to shut up and remember that we’re mad at him right now.

“I’m sorry about earlier.”

He’s sorry? Is he sorry for making me upset, or is he sorry that he kissed me? I’m afraid to ask. “I just don’t understand…why would you want to drop out of school?” My voice gets quieter. “I would miss you. Every day.”

“I’d miss you too. That’s why I said I’d take you with me. I’d take you anywhere with me, you know that right?”

“But I can’t do that, Alex. That’s a crazy thing to do.”

He scratches the back of his neck. “Maybe it is, but I think doing what everyone else calls normal is sort of crazy too.”

I roll my eyes, but a faint smile plays on my lips.

“I meant everything I said earlier.”

I nervously pick at the lint on my purple pajama bottoms, unsure what to say next. Are we just going to dance around the fact that we kissed?

“So, what then?” I ask.

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