Page 53 of Never Thought I'd End Up Here
“I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen,” he says, somehow without an ounce of sarcasm. “You’ve always been beautiful—beautiful like the stars are, like Shanghai is. I could never get sick of looking at you. But back then I just … I didn’t know what I could possibly do to make you so much as look my way, and again, it’s awful, but I thought—I thought that was simply how it worked. My own father had told me that being in love meant fighting with each other all the time, and I was foolish and naive enough to believe him. Only later did I realize how completely, utterly wrong he was—and how wrongIwas to have resorted to tricks and childish teasing when I should’ve just gone for it. Treated you like you were precious and perfect because you always have been.”
“There’s no way,” I say, shaking my head fast. I would actually be less stunned if he revealed that he’s a vampire. “There’s— I mean, how? Literally, how? I don’t even know what you’re talking about—”
“I tried to tell you in other ways,” he says, a pleading edge to his words. “I wanted to leave flowers in your locker for Valentine’s Day, but I was so allergic to them that I never got to properly place them inside, and all I’d managed to achieve was attracting bees. I would make up these ridiculous excuses just to talk to you, and I’d deliberately leave my homework unfinished so I could ask to look at yours. I would join in on your games, thinking I could impress you if I won them all. But I kept messing up, like always. Everything I did to pull you closer only ended up pushing you further away. And then you were gone—” He takes a deep breath, resting one shoulder against the gray-tiled wall, like it’s costing him everything to stand here and keep speaking. “I swear, I begged the teachers to change their minds. I did everything I could to convince them that it had been a huge mistake, but they thought I was only lying to cover for you because I felt bad. And everybody else was so certain they had seen you push me …”
I stare at him. I stare and stare and attempt to wrestle my thoughts into order but I can’t, everything’s changed irrevocably, and I don’t even know what to say except: “You never apologized.”
Now it’s his turn to blink in rapid confusion. “I did. I must have apologized thirty, forty times over in my letter … I wrote it so many times I ran out of ink.”
“Letter?” The ground seems to wobble beneath my feet, my mind racing faster and faster like a bullet train, threatening to throw me right off its tracks. “What letter?”
“I wrote you a letter,” he says.
“You didwhat? It’s the twenty-first century, Cyrus. The human race is alarmingly close to developing literal mind-reading technology. You couldn’t have just gotten out your phone andtextedme?”
“You blocked my number,” he points out.
A very good point. I clamp my teeth together.
“Besides, I—I thought a letter would be more sincere than sending a simple text. I begged you to give me a chance to explain everything, but then you never replied, and I figured you just didn’t want to hear from me at all, which would have been entirely fair …” Understanding trickles into his expression the same time I feel it wash over me. “You never received it.”
“No,” I whisper. “It must have gotten lost in the mail or something—I had no idea—”
“I was deeply, truly sorry then, and I’m sorry now,” he says, and I can see it written like a confession in his eyes, their darkness as lucid as a cloudless night, clear enough for you to map out every constellation. “I know I won’t ever be able to make it up to you, no matter what I do, but I needed to tell you. I needed you to understand how I felt. How I feel.”
“But what about the wedding?” I demand. “You didn’t apologize then. You weren’t even beingniceto me when you saw me there.”
He huffs out a self-mocking laugh. “Do you know how nervous I was that day? It was all I could do to look you in the eye, Leah. I was so scared—scared you’d simply take one glance at me and leave before I had the chance to talk to you. Scared that if I came across as too nice all of a sudden, you’d assume I had some kind of evil plan or that I was playing another prank. I mean, at that point, we hadn’t seen each other in two whole years. Imagine if I confessed to you then what I’m confessing to you now. You wouldn’t have believed me for a second and I’d have ruined any hopes of ever being your friend or—or something more.”
I’m stunned. He knows me in ways I wouldn’t have thought anyone ever could, or would ever even bother to. It’s like he’s reached into my brain and peered at the mess there and gently untangled everything.
He knows me so well. And I don’t know him nearly as well as I thought.
“I—” There are too many emotions crashing through my chest. I nearly expect my rib cage to crack open from the force of them: anger and relief and disbelief and giddy joy and, finally, a snap back to anger. “Seriously, Cyrus. What the actual hell? How could you— I don’t even— Why would you tell me and then—just—” I twist around on my heel, breathing hard, and march away from him down the alley before I can do something stupid. Like throttle him. Or kiss him.
Within seconds, I hear his footsteps chasing after me, echoing over the cobbled stones. “Leah. Wait—”
I don’t plan to, but my feet resist all executive orders and slow down on their own, letting him catch up to me. I fold my arms across my chest and make the mistake of lifting my head to meet his achingly earnest gaze.
“Are you mad at me?” he asks, his brows drawing together.
“No,” I snap. “Not at all.”
“You very clearly are,” he says.
“I’m not. There’s nothing to be mad about.”
“Leah—”
“Look, you can’t justsaythings like that, Cyrus.” The words burst out of my mouth before I can stop them. I wave my hands about in the air, my composure shattering. “You can’t, unless you’re absolutely certain you want to be with someone and you’re in love with them—”
“I am.”
The world freezes.
My heart, the willow trees, the green waters in the canals, the sparrows perched on the tiled roofs. All of it stops right there and then, and the only thing that restarts is the fierce, uneven pulse in my ears, thudding harder and harder, building into a deafening roar.
“You’re in love with me?” I whisper. “Since when?”
