Page 84 of Love You Madly

Inside, I wish he would kiss me.Why does he have to have a stupid girlfriend?The thought lingers as we hug, and I swear I feel him placing a soft kiss on the top of my head. My heart flutters, but I keep my feelings in check.

“I’ll see you again soon,” he says, pulling back slightly to look at me.

I nod, smiling. “I’ll hold you to that.”

As he drives away, I lean against the back of my new front door and rest my head back with a thunk.Ouch. I wrap my arms around myself, already missing his touch and wondering when I will see him again. I slowly slide my back down the door until I’m sitting on the floor staring up at the ceiling.

I can see my reflection in a mirror that we hung on the wall across from the front door and I feel ashamed of myself.

“He’s got a girlfriend, Callie. A fucking girlfriend. What are you doing?! You cannot catch feelings for this guy,” I reprimand my reflection aloud like a lunatic. “You’re just rebounding because of everything that’s happened lately with Adam and Matt. It’s nothing. Don’t try to make it something.”

But it’s not nothing.

In fact, it’s just the opposite.

Part of me wonders if I just want him so badly because I know I can’t have him. Because he can’t be mine. But that cannot be the case because I wanted him before he had a girlfriend. Before he lost his stupid phone.

He had told me that there was no way it would work out because we live so far from one another. But if that’s the case, then what the hell was today?

It seemed like the timing worked out just fine and he was able to get here when he wanted to be.

Why is the universe so cruel that it would send me the right guy at the wrong time?

And why did he show up now?

Why didn’t he show up months ago when we first met online before he wrote me off so quickly and shoved me into the friend zone?

What changed?

God, I must look so pathetic. I guess he just couldn’t help feeling sorry for me since I was desperate enough to ask for his help.

I guess chivalry isn’t dead though. So there’s that.

thirty-six

BLURRED LINES - ROBIN THICKE, T.I, & PHARRELL WILLIAMS

OWEN - JULY 12, 2013

Driving away from Callie’s house, my mind is spinning. I grip the steering wheel tighter, my knuckles turning white. Leaving her tonight might just be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

Not kissing her took every ounce of restraint that I have. But it is important to me that I don’t cross that line. I’ve already bent the rules more than I should have when it comes to Callie.

I need to end things with Karissa.

I need to end them before I see Callie again because I don’t think I will be able to resist kissing her when I see her again. Not unless she tells me I can’t, anyway.

Being with Callie was so easy. I think I always knew it would be. But I convinced myself that the distance was going to be a barrier I wouldn’t be able to work through. Fuck, I’m still not sure how I would work that out or if she would even want to.

She wants to, though. She has to want to. It couldn’t have been just me who felt the connection between us today.

I know I’m not the only person that felt that tonight. There’s no fucking way she missed that. How bad I wanted her–needed to be around her.

And fuck, her laugh is intoxicating. She is crass and beautiful and sweet and she smells so fucking good. Like roses and warm sugar.

And she has such a potty mouth.

Makes me wonder what other things she can do with that filthy mouth of hers…

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