Page 102 of Be Your Anything
My question is a little bit of a tease. I’m aiming to hit that playful tone we’ve been using all evening.
Lennon laughs. Her head falls back, eyes closing, a full-on belly laugh. I love how she looks when she laughs, and a part of me wants to laugh with her, but the other part wonders if she’s laughingatme, at what I said.
“You’re funny.”
I just continue smiling. “How is that funny?”
“Oh, come on, Lucas. You expect me to believe the two of us should go on a date?” She giggles again. “I’m pretty sure we’d never hear the end of it.”
The feeling her reaction elicits in me isn’t what I was hoping for. What Iwantedwas for her to seem like she was receptive to my interest.
“So you’re not into it then?” I ask, still keeping my tone light.
The last thing I want to do is ruin our friendship. If she isn’t down for it, she isn’t down for it—simple as that—and making things awkward or uncomfortable if she shoots me down is the quickest route for our friendship to head down the drain.
She tilts her head to the side, maybe finally considering what I’m saying for the first time.
“I’m notnotinto it,” she replies, “but I’ll believe it when I see it.”
I smirk at her. “Oh, Lennon. You have no idea what’s coming your way.”
She laughs again and I stand up, holding my hand out to pull her up as well. She accepts it and I yank her to her feet, our faces just inches apart.
Her eyes fall to my lips, and it takes all of my restraint to stop myself from kissing her.
But you don’t win a queen with a kiss. You win her with backbreaking work, hard-fought battles, devotion, and loyalty.
So I take a step back.
“Let’s go inside.”
It doesn’t take a genius to realize I missed a golden opportunity.
Lennon and I were teed up for a perfect little something to happen between us and the feelings I had for her were being fanned, were on the verge of setting us both ablaze.
“I don’t think I ever realized how she felt,” I finally say to Paige, knowing no matter what I say, I sound like an asshole. “I always thought…I don’t know. I… We were friends and I just always assumed that’s all we could ever be, and then I was with Remmy and…”
My voice chokes off.
I feel sick to my stomach, for a number of reasons.
I feel regret that I let that opportunity slip by when we were younger.
I feel sadness at how our relationship has fallen apart.
I feel irritation at myself for allowing my young mind to be so easily swayed, knowing what came after that party and how I allowed my relationship with Remmy to become my focus. Things with Lennon so quickly fell to the wayside and I never really noticed it like I should have.
But at the same time, I feel anger at myself for havinganyof these thoughts.
I’ve been with Remmy for eight years. Sure, a different relationship might have been missed out on, but I feel disloyal to a girlfriend I’ve cared about for a long time by wondering if I should have made a different choice so long ago.
I rest my head in my hands, wishing I could make these two halves of my mind and my heart merge into anything that makes sense, that makes us all happy.
Paige stands, walking over to the couch and snuggling in next to me, looping her arm through mine and resting her head on my shoulder.
I don’t deserve her kindness right now.
Not when I’ve been fucking up so massively.
