Page 36 of I Would Stay Forever
“One time! It was one time!”
“Ah yes, of course, I just happened to run into you the one time it happened,” he said. “There’s absolutely no chance that you, in fact, do that every day and I just caught you the one time.”
I guess he wasn’t technically wrong that it had happened more than once. Although they’d been getting less frequent as the weeks went by, there had been multiple times I’d gone sprinting from my house in only my pajamas. I just hadn’t had an audience for the other times.
When I didn’t answer, Dean turned his gaze back to his reading, probably assuming I didn’t want to talk about it. Normally, I would have been grateful for the chance to think of anything else and would have followed suit. Today, though, I had the strange, nagging feeling that I actually did want to talk about it—and I didn’t have the slightest clue why. It wasn’t like runningwas a topic of conversation I enjoyed, and even if I did, Dean Graham wouldn’t be my first choice of person to discuss it with. Which only made it all the more perplexing at the words that blurted out of my mouth a moment later: “I panic run.”
Dean blinked, his face contorting with confusion. I didn’t give him the chance to ask anything before I barrelled on.
“That’s why I was out the other morning in my pajamas,” I continued, my mouth going faster than my brain could keep up with. “Ever since my dad left, I just… Sometimes I wake up and I feel this overwhelming need to get out of there. Like there’s a weight on my chest and my options are either to drown or to run, so I run.” I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, realizing how stupid all of this sounded out loud, especially when he hadn’t asked. But I couldn’t stop myself. “Anyway, that’s why I was there in my pajamas. If you were wondering.”
Dean stared at me for a long time, and I felt my face begin to flush as I realized that we were only here to do a group project and instead I was busy trauma dumping all over him. My throat tightened with the thought as I realized what I was doing. He was my partner for some school work, but that didn’t make him my confidant. He wasn’t my person to talk to about this.
Really, I should have been talking to Sebastian about it—we’d been doing so much better since the other day when he broke up with Tiffany. But I hadn’t gotten the chance to discuss this with him yet. And even though we were in a better place, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to. If I told him about this, then he would start realizing every time I went out for a run. His bedroom was in the basement, so he would hear me walking overhead in the morning and come after me and want to talk, and heaven knows he already didn’t get enough sleep as it was.
Anyway, it felt somewhat full-circle to share this with Dean. He’d been there since the moment this all started in that alleyway. It was Dean who sat with me when I couldn’t sleepthat night. Dean who saw through the mask I’d been putting up for the weeks following. Dean who seemed to be everywhere I turned lately, always ready to give me a hand. Was it so wrong of me to want to share this with him too?
Yes, I reminded myself. It was. Because Dean wasn’t my friend, he was Sebastian’s friend. So why was it that I was more comfortable talking about this with him than with Zoey?
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I don’t know why I?—”
“I hate training in the mornings,” Dean said, cutting me off. I stared at him, trying to make sense of that reply. He laughed softly and ran a hand through his hair, looking uncomfortable. “Actually, as much as I love football, I kind of hate how much time I have to dedicate to it. On top of practices, I also have to hit the weight room and the track almost every day.”
“Right,” I said, not totally following what we were talking about. But he’d heard me out, so now I would hear him out. I was sure there was some meaning in his words that I was missing and I just hoped I’d be able to figure it out.
“My parents have this thing,” he continued, “about being perfect. Well, I guess it’s not about actuallybeingperfect, as much as it islookingperfect to everybody else. When they were in high school, Dad was the quarterback, so it only made sense that I join the football team too. But it’s not enough for them—I can’t just be on the team, I need to be thebeston the team. I need to look so good that other parents look at me and tell them, ‘Wow, your son is amazing.’”
How many times had I looked at the Grahams and thought they were the perfect family? How many times had I heard Mum compare our family to theirs, saying that she wished we were as put together as them? They were the classic family you saw on TV, with the parents who were so in love, the son who played football, and the daughter who was quiet and sweet. I guess I’d really fallen into the trap of the image that they put out. A waveof guilt washed over me as I realized that I never wondered what it must have looked like living inside that—trying to be a part of the picture-perfect family that everyone envied.
Dean scratched his neck, looking uncomfortable. “So, that’s why I was out there that morning, running on the track. Because I feel like the practices I do with the team aren’t enough—I have to be better than the rest of them, which means killing myself twenty-four-seven to get there.”
“I guess we were both having rough mornings,” I said in a weak voice, just for something to fill the silence. Dean wasn’t looking at me anymore; his gaze was pointed at the textbook in front of him, though it seemed unfocused. He just nodded in agreement.
I bit my lip as I looked at him, suddenly having the overwhelming urge to just be closer to him. To brush his hair back, running my hands through the soft, dark locks. To whisper sweet comforting words in his ear. To run my lips over his, memorizing the taste of him. I wondered if he would taste as good as he’d smelled on Friday night.
My hands flexed on the table, the desire to do it all clashing with the knowledge that I never could. I had no idea where the thoughts had come from, but they needed to lock themselves back up tight. I needed to stick Dean firmly back into the category of “friend”—already a compromise from his previous placement of “Sebastian’s friend/my neighbour”—and not allow him to slip anywhere close to the category of “crush.”
Dean Graham was not mine. He would never be mine.
But I couldn’t let go of the overwhelming feeling that I wanted him to be.
eighteen
I wasn’tsure what I was expecting when I drove Imogen home that night, but it wasn’t for her to suddenly turn to me and say, “So, I think we should talk about Dad.”
I almost slammed on the brakes in surprise. The D-word hadn’t been used in our house for weeks now. It was an unspoken rule that nobody ever brought him up, and I couldn’t think of a single reason why she would want to now. I wondered if she’d planned this, using Sebastian’s terrifying driving as a reason to ride with me just so that we could have whatever conversation she was trying to start right now.
My hands tightened on the wheel and I had to fight to keep my voice calm as I said, “Oh?”
Maybe it was egotistical of me, but I automatically assumed that when she said she wanted to talk about Dad that she was talking about the night he confessed to everything. Sure, almost two months had passed by now, but I figured something about that night had been bothering her and she figured it had been long enough now that she could bring it up. Maybe she’d somehow guessed Dean’s role in it and wanted to ask me about it. So I was taken aback by her next words.
“Do you think we’ll ever see him again?”
It took me a minute to wrap my mind around the question and another to process it. All the while I kept driving, but I was functioning on autopilot. When I turned onto our street, I blinked, realizing I didn’t remember half of the drive home.
“I’m not sure,” I said slowly, because Imogen was still patiently waiting for my response. I wasn’t sure what she was hoping that I would say, or if she was hoping for anything in particular at all. I had this bizarre feeling that I didn’t want to let her down with my answer, but I was also so out of my depth that I didn’t even know where to begin.
I pulled into our driveway, noting that Sebastian wasn’t back yet, and turned the car off but didn’t get out. I now had no doubt that Imogen had been waiting until she was alone with me to ask this, which meant the conversation wouldn’t be leaving this vehicle.
