Page 63 of The Other Half

He grabs one of my hands and I turn around to face him again, confused. Our eyes meet but he doesn’t say anything. “What?” I search his eyes for an answer, but all I find is brokenness.

“The world is never going to be on our side, Oakley. No one is ever going to tell us we’re right for each other. Your parents are going to fight as hard as they can to keep us apart. I know that there’s no logical reason for us to end up together. I know that people like you don’t belong with people like me.”

I start to open my mouth to argue, even though there’s no use. He’s right.

“But I don’t give a fuck.” He grabs my other hand and pulls me closer to him until my chest is pressed against his. “I can’t live without you, and I don’t give a shit what the world wants. I want you. I’m always gonna want you.” He crashes his lips against mine, completely ignoring the fact that my mom is probably seeing all of this.

The kiss doesn’t feel like our kisses used to feel, playful and sweet. It feels sad. It makes me wonder if we’ll ever be that way again. We’re not that version of Oliver and Oakley anymore, now we’re the version that’s simply fighting for survival.

He pulls away to catch his breath. “You know this isn’t over. Tell me you know that.”

I stare at him for a moment. “Yeah, I know,” I say breathlessly.

He rubs his thumb along my bottom lip softly and whispers, “I love you. Forever, Oakley.”

“I love you too.”

Chapter 49

Oakley

I awkwardly walk to the car, scared of what my mother’s reaction is going to be. She did say she wanted to meet Oliver, but I don’t necessarily take that as her hoping we’ll be together again. I open the door and she looks up from her phone. “How did it go, darling?”

I wonder how much she saw. She seemed to be pretty engrossed with something on her phone screen until I got in the car. “It went okay.”

She nods once and pulls out of the parking lot quickly. She looks distracted and worried, sort of the same way she did the day we went to my grandma’s. “Is everything alright?” I ask.

She looks over at me with a deer in the headlights expression. “Everything is fine.” It doesn’t sound true, though.

We pull into the driveway and I hop out. My heart is still racing from the unexpected kiss we shared. I should’ve just told my mom I didn’t need a ride, having to leave mid-conversation really wasn’t helpful. I start to walk upstairs towards my room, I just want to be alone for a while.

“Oakley,” my dad calls out from the bottom of the stairs.

I twist around, expecting to see his face red and balled up in anger. He must have found out where I just went. Instead his face is blank, unreadable. “Yeah?”

“I have something for you, a Christmas gift. Would you like to come see it?” A small grin appears on his face. He looks and sounds so completely opposite from the Dad I’ve gotten used to. Almost like the one I knew when I was a kid. Back then he and Mom hardly ever fought, they still held hands and cracked jokes together. He would help me build sand castles at the beach and when I fell off my bike he’d put a band-aid on my cuts.

I’m so caught off guard that it takes me a while to reply. “Um, sure.” I track back down the stairs and follow him out the front door. He keeps walking until we get to our garage. It’s about half the size of our house, with three garage doors. My parents typically only use the Volvo or the BMW, but we also have a convertible Porsche Spyder that they use sometimes during the summer. There’s a lot of empty space in the garage, though, it’s way too big.

He walks past the three cars and presses a button on the fob in his hand, and I hear the chirp of a car unlocking coming from the far corner of the garage. I turn my attention to where the sound came from. It’s beautiful. I’m not a car person, but I love this car. It’s a baby blue Mercedes, and it looks like it was probably built in the eighties or nineties. The color must be a custom wrap because it looks brand new.

“What do you think?” he asks, stepping a little closer to me.

“I-I love it.” I really do. I expected Dad to pick out something I wouldn’t like, but it’s so perfectly me. The color, the fact that it’s a classic, everything. “You didn’t have to–”.

“Yeah I did,” he interrupts. “Go take a look, sit in it.”

I walk up to the car and pull the driver’s door open. The interior also looks redone, it’s white leather without a single tear or scratch. I sit down and adjust the seat. He opens the passenger door and sits next to me.

“You wanna take it for a ride?” he asks.

Even though I’ve had my learner’s permit for two years, I’ve hardly driven at all since driver’s-ed. I don’t know why, really, I’ve just always been afraid of driving. But I know I need to get used to it before I leave for college next year. “Okay.”

He tosses me the key and I put it in the ignition. He opens the garage door and I maneuver the car around the others, exiting the garage. I drive it around the neighborhood a couple of times, both of us remain silent during the drive.

The car drives smoothly, and I actually feel safe in it. I switch on the heated seat and feel it start to warm me almost instantly.

“I want to talk to you about what happened,” he says.

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