Page 96 of True Sight
“Why do I feel like there’s a ‘but’ in there?” Alex asks gently. She starts to shift and I open my eyes to see her looking back at me, propped up on her elbow with concern written all over her face. I close my eyes again and wrap my arms around my head, too embarrassed to look at her.
“But,” I sigh, “he didn’t say it back.”
“Oh…” Her voice is small as she thinks about it. “Well what did he say?”
“Nothing,” I say flatly and roll my eyes behind my eyelids.
“Nothing?” she clucks.
I open my eyes again and look at her. “Nothing.”
She frowns at me for a moment before lowering her head back down to my stomach and confidently announcing, “Well, boys are dumb. He was probably just surprised. Sometimes you need to give them more time to think about things like that.”
“You do remember that I’m a boy, right?” I snark, glancing down at the top of her head.
“Yes, but you’re a fully developed boy, you don’t count.” She waves a hand. “He probably just needs time to process. You’re his first boyfriend, his first gay experience. You’ve said before how he’s told you he doesn’t like change. Having someone tell you they love you is a pretty big change.”
“He didn’t come after me, Alex,” I lament, recalling how I waited for him to open the door and ask me to stay.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I left and he didn’t come after me. I waited, but he didn’t come and I haven’t heard from him since,” I rattle off, flinging my hands around in the air around me.
“You left? You said I love you and then you left?” Her voice is getting louder and more annoyed as she speaks.
“He didn’t say anything back, what was I supposed to do?” I cry out defensively.
“Oh my fucking god, maybe you aren’t as fully developed as I thought you were.” I can hear her eyes rolling. The sounds of her scuffling around fills the room and when I open my eyes, she’s sitting up completely and looking at me once again.
“Listen to me. You do not tell a boy that you love him and then run away when he doesn’t say it back. It’s a lot of pressure to say that to someone and to run away when they don’t say it back right away isn’t fair.” She’s lecturing me as if I’m a schoolboy being taught how to behave on the playground. “And from what I know about him, he really isn’t the type of guy you dump and run on. He probably thinks you’re mad at him or that you don’t want to be with him anymore.”
I look at my friend whom I’ve only known for a couple of months but already feel like she’s more of a sister. I regretted leaving as soon as I made it home but also couldn’t bring myself to go back to his place. I know she’s right when she says he probably needed more time than others to process my confession, knowing that about him was part of the reason I’d waited a few weeks before saying it at all. But I still couldn’t stop my heart from feeling like someone whacked it with a baseball bat when he didn’t say it back.
“So what do I do now? I haven’t heard from him since I left his place yesterday and just showing up on his doorstep seems a little much, don’t you think?”
“I think you need to honor the forty-eight hour rule,” she says confidently.
“The forty-eight hour rule?” I ask skeptically. Waiting has never been my forté. I’m better known to rush in at full speed than to pause and think before I act.
“Give him forty-eight hours to think, process, and reach out. If he doesn’t, then you reach out to him. Give him the space he needs to get out of his head and realize how madly in love with you he is and come crawling back to you.”
“I’m actually the one who normally does the crawling…” I murmur under my breath, cracking a joke.
“There’s my Henry boy,” she boasts, putting her hands on my shoulders and shaking them.
My heart falls when a thought I’ve been trying to keep at bay rears its ugly head and I can’t help but ask the question.
“What if he doesn’t love me back? What if I scared him off and he doesn’t want to see me again?”
She looks at me with a hopeful smile and tucks her chin to look at me through her lashes. “Then he’s an even bigger idiot than we thought and you and I will ride off into the sunset, happily ever after.” I smile at my friend and nod in agreement.
“I’m never sleeping with you though,” she deadpans and we both fall into each other laughing.
37
CONRAD
The number of times I’ve reached for my phone to call him is threatening to reach a hundred thousand. The number of walks Annie and I have been on feels like it’s reaching the same amount because anytime I think about what he said for too long I feel myself needing to escape. Not that she cares in the slightest about the extra exercise. It might not be the runs she gets with Henry but she’s going to have to deal with it because I’m not sure when I’ll see him again.
