AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Row teaching me how to slow dance in his room before my very first prom because I knew I would be too terrified to ever dance with anyone else and didn’t want to miss out.
Row and I sitting on the hood of his car, in front of an endless ocean, the moon, and the stars. Me saying, “Isn’t it beautiful?” and him answering, “Yes, you are.”
Row being essentially in love with me.
I couldn’t even touch the other revelation right now. It was too much to process.
Bitchy. Bitchy. Bitchy.
McMonster. Selfless, sweet McMonster. Who seemed to know me inside out. Who could read me like an open book. Could it be?
But it couldn’t be.
No. It couldn’t.
Not him.
Not the shiniest boy in Staindrop.
“No more running.” I planted my feet on the pavement, clutching my knees, panting. Tears prickled the back of my eyeballs. Row looked on high alert. Neither of us seemed ready to acknowledge the fact that he was McMonster and I was Bitchy.
For the first time since I’d known him, he looked like a boy. Not a heartthrob, not a world-famous chef, not a formidable boss—just a boy. My head swam with so many questions. I had to comb through them, to wait before I launched on the elephant in the room.
“I’m going to go back to the Bitchy confession in one moment. I just have to…” I held my head with both hands like it was about to explode, pacing the small corner of the street. “Why doesn’t Dylan care about us anymore?” I straightened. “Give me the truth.”
Raindrops framed his face, his hair clinging in coal strands over his forehead. He stole my breath, and I had a feeling he was about to steal a few other things if I let my guard down.
His chest fell and rose. His lips parted, condensation rolling out of them. “She moved on.”
“You’re lying.” My tears were falling freely now, mixing with the raindrops.
“I am,” he admitted. “She wasn’t the one who moved on. I did. I moved on. That’s why it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“I’m so stupid. So stuck inside my own head I didn’t see the signs. All the little tidbits. The romantic moments. The sweet gestures. The compliments you never seemed to pay anyone else but me. Tell me I’m crazy, that I’m hallucinating, sleep-deprived.” I grabbed the back of my head, folding over and letting out a yelp. “But I think, once upon a time, you wanted me. As a girlfriend. You had feelings for me. You…you…” Say it, don’t be scared. He is safe. You know he’d never hurt you. “You liked me.”
My epiphany was sharp and painful, like a blade twisting into my stomach. There was not enough air in this world to keep my lungs from burning.
“Let’s not get carried away over here.” He walked backward, away from me.
“She was feral when she caught us, Row. And Dylan is normally chill.” I was chasing him now, on the verge of running. I tried to snatch the soaked sleeve of his windbreaker. “She didn’t want us to hook up because she thought I’d hurt you.”
He said nothing, just stared at me, looking slightly alarmed.
“I’m sorry it took me this long to figure it out.” I jogged after him, picking up speed. He kept walking backward, staring at me like I had stripped him of his clothes at gunpoint.
“You had feelings for me.” That whole time I had felt unworthy, the shiniest boy in the world had thought differently. “That was why Dylan was so mad at me when she found us. That was why you stayed that night to give me a ride home, even though I was horrible to you and completely blew it with the way I handled everything.”
“That is enough.” His jaw was so tense, it looked like it was about to snap out of his skin.
“It’s why you taught me how to dance in tenth grade.” I ignored him, stumbling toward him blindly, happily, excitedly. “Why you were never grumpy with me…” I was in a trance, my tongue as loose and unhinged as my thoughts. “…and when we bumped into each other under the mistletoe when I was in eleventh grade, you pressed a Hershey chocolate to my lips and smiled. You said, ‘Same place next year?’”
“Actually, that time I was turning you down politely.” He was swatting me off like I was a fly that had slipped into his shirt.
“You made me a paper ring.” Jesus, how long had he had feelings for me? “You had an Oh Henry! in your drawer for me to steal every time I came over, because I once told you they were my favorite. You always had one ready. Every single time.” I stopped running, wheezing. “They don’t even make them anymore. How the hell did you find them?”
“How did I fin… Does it matter?” He shook his head, raindrops flying from his hair everywhere. “What mattered was that your skinny, anemic ass ate them. You were severely malnourished as a teen. Lived off chicken nuggets and chips.”
I stopped running. He came to a halt too. Everything was drowned out. The world stopped moving.
