Escape the Doubt

by Andrea Michelle

  I looked down at him, “Straight from the source, she said you asked her, and she said yes.”

  “I did, she did.” He said simply and sat straight up to look at me face to face.

  I looked away from his hazel eyes that always saw too much but also never enough.

  “Oh.” I just stared at the lake, at the families enjoying their day. Why didn’t my parents spend their time like this, maybe then I could tell my best friend how much this hurt me. Maybe then I wouldn’t be afraid to let him in. Tell him that I wanted it to be me. Take what I could, even if it didn’t last.

  I felt like the girl in the Taylor Swift video, You belong with me. Except, Josh wasn’t going to kiss me in the end. He would kiss Laiken. Kissing Josh haunted my every thought. I wanted to kiss him again. I hated that he immediately went right back to her.

  We were silent, sitting there for a while. I didn’t have the words to say next, but Josh did.

  “Riley, it’s just a dance. Besides, I heard Dean asked you. Didn’t he?”

  I hadn’t thought for a second about how me being asked to the freshman dance would affect him. It never occurred to me that it would bother him. Dean was our third wheel, not a big deal. I told Josh already that I didn’t like Dean like that. I just figured he would get that.

  I looked over at him, his face guarded and unreadable.

  “Um, yeah, he did. Yesterday.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, I would think about it.”

  “Oh,” he paused studying my eyes, “Have you?”

  “Have I what?”

  “Thought about it?”

  “Not really, but I guess I will say yes. No one else has asked me.”

  Josh tilted his head to the side searching my face for something.

  “I see. Did you want someone else to ask you, Riley?”

  I stared at his beautiful hazel eyes, déjà vu attacking me. The words were on the tip of my tongue—again. But instead I jumped up and said, “It’s getting late Josh. We should probably go home now.”

  The look of confusion and something else haunted his face. We walked home in complete silence. He held my hand the entire walk, a friendly gesture on his behalf of course.

  Josh didn’t speak much to me that week. I think he needed a time out, and truthfully, so did I.

  The day of the dance had my stomach in knots. Not happy butterflies, no those were knots of nausea, and I wanted to call the whole thing off. I wanted to cancel on Dean, bake some brownies, eat every last bit on my own and dream about soft lips on mine—not Laiken’s.

  “Knock, knock. Can I come in?” The voice I loved to hear was standing in my doorway, looking ever so handsome in his dress shirt and tie. I felt breathless.

  “Hey. You um, look…um, yeah…you look really nice, Josh.” I stuttered. Nice? Apparently, I’d lost the ability to be articulate.

  He grinned and stepped into my room, shutting the door behind him. “Thanks. You look beautiful, Riley. Dean is a lucky guy.” His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  I frowned, “I guess. So, what are you doing here?” I said, trying to not think about dances with Dean, dances with Laiken. Stupid dances, I thought.

  He pulled out his phone and turned on, Just the way you are by Bruno Mars. “We may not be going to our first dance together, Riley. But I want you to be the first girl I dance with. So, what do you say, pretty girl? Can I have this dance?”

  I thought I was breathless before, speechless before, no right then, in that very moment, I was suffering a heart attack. Surely I was. My heart was pounding in my chest. He reached out his hand to me, and I took it, wrapping my hands around his neck as he placed his arms around my waist and the small of my back.

  He hummed the melody and kissed my forehead. That moment was sweeter than that one with the chocolate. I was in a bubble of bliss, and I wanted to beg him to stay with me just like that…who needed the dance anyway?

  When the song ended, he placed a soft kiss to my cheek.

  My bubble didn’t last forever. He told me thank you, and gave me his best wishes for my first dance—also first date with Dean. I wanted to take it all back. That first should’ve been with Josh, but it wasn’t.

  I went to the dance with Dean, and Josh went with Laiken. One of my firsts was spent with the wrong guy.

  CHAPTER 17

  Enough is enough… I’m so fucking pissed that she doubts me. It’s time to shoot it straight, like my dad said. Going to our spot by the lake, I’m going to tell her the truth.

  We arrive at the lake and sit in the truck uncomfortably. The air felt thick of things unsaid. She kills the engine and looks at me. I remember every moment with her that I should have fought harder, said something different, made her realize just how perfect we are together.

  I don’t say anything to her just yet. I just climb out of the truck. She seems frozen in her seat, unable to move. I open her door, and she turns her body toward me.

  I look into her eyes, thinking they will haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. It’s now or never, Parker. No more wasting time.

  “Come with me,” I speak in a low demanding voice and hold out my hand for her to grab, which she does.

  We walk to the pier on the edge of the lake where I sit down in silence before lying back to look up at the clouds. I pat the spot next to me, and she joins me placing her head on my arm. She curls into me. It just feels natural to have her like this, like she belongs right here in my arms.

  I attempt to lighten the mood by joking about the shapes I can find in the clouds. She finds a cloud that looks like an elephant. I find one that looks like a two-headed turtle.

  I clear my throat and think here goes nothing.

  “Riley, do you believe me when I tell you that you are special to me?” I ask barely above a whisper still looking up at the clouds.

  In a small voice, she answers, “Yes.” She squeezes closer to my chest. I look over at her, but she won’t meet my eyes. It is warm today and yet she is shivering. I wonder about it. She told me she was scared before. Does being with me frighten her this much?

  I silently will her to turn her head to mine, but she refuses. She stays as still as she can.

  My breath feathers along her cheek when I say, “We have a lot of memories here at this lake and under that tree over there. Don’t we?”

  “M’hm,” she finally turns her head toward my voice, and her breath catches when she looks at me.

  I place a soft kiss to her nose. “Let’s go.” I tell her sitting up and holding out my hand for her to hold. If I am going to do this, I’m going back to the beginning, to the moment I should have changed something. There were so many times I could have said it. I could have done it differently. The moment by that tree freshman year was one of those.

  She looks at my hand reluctantly. I can tell she is nervous. When she finally places her delicate hand in mine I almost lose my shit then. “Where are we going?” she asks in a tiny voice.

  I nod my head toward the tree, “Our tree,” I smile.

  When we get to the tree, I sit on the swing and pat my lap for her to sit on me. She does, placing her arm around my neck and cradling her head on my shoulder. “Did you have fun today...with me?” I ask softly as we watch the ripples in the lake.

  “Yes, I always have fun with you, Josh.”

  “It’s easy, huh? The way we are together, like it’s meant to be.” I am threading her hair in between my fingers when she lifts her head to look at my eyes. I cup her cheek.

  She leans into my touch and squeezes her eyes closed. I can feel her body shake. She is starting to panic. I don’t know why she does this. But she does. Every time I try to cross the line, she pulls away. All I want to do is take away her pain, and she wants to push me away. This time she nods, and I feel wetness on my hand as silent tears fall from her eyes.

  I sigh and tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Please. Don’t cry, Riley.” My heart is in fucking shreds at the pain
she carries. She can’t trust any of this to be real, and it kills me. I kiss her cheeks and wipe away the tears. I kiss her eyes where they fall. I kiss her forehead the way I always have, and then I stand us up. I grab her face and make her look at me.

  “I know you don’t trust this. Us. Any of it. I know you felt betrayed by Dean, and I know your Dad cheated on your Mom and broke his promises. But please Riley. Please believe me when I say…every day since we were five years old, you have been a crucial part of my life, a piece that I had to have to be complete. I have spent years loving you. Yes, that’s right. I fucking love you, Riley. I always have and I probably always will. I’m not the guy you think I am. I don’t change my mind often about girls. I don’t fucking care enough about them to even use my mind, because every waking thought, every fucking dream is filled with you. It’s always been you for me. Always. I just had to wait for you to realize you felt the same. That you knew, you deserved to be loved. Dean never loved you, Riley. He lied to you all the time. I will never lie to you. I promise.” I put it out there, put my heart on my sleeve and held my breath for her to embrace it and never let it go.

  Her eyes are still closed tightly, and when she finally opens them, I’m scared as fuck for what she is going to say.

  But then she smiles and steals the breath right out of my lungs. “I love you too, Josh. I’ve only ever loved you.” She says in a soft voice that I almost can’t hear.

  I feel the tension, the fear fall away. She loves me. I love her. We can be happy. Finally.

  I kiss her, loving the taste of her salty tears being melted away and everything that is Riley becoming mine. I am not lying. I truly believe I will love this girl forever.

  I sit back on the swing, and I pull her onto my lap where she is straddling me. She wraps her legs around me, and I love the feel of her like this. She rests her head on my chest. Her hands are around my neck, and my chin rests on her head, and I’m inhaling the scent of her hair. I swing us gently embracing this perfect moment.

  “Wanna know a secret?” I ask her.

  “M’hm,” she mumbles into my chest.

  “My tattoo, the third rose, it’s for you.” I say and her head snaps up.

  “What? What do you mean?” she asks studying my eyes.

  I lift my sleeve and rub my fingers along the rose that is hers. “It represents friendship, falling in love, unconscious beauty and desire. I blended the colors because you are all of that for me.” Her tiny fingers touch the rose delicately.

  She bites her lip and turns her gorgeous eyes back to mine. “Wow!” she breathes. “Mine is for you too, although in a different way.”

  “How so?” I ask interlacing her hand with my own.

  CHAPTER 18

  Trusting someone with your heart is so damn hard. But I do love, Josh. I have wasted so much time. I don’t want to waste another minute without him.

  I am about to reveal my secret too. Josh just admitted his tattoo and the rose I love so much is mine. For me. He never knew my own was for him, until now.

  “Well, I always felt like my heart was dead or half beating, so I made the heart black, but it surrounded the treble clef for you. The music is yours. The heart and the treble clef are connected. I guess...I kinda hoped one day that your music would breathe life into that black heart and teach it to love, create music together.” I’ve never admitted how deep my reasoning was, not even to myself I think. It was more than his music. It was the music he and I shared, the music that I thought we could never have.

  His eyes study mine, and he is quite for the longest time before he places his hand on my heart. “Your heart is beautiful, Riley. I feel that. The beating. Not half alive but thumping wildly. That’s our music, Riley. It’s not dead. It’s just beginning, our song together will never end.”

  I place my hand on his chest feeling his own heart, alive, beating wildly and for me. I drag my hand up his chest and along his face where I trace his jaw, his mouth, and his ear. Tracing to memory his features. I run it through his hair and he groans. I wrap both hands around his neck and lean into his face. I lick along his lips and tug a little on his bottom lip with my teeth like I have wanted to do all damn day. He has one hand on the rope holding the swing and the other cupping my ass.

  Our kiss is slow, meaningful, full of love and absolutely necessary.

  I pull him as close to me as he can get and yet it isn’t close enough.

  After Josh and I went home, we decided to go separate ways. I think he needed a cold shower, and I needed...well, I needed him, but that wasn’t a possibility right now.

  “Hello” I answer my phone plopping on my stomach on my mattress.

  “How’s my favorite short friend?” Emily asks me glumly.

  “She is awesome.”

  “Great, cuz I’m on my way to your house.” She honks her horn “Hey asshole, learn to drive.” She shouts at someone.

  “Ok, so you’re heading over now. Why?” I ask just playing.

  “As if I need a reason. I miss you bitch.” She laughs.

  Urm...K, “Miss you too. Why do you sound annoyed?”

  “One, people don’t know how to freakin drive, and two, boys are confusing. I gotta talk to you about something, K? Oh hey, who drives a white beetle bop?” Emily asks, and I think she is speaking to herself, so I don’t reply. She tends to ramble her thoughts off, not realizing she is talking out loud.

  “It’s parked out front your house, maybe they’re at Josh’s?” she mutters, and the phone goes dead.

  “Um, K.” I say to the deadline and head to the front door to let my crazy friend in, because apparently she is already here.

  I open the door, and she attacks me. “Miss me much, Ginger?” I joke with her.

  “I did, until you called me Ginger. You know I hate my hair?” she gripes and crosses her arms like a toddler.

  I laugh and peek my head out the door to see that, sure enough, a white Volkswagen bug is parked out front.

  “No clue who that is,” I mutter and we head off to my room.

  Once there, I lay on my bed and Emily jumps into full story mode about how she had a major freak out moment with self-tanner. “I totes forgot to wash my hands, Riley, they were fucking orange like a pumpkin.”

  Poor girl hates her skin and her hair. She has strawberry blonde hair, which I think is gorgeous, and also why I call her ‘Ginger’. She can’t stand her hair, though. Her skin, although beautiful in its pale form, doesn’t tan but burn, hence her self-tanning ‘oops’. She is always trying new ways to change herself. She is crazy. But—I love her.

  “So, how did you get it off?” I ask noticing they are still a little orange, but I don’t dare tell her I notice, she would freak out even more than now.

  “A thousand showers, hot baths, alcohol swabs, the works.”

  I nod and bite my lip to stifle my laugh.

  “So, wzup with Mr. ohmigod his hazel eyes-Em, those six pack abs make me thirsty-gives me wet dreams-hm… hm… hm…hottie next door?” she asks nodding her head toward my window, fanning herself dramatically and rolling her eyes at me.

  I am exasperated, “Oh my God, Em. I don’t even sound like that.”

  She puts her hands on her hips and tilts her head, “Oh my God, Riley. You so do”

  I stick my tongue out at her and she laughs.

  “Soooo?” she asks rolling her wrist and her eyes dramatically.

  “So, I think I’m like his girlfriend now.” I say sheepishly, and then cringe when she squeals and jumps up and down clapping her hands.

  “Eeeekkk...I’m so happy for you. It’s about damn time. I hate Dean. Josh is who you belong with.”

  “I know, I just didn’t think I should belong with him, ya know?” I say, and she frowns knowingly.

  “I found this in my notebook. I wrote a poem about him that he accidentally found and kept, and in its place he left this.” I pull the notebook from under my pillow and show her.

  She reads and widens her eyes, “Du
de,” she raises her eyebrows.

  “I know.”

  “What did you say?” she asks me.

  “Nothing, I said nothing.” I pout and put the pillow over my head.

  “Why the hell not?” she nudges my leg and yanks my pillow away.

  “Because, he is Josh, and this scares the living shit out me, Em. This isn’t like Dean. This is Josh we are talking about. Just since this morning, I’ve already inserted my friggin' foot in my mouth more than once. Of course, he doesn’t hold it against me. He just says these things and then kisses me senseless, but still oh my God...I just feel like something bad is going to happen, and I am going to lose him.” I explain.

  She stares at me with wide green eyes, “Ok. Out of breath yet? Look, I get it. I do. Sometimes, you just gotta put yourself out there and pray for the best, Riley. Trust me. I know,” she sighs and frowns.

  “I just don’t know”

  “Riley, look at me.” I do. “When Beau told me last year that he thought we should break up because long distance relationships never work, I thought it was the worst idea ever. I knew he would meet someone in college better than me. And when he came home over Christmas break with Kristen, I knew I was right, but I realized something else, Riley. Ya wanna know what?”

  “What’s that?” I pick at a piece of invisible lint on my comforter. I don’t want to think about colleges or going away.

  “I realized that, what he and I had wasn’t real love, it was just fun, easy. The way he looks at Kristen...well, he never looked at me like that. She makes him happy. They laugh, they smile… it’s just different. But it’s beautiful to see, so beautiful, in fact, it hurts to see it, and not because I love him. No, it’s because I want that, a love like that.”

  Emily grabs my hand, “Riley, Josh looks at you the same way Beau looks at Kristen. And you smile at Josh the way Kristen smiles at Beau. It’s love, Riley. And it can be beautiful. Just let it be.”

  Didn’t my mom say the same thing?

  “I’m trying, ok?” I need to change the subject. “So, what did you need to talk to me about?” I ask.

  She sighs, and I pick up Tink off my floor to snuggle. “Ya know, I’ve been loving the single life since my break-up with Beau, kissing a lot of frogs before I get to my prince has been my new favorite hobby. But I’ve found a frog with ocean blue eyes that I can drown in, and a lip ring. Also, a tongue that does this twirly thing in my mouth, and—you know—down there.” She moans, pointing to her vagina. I slap her leg.