Page 78 of Nothing Without You
After what felt like a minute, she snapped out of her trance. “Wow, I didn’t expect you to say that. Since you always look at me like you want to lock me up in Mrs. Trunchbull’s closet.”
A rough chuckle.
“You piss me off, that’s why.”
That seemed to get on her nerves. Her lips curved into a snarl.
“You notice everything about me, yetIpiss you off? Unbelievable.” She huffs out a breath and walks past me with her two other bouquets—placing them down beside my own.
Sucking in my cheeks, I held back a smile. It seemed that Adelaide Mikael put a little too much meaning on the words coming out of my mouth.
She crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head back and breathed. Entranced, I watched her. The gaping heaves of her chest, the solidarity she caved into despite my eyes on her.
It was unnerving. How I felt it all sosuddenly. Or was it even sudden? Did these feelings exist when she came back into my life, or did they renew themselves?
Swallowing the dryness in my throat, I walked up behind her and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Do you know how it feels having memories of you when I don’t give a shit about other people? When we were younger, you spoke your mind, you didn’t care that people talked about you like there was something wrong with you.” She stilledwhen my hands curved around her arms from behind. “Watching you now is frustrating. You open your mouth then close it, the gears in your brain shifting before you decide keeping quiet would be fucking better. You fist your hands in your clothes when the anxiety kicks in and you don’t tell anyone, you take it all in yourself—it’s fucking frustrating.”
“Sometimes what I have to say seems useless,” she said quietly.
“Nothing you could ever say is useless to me.” I turned her around, so she knew I meant it. “I’m not kidding, you can tell me every tiny detail about a fruit growing mold and drying up in the sun and it wouldn’t be useless.” Didn’t she get it? It washervoice I wanted to hear. I wanted to hearheryap, to seeherexplode with all the fucking brightness inside ofher. She pressed it all too close to herself and blocked all the possible ways out. Her anxiety was this oversized baby who cries whenever she takes a step forward, pulling her back into its snotty body and squeezing the strength out of her.
My hands dropped when she pulled away. The more she did that, the more I wanted to pull her back in. She was good at keeping her distance and pretending like she didn’t want me when it was clear as fucking day that she did.
“You give me whiplash, Christian.”
“What?How?”
“You’re different one minute, saying crude things, then the next you’rethis.” She gestured erratically with both her hands. I wanted to tell her I was confused too. Nothing I did made sense anymore. She was there and my brain fused and there was no existing wire to connect it back to rationality.
“Does it bother you?” I asked.
“A little bit,” Adelaide ran a smooth hand down her hair and averted her gaze to look at the bee buzzing around the flowers. “No one in my life has ever noticed this about me. You’re like a guy with a shovel. It’s like…” She glanced up. “I’m at the beach—screaming my heart out—thenyou’rethere, digging yourself out of the sand like you escaped prison or something and you just stand there watching me.”
Her cheeks flushed with the confession.
“I unnerve you,” I said after a minute.
“No, youterrifyme. I’m trying my best to keep it together and make it through today, but it won’t be possible when you’re so wishy-washy.”
“Do you want me to be mean then? Ignore you? Degrade you?”
“I’d rather you didn’t acknowledge me at all.” She rubbed her shoulder with the opposite hand. She didn’t mean it.
“You’re the one who said we were friends.” There had to be a way to get a hold of the situation again.
So fucking resigned. She said, “It’s my mistake. You were right. We can never be friends, Christian.”
We could if we tried. That was the only option we had, the other was ignoring each other and I didn’t want that. She finally spoke to me, and I wanted to hear more, have conversations in the early morning and late at night. If she pushed me away…
I was desperate to have her near in whatever way possible. Even if beingfriendswas the only option.
“We haven’t even tried being friends.”
“Because I know it’ll lead to more heartbreak, Christian.”
My hands balled into fists. “How? Did the scenarios you came up with in the last five minutes tell you that? The thoughts you think in your brain aren’t reality. You don’t get to decide if a friendship between us won’t work.” I was so sick of her coming up with stupid conclusions on her own.
“Do you even want that? For us to be friends?”
