Page 78 of Last First Kiss
“What?” I finally snap, and the word echoes off the walls.
When I turn, Alejandra is standing there with the most pained look on her face, and my heart cracks a little more.
We stare at each other for a second, breathing hard like we’ve both run a marathon.
“Can we please talk?” she says desperately.
Heat pricks behind my eyes, and I swallow hard, forcing down the lump in my throat. “Talk?” I shout. “Nowyou want to talk?”
She flinches, and I instantly hate myself for how it came out.
“I didn’t know how to tell you,” she says quietly. Her voice breaks, and it makes it hard to hold on to my anger.
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. We have always been able to talk honestly. With everything that’s happened lately, I expected more from you, Ale. I thought I was your person, the one you could tell anything to.” My voice cracks,and I feel so naive for opening myself up to her completely when she’d barely cracked the door open for me.
She steps closer, cautiously, like I’m a wounded animal that might bolt. “You are,” she says sweetly.
“No. You should have told me before we did anything. After our first kiss. You shouldn’t have let me get my hopes up for an ‘us’ you knew might not exist once you decided to leave.”
Silence stretches between us again, the fluorescent lights above humming like they’re trying to fill the space.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. And for the first time, I see how scared she looks. “You’re right, I should’ve told you.”
My shoulders slump with sudden exhaustion.
“I was worried you’d tell me not to go and that I’d do it because of how deep I’m falling for you,” Alejandra sobs, and it breaks something in me.
I step forward without thinking and wrap my arms around her. She collapses into me, burying her face in my chest, clutching the fabric of my shirt like she’s afraid if she lets go, I’ll disappear.
We stay like this for a while, in the middle of the hospital corridor, wrapped around each other as nurses and doctors race past us.
“I don’t want you to go,” I whisper into her hair. “But I would haveneverasked you to stay. I hate that you thought I would have, but I get it. Right now, I’m concerned that I don’t know what your potential move means for us.”
“I don’t have an answer.” Alejandra leans her head back on my shoulder. “But I don’t want to lose you.”
I don’t say anything. I want to comfort her, to promise she won’t lose me, but the truth is, I don’t know how I feel right now. So I stay quiet, because saying something I’m not sure of feels worse than saying nothing at all.
When Alejandra and I make it back home, we kiss goodnight and head into our separate bedrooms. I lie in bed, looking up at the dark ceiling, faintly illuminated by a candle I’d lit earlier, trying to figure out how to move forward.
I think about her move and try to imagine what long-distance would be like. I try to picture late-night phone calls and airport goodbyes, but the images are blurry and uncertain.
Can I make that work? Do I have enough experience—enough strength—to hold something like this together from miles away? I don’t know. I’ve never even had a close-distance relationship, so I have no real frame of reference for making a long-distance one work. I want to believe that the desire to make it work enough. I want to believe we can figure it out, but I don’t, and right now, all I can do is lie here in the dark.
Then, a knock sounds on my door, and I force myself to get up and walk over. Slowly, I open it.
“Hey,” Alejandra says with the tiniest smile I’ve ever seen on her face. “Can we talk?”
I step to the side, and she settles on the edge of my bed. I sit right next to her, watching Alejandra nervously play with the rings on her fingers.
“I’m sorry,” Alejandra says, tears forming in her eyes.
“I know.” My voice is steady, even as my heart pounds. I don’t doubt that she is, I just hate that we’re in this position. I pull her closer, wanting to fix everything with this one touch.
“I’m so sorry.” Her shoulders drop. “Ishould’ve told you sooner that I was thinking of moving. I should’ve been honest instead of letting everything get more complicated. And I shouldn’t have let things become ... so real and safe between us, not when I knew there was a chance I was leaving. That isn’t fair to you.” Her voice trembles slightly. “But lately, the decision hasn’t felt as solid as it once did. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to derail us over something that might not even happen.”
I hear the words, and something inside me twists—not with anger, but with shame. She’s apologizing for how I was hurt, and yes, she should have told me. But my reaction feels so much bigger because I’ve been waiting for this for so long. There are years of yearning and want behind everything I do with her, and she doesn’t even know it.
I try to look at this objectively, because if nothing had happened, if those feelings hadn’t existed until a few weeks ago, I’d still be hurt ... but it wouldn’t hurt likethis. She had no way of knowing. And now, I have no right to blame her.
