Page 2 of Honey Pot

“I’m just your shadow.”

Cael flinched like I had slapped him.

I did everything in my power to hold the wave of tears at bay as they pricked the corners of my eyes and formed a lump in my throat. He would never love me the way I loved him. I pushed from the grass when he didn’t say a word, his blue eyes glossy from fighting his emotions. He simply watched me walk away. I stomped along the path, taking out all my anger and agony on the trees and moss around me. When my house came into sight I inhaled a long breath to calm myself down before breaking out into the backyard.

“Hey, Lovebug,” Momma cooed from the porch as I straightened myself out and wiped away the tears. “What’s wrong? You’re all covered in mud, Baby.”

My mom stood from the garden and wiped her hands on her overalls, making as if to stop me before I entered the house through the back door, but I just brushed past her, avoiding her gaze.

“Nothing, Momma, I just tripped.” I couldn’t look at her. My mom would see through the façade and lies, furthering the breakdown that edged closer. “I’m going to go shower. Tell Cael I went to the library… if he comes looking. I don’t wanna talk to him.”

As the back door swung shut, I heard Mom call out for more explanation, but I kept walking up through the house to my loft where the world couldn’t hurt me, and Cael couldn’t come.

Once I was inside, I clicked the door closed, making sure the latch was tight and no one could bother me, before climbing into bed in my muddy dress and muffling my sobs with the soft, clean fabric of my pillow.

I cried myself to sleep, my shoulders sore and head pounding, every part of my body in pain over preemptively losing my best friend. The reality that he was leaving had finally sunk in, but the truth that the distance would change everything about us had hit me like a freight train.

When I woke, the sun had gone down and my pillow was damp from the tears I cried, making my face sticky and clammy. I groaned, pushing from my bed and stripping from my dress, leaving it in a puddle on the floor near the foot of my bed. I wandered to my bathroom, still painted sky blue from my sixth birthday, when my dad let me pick whatever color I wanted. I ran warm water, briefly staring at my pale, freckled face and stringy dark hair in the mirror.

The girl that no one could love.

Cael Cody’s shadow.

The water seemed to ease the tension from my shoulders but only made my headache worse and, after a while, made me dizzy enough to sink to the floor of the tub and put my head between my knees. I had been so stupid to think that Cael would ever see me as anything but a friend.

I distinctly remembered the moment I saw Cael as something more, the exact day to the hour the sun casted differently on my image of him. He had stepped down from his porch, baby blue button-down undone at the top to show the gold necklaces he had stacked up on top of each other before the party. His hair was longer than usual, and chunks of dirty blonde had fallen against his forehead. He smiled at me that day, and I felt my chest open up and swallow the feeling of being loved by him whole.

I climbed out of the shower, trying to focus on anything, but my mind kept slipping back to his face. A year ago, somewhere between being kids and turning into teenagers, I had forgotten how to be his friend and started to become a lovesick puppy. I just hadn’t realized it until that moment.

I rummaged through my drawers for shorts and a tank top, changing into them and drying my hair, before chucking the towel back into the washroom. Quickly, I changed the dirty sheets on my bed, kicking the muddy ones into a pile and crawling back into my fresh-smelling bed. I pulled my journal from the dresser beside me. The top was carved apart and painted on with tiny little doodles that I couldn’t get out of my head.

I kicked around under my sheets until my feet hit the tiny knit bag full of pens, and I dragged it up to myself, picking out my favorite black one before throwing the bag somewhere into the void of my messy room. I could hear my parents in the house below, dancing in the kitchen to Tim McGraw like they always did.

I sighed. I had been taught that love is forever. It’s like cement. Once you're in it, there’s no getting out. I craved it, longed for it, and it seemed to always pass me by in the form of watching Cael pull girls into his lap or flirt with the cheerleaders during lunch hour in the cafeteria. I had a list as long as my leg of the girls Cael had loved that weren’t me.

Time seemed to creep by, and as the sun set in the sky, a soft knock came on my door, scaring me into hiding my journal beneath my pillow. I padded across my ugly, thrifted floor rug and turned on the small, dingy lamp on my desk beside the door before popping the latch and opening it.

“Mrs. Matthews said you didn’t eat,” Cael stood before me, his eyes cast to the ground like he was in trouble holding out a plate of my favorite fries. “I went and got them from Duke’s.”

“Why?” I asked like I didn’t know the answer, my door still half closed like it might protect me or even stop me from letting Cael come in.

“Because I made you sad, Clem, and I didn’t mean to,” he looked up at me through his thick lashes, and I could see that he had been crying too.

“You didn’t make me sad, Cael,” I bit. “I made myself sad, wishing for something I couldn’t have.”

“What do you want? I’ll go get it for you,” he said without hesitation, and I felt my heart shatter like a piece of china inside my chest.

“What I want, you can’t just go get,” I said, strained and twangy.

“Just tell me what it is, Clem, I won’t leave until I know. Your Momma and Daddy went to a movie, you’re all alone in this big house, and I sat outside for two hours until they let me in. And Mr. Matthews threatened me with a gun before they left, so you better tell me what you want before he comes back and shoots me.”

“Stop!” I yelled louder than I ever had before, and Cael’s head cocked to the side in surprise. “I can’t tell you.”

I said each word with purpose and intent so he understood that it wasn’t something he could buy from a store and it wasn’t something he could fix with his pretty smile and perfect jokes.

“You can tell me anything, Clementine,” he said, pushing his foot against the door, “and you're gonna tell me right now what's making you so sad.”

“What if saying it out loud makesyousad?” I asked, backing away as he made his way into my room.

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