Page 54 of Never Thought I'd End Up Here
His smile is wry. “Only the past seven years.”
And I think about the people who first discovered that the earth was not at the center of the universe, that you would not fall off if you sailed too far across the ocean, that fires could be built from kindling to give us light and warmth, that stars would live and die just as we do. The initial shock of the revelation, and the aftershock as everything they’d once thought to be true was destroyed and rearranged. “I … This whole time?” I ask him, almost afraid to believe it.
“Of course,” he says, watching me intently, his dark eyes serious, his hair tousled and soft around the sharp lines of his face. “There’s never been anybody else for me. There never will be.”
I’m not sure how any of this is happening. I’m not even sure I’m breathing.
“I can stop talking about it if that’s what you want,” he goes on. “I can promise to never bring this up again. But I meant it when I said that I can be whatever you want me to be: whether that’s an enemy for you to curse and hold a grudge against for the rest of your life; a friend you can trust to accompany you anywhere and drive you safely back home, the one you can call at any hour of the night and tell all your secrets to; or the person you fall for, who will always wear a jacket so you don’t have to bring yours, who will be the first to find you when you’re lost and alone, who will remind you how heart-wrenchingly, unfathomably beautiful you are even on days when you don’t feel it. The only thing I ask is that we don’t ever become strangers, because I really—” He breaks off. Clenches his jaw, fighting against some ineffable emotion. “I don’t think I could bear it, Leah. I don’t think my heart would be able to survive it.”
He’s gazing at me, waiting, hoping, imploring, and this should be the perfect chance to execute the final step of my plan. It’s our last full day here, my last opportunity to do so before the trip comes to an end. He’s at my mercy, just like I always wanted. If I reject him right now, tell him that I hate him, that I’ll never forgive him for what he did, the consequences will be devastating. He’ll suffer terribly, and the image of it—the inevitable hurt on his face, like an open wound, his cheeks tinged red with humiliation—should send a thrill of satisfaction racing through me, but when I open my mouth to deliver the fatal blow, nothing comes out.
Nothing comes out, because his lips are on mine, crushing the distance between us, and instead of pushing him away like I should, like I’d planned to, I pull him closer, one hand guiding him forward by the nape of his neck, the other cupping his face, letting my fingertips linger against the hot shell of his ear, teasing, tapping a faint beat in rhythm with his pounding heart.I can always break it later, I reassure myself, a half thought that crumbles when his mouth parts, soft and slow and slightly stunned, and I can sense his disbelief when he inhales. And even though he’s far from the first boy I’ve kissed, it feels as if he is; the others simply don’t count compared to him. He kisses me not like he wants to own me, but like he’s mine, and he’s desperate to prove it.
“You have to know how much I wanted this,” he whispers, his breathing unsteady, his voice thick and hoarse the way it is when you’ve just woken from sleeping too long. “Qin ai de.”
I recognize the words. “Did you just call me your worst enemy?”
He smiles against my lips. “I was lying.”
“What?”
“Qin ai de doesn’t meanmy worst enemy,” he says. “It meansmy love.”
I barely let him finish speaking. I kiss him harder, my thoughts all tangled up like lace ribbons in the collar of his shirt, in the feel of his arms, and the shadowed corner of the alley just a few yards away, where we would be free to do whatever we wanted—
“Oh damn.”
Oliver’s voice cuts through the air, snipping the ribbons of my thoughts in half, and I release Cyrus reluctantly, my eyes opening to the sight of his swollen lips and dark glare.
“I swear that guy is everywhere,” Cyrus mutters to me, adjusting his clothes.
“I know,” I whisper back as I turn around. “He’s basically omnipresent.”
“Sorry,” Oliver calls out to us as he walks over, his grin only half-sheepish. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. We should be heading back to the group now though. If you want to continue later, then by all means, go for it. Since I just won two hundred dollars, I’ll even be extra generous and steer clear of our hotel room tonight until curfew.”
“Two hundred dollars?” I repeat with a frown. “For what?”
“Yeah, so, um, there’s kind of a running bet in the group about whether you two would get together,” he says cheerily, following us back down the alley. “And, you know, being the genius that I am, I figured early on that it was a win-win situation if I bet on it happening. If you didn’t like Cyrus, then maybe I’d have a shot with you. And if you did like him, then I’d make some extra money.”
“Why are those the only two possibilities?” Cyrus demands, sidestepping a manhole that Oliver marches right over.
Oliver throws him an incredulous glance. “Let’s face it, bro, it’s not as if there was any chanceyoudidn’t likeher. Like, you can barely stand up when you’re in her presence. You look at her like you’re seeing the moon for the first time or some shit. It’s kind of disgustingly obvious.”
“Thanks for that,” Cyrus says, but despite the self-consciousness creeping into his voice, he doesn’t deny any of it.
“Anytime, bro.”
I have to bite the inside of my cheek to stop from smiling too wide.
***
The most memorable conversation I’ve ever had with Cate Addison took place shortly after I kissed Adam, the popular quarterback.
We were lounging across the chairs in the cafeteria with her friends—because in my mind they were always first and foremostherfriends, even if we all went out to brunch and the movies and parties together on a regular basis—when I told her.
“We kissed before lunch,” I said. “Or, well, he kissed me, and I went along with it.” And then I waited eagerly for her reaction. It was ridiculous, but that was the main reason I’d let Adam kiss me in the first place—so I could talk about it with Cate afterward. In those early days, I kept hoping for a breakthrough, something that would allow us to really, truly bond and giggle and whisper together like best friends in movies. Sometimes I just wanted proof that she actuallylikedme, and wasn’t keeping me around because I made for a nice prop in her social circle.
Cate had glanced up briefly from her blueberry bagel. “Um, who?”
