Page 46 of It Couldn't Be You
He rolled down his window. “Em? Are you okay?” he asked, a little confused, half smiling.
“What were you going to say? When I was twenty-one things were, what?” I asked, even though my voice was a little shaky.
“Nothing, nothing. Don’t worry about it,” he said casually. A hint of what Heather and Lila might’ve encountered.
“Gabe,” I said. “It’s me. I know you meant something. ”
He looked at me with eyes a little darker, his voice a little lower, “Can you guess what I meant?”
“I don’t want to play a guessing game.”
He started laughing a little sadly. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant, if you want to say something, you should say it.”
It was quiet for a minute. I looked up to see flurries falling harder than before. He noticed too. “Go get in your warm car and forget about it. I was being a jerk.”
“You weren’t being a jerk,” I said, willing to wait it out. Should I just say it? Say what we never said? Talk about what we never talked about? Admit what I didn’t want to admit? “I just want to know what you meant.”
“Em, don’t get all up in your head. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. Let’s just go back to normal, yeah?”
I felt a door had been cracked open for a second, and now it was closing in my face.
Snow was on my eyelashes, my fingertips. I felt numb in my shoes. “Okay,” I said unsurely.
“Okay.” His voice was as unsure as mine.
“Okay,” I said sadly, resignedly.
I got into my car and started the engine as he drove away. I went to put my car in drive but instead buried my face in my hands. Did I want to talk to him about the kiss?
About that fall, almost an entire year after the kiss? And what was going on in those in-between months?
About this never-ending childhood crush? Or the fear that it was more than a stupid crush?
About all of it? About any of it?
What even was it?
“What good would it do?” I asked myself. It felt off-limits. It felt useless to even talk about it. To think about it. It’d probably just make things messier, worse.
I didn’t want to imagine the ramifications it would have on my closest friendship—on the family that felt like my own family.
And what if I brought it all up just to find out it was all in my head? I could lie in bed and think through every word he said and analyze why it meant something, but I could just as easily logic myself into thinking it meant absolutely nothing.
Plus, he doesn’t even live near me. He’d move back to Los Angeles soon. He’d go back to his work trips, meeting Heathers and Lilas, and I’d be left here.
He’d drive off and leave me behind, like right now. He just left me there, crying in a parking lot. Snow still in my hair and on my lips, like the stain of an untold kiss.
Sixteen
Me
hey, I know things got a little deep earlier, but I forgot to say thanks for coming to my rescue today
Gabriel
Happy to help!
