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He tensed up but kept his eyes on the road.
“You only want the pretty part of me. Not the angry, troubled part… but guess what, soldier, I’m done trying to be the perfect version of myself around you or anyone. I’m fucking flawed and imperfect, and the fact that you judge me tells nothing about me buteverythingabout you.”
Darren had spoken those words to me and I had clung to them for weeks. I couldn’t be with someone who couldn’t accept me for who I was.
For the next fifteen minutes we didn’t speak. Gabriel took Exit Thirteen and made his way up the mountain, and he didn’t stop until we arrived at a forest.
“Come,” he said and got out of the car.
“Can’t you just take me home?” I asked, but he had already closed his door before I finished my sentence.
Ten seconds later he opened my door and offered me a hand. I ignored it and got out by myself.
“Have you ever been here?” he asked.
I looked around. “Where exactly is here?”
“Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park,” he said calmly. “They used to do mining here – I’ll show you.”
“So what are we now…? On some kind of historical sightseeing tour that I never asked for?”
He reached his hand out to me but I ignored it and marched on.
“So if me judging you tells everything about me… then what does you judging me tell about you?” he asked behind me.
I had to repeat his words in my head before I understood what he had actually said.
“I never judged you,” I scoffed.
“Really? So you are allowed to be flawed and imperfect, but I’m not?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked annoyed.
“I already apologized for screwing up, but you won’t forgive me or give me a second chance… so I’m concluding that there wasn’t room for me to make mistakes in our relationship. You want me to accept your flaws but expect perfection from me, is that it?”
“Of course not,” I said, offended. “All my friends are different and kind of crazy… I don’t judge and I don’t need perfection.”
He arched a brow. “Is that what you’re telling yourself?”
I moved on, annoyed with his insinuating that I was asking more than I could give.
When I came to a split trail I stopped. “Left or right?”
“Left.”
“I don’t know what your problem is. How do you expect me to be with a guy who finds me repulsive?” I asked.
“I don’t find you repulsive,” he said. “I never did.”
I turned around so fast that he almost bumped into me. “So are you saying that if I was dressed as a Goth you would still be attracted to me?”
“No. I don’t like that look, it does nothing for me.”
“Aha… See, I rest my case.”
We stood there on a narrow trail with the forest all around us and glanced deeply into each other’s eyes, stubbornness burning brightly.
“I won’t lie to you, Cia. I’m a guy and we’re visual. I like it when you dress in feminine clothes and I don’t like it when you dress like an angry boy.”
