Page 115 of Never Have I Ever
He serves the guy at the end of the bar and then comes over to me again. “Listen. When you want to be honest with me, then we’ll talk. I’m not going to stand here and listen to this bullshit.”
“It isn’t bullshit,” I say. “Yeah, we had fun, but now it’s done.”
He stares at me for a while and then shakes his head, narrowing his eyes at me, “You said that shit to her, didn’t you,” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest.
I shrug. “Not those exact words.”
He grimaces. “You’re a dumbass.”
“What?”
“You’re a fucking dumbass,” he says. “You’ve been lost without her. Drinking, sleeping all day, acting like you’ve got a stick shoved up your ass all week. You can’t even look at her with another guy without feeling sick. And you think you don’t love her?”
“I don’t.”
He gestures with his head behind me to Rosalie. “That girl said she loves you, she felt comfortable with you and told you how she feels, and you said ‘it was fun, but now it’s over’ to her face,” he says, frowning at me. “You broke her heart.”
Fuck, don’t I know it. I did everything I possibly could to avoid that situation. I didn’t want to hurt her. “I told her not to get attached.”
He crosses his arms, glaring at me. “Was she just a fuck?”
This guy is begging for my fist. “Don’t fucking talk about her like that.”
“Was your whole interaction purely sexual?” he asks me again.
I look away, remembering everything we did together. How I showed her what makes me feel alive, how I took her drinking for the first time, dancing with her, taking her to the lake.
“Not exactly. We did other stuff,” I tell him.
“Like?”
“Like shit I don’t want to tell you,” I spit out. I don’t need to tell him everything that happened between Rosie and me. It was between us. It was ours.
He laughs. “You’re head over heels in love with that girl.”
I swallow, shaking my head. “I—”
“Love isn’t a made-up concept, Grayson. It’s when you can’t stop thinking about someone. You want every day with them. You trust them. You love everything they do. You love everything about them.”
I picture her smile and how my chest tenses every time she smiles at me. Her laugh, her voice, how sweet and breathless it is. Her face, that gorgeous mole that I can only see when she doesn’t have makeup on. How she gets excited about everything, how she feels in my arms when she cradles her head into my chest.
Aiden’s voice snaps me out of a Rosalie montage in my head. “If you don’t feel that way for her, then fine. You don’t love her,” he says.
Shit. He’s right. I do feel like that for her. I can’t even sleep when she’s not near me. Every time I think about how I’m never going to see her again, never going to kiss her again, never going to hold her again, I struggle to breathe.
“Fuck,” I curse, running a hand through my hair.
He grins. “You’re welcome.”
I love her. Of course, I fucking love her. I want every moment with her. I want to wake up with her, go to sleep with her, share every day with her. I want to teach her everything and share all of her firsts with her. I want to hear her laugh, I want to see her smile, I want to make her happy because she makes me happy just by being around, by being herself.
I want her.
I love her.
“I’m going to get my girl back.”
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