But I did.
Because how can he just stand there and be all unaffected when I’m going to pieces over here. When I’m shattering and there’s this epic pain in my chest and I don’t know if it will ever go away.
I don’t know if it will ever stop hurting.
He swallows then and runs his fingers through his damp hair. “Look Salem, what happened that night –”
“Can’t we just forget about it? Can’t we just forget about that night? About what I said?”
“No.”
“I –”
“I can’t forget it.” His voice rises up then. “I can’t forget… what you said.”
His jaw moves back and forth as if he’s crushing my words – those three words that I said to him – between his teeth.
“So this is for the best,” he continues. “This clean break. You go your way and I go mine. Besides, as I said, I was going to leave anyway. All of this was temporary.”
Before I can say anything else, he moves.
I watch him walk across his dull gray room and retrieve an envelope that was sitting on his desk. He brings it back to me and my hand automatically reaches out to grab it.
Like I have to take everything he gives me.
Like I’m incapable of refusing him anything.
I’m pathetic, aren’t I?
Shaking my head, I look at it. A nondescript beige envelope.
“I was going to leave it with Coach TJ, but since you’re here, you can have it,” he explains.
I frown. “What is it?”
“Application for the Galaxy’s youth program next summer. I filled it out for you. And my recommendation letter.”
My fingers spasm and I look down at it again.
My new dream, my ambition that he gave me a couple of weeks ago. Something that I never thought I could have: a goal.
A chance to play some real soccer because I never thought I was good enough.
Until him.
Until he told me that I was and made me realize that I could do it.
I’d forgotten about it actually.
Because of everything.
And I realize now that if he hadn’t given me this, I never would’ve remembered.
“You filled out my application and gave me a recommendation letter?” I repeat when I look up, feeling… floored.
Overwhelmed.
And in so much pain.
“Yeah. I…” He clamps his jaw before swallowing. “I’ve never seen anyone like you – play like you do. You’re talented, Salem. You’re very fucking talented and no matter what you decide to do with it, I want you to know that you have my support. You have my belief.” He swallows again, the blue in his eyes shining. “I believe in you. I believe that you can go places. Should you choose to.”
I could drown in the blue of his eyes.
I could drown in the warmth he’s causing in my body. I could drown in my love for him. In his belief. In me.
I could drown and die.
Not only that I could throw myself at him too.
I could throw myself at his feet, wrap my hands around his leg and let myself be dragged through the streets, trailing behind him as he leaves.
Just to slow him down. Just to stop him.
Just to be with him.
I could do all of that and I could do it all right this second.
The very things I promised that I wouldn’t do.
All because he believes in me when no one else has ever done that.
That’s why I hug the envelope to my chest and blink.
I also nod and whisper, “Thank you. Uh, can you call me a cab, please? I’d like to go back.”
His eyes flare as if taken aback. “What?”
I hug the envelope tighter, dig my nails in my waist. “Please?”
At this, resignation washes over his face and he jerks out a nod. “I’ll take you back.”
I don’t argue; the less time spent in his company, the better.
So I nod too and with a last look at me, he moves.
He goes into the bathroom, grabs a shirt and puts it on, even though he’s sweaty from his workout. Grabbing his keys with tight movements, he strides to the door. He jerks it open for me and I walk through it.
And then, we’re riding back to St. Mary’s, me sitting behind his back, clutching his rigid frame and the envelope.
Hugging the love of my life and his belief in me.
His precious, immeasurable, invaluable belief.
Like the cab ride, I don’t remember this ride either, which is a shame because this is my last ride on a motorcycle.
I always knew that if I can’t ride with him, I wouldn’t wanna ride at all.
Soon it comes to an end, my last ride.
Soon, I’m climbing off his bike and standing on the ground. I’m looking at his face, his beautiful, stunning face. Sharp, jutting features.
My Arrow.
Even though he had a helmet on, his hair’s all messy, half damp from his workout and half falling over his brows, framing his navy eyes.
Eyes that have such intense, intense emotions.
Hugging the envelope to my chest, I say, “I…”
His hands on the handlebar flex and he says in a voice that sounds both eager and low, “You what?”
“I, uh, always thought, back when we lived together, that you were this perfect guy,” I say, biting my lip and I notice another flex, this one on his jaw. “You were so calm and determined and focused, you know? So dedicated to the game, to your goals. I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone with your focus. Not even my sister or my mom. I admired that about you. A lot. The Blond Arrow.
“But then years later, I got to know you. I actually got to know you. I mean, it’s funny because I had all these plans of going away and you were somewhere else. But somehow we ended up in the same place. But anyway, I got to know a different side of you. A new side. This guy who smokes because he’s stressed out. This guy who can get really angry when his trust is broken. Who can be so vulnerable and strong and tortured all at the same time. This guy who can be so mean and rude. Sometimes so much that I wanna smack him. But then sometimes he can be so sweet, you know?”
I chuckle brokenly. “I want to say that… I like that guy. That Arrow. And it hurts me that you think that guy is a failure. That he’s a liability. That he should be ignored. That anything other than The Blond Arrow, any other instinct that you have, is wrong. It hurts me when you beat that guy up for his flaws. Because that guy has something to offer, you know? That guy has so much to offer. You know how I know that?”
His jaw is ticking and ticking.
And I know that the heart that he thinks is dead is pounding inside his chest. I can see the tight vein on his neck throbbing just like his jaw.
“How?” he rasps, his eyes somehow both molten and on fire.
“Because he’s the guy who gave me this.” I motion to the envelope stuck to my chest. “He’s the guy who gave me a chance. Me. A girl who’s never followed a rule. A girl who never ever wanted to be perfect. He gave me a chance. He inspired me to be more. Not only that, that guy forgave me. For something that I’ve been beating myself up for for years, for falling in love with my sister’s boyfriend. He forgave me, Arrow. How can that guy be anything less than perfect when he gave me such a perfect gift?
“Please, please don’t shut him out, Arrow. Please. He’s inside of you and he’s good. He deserves more. He deserves your acceptance. Don’t shut that part of yourself out. Give it a chance, like you gave me. You told me that I could go places, right? That guy can go places too. That guy can do whatever he wants. That guy can be whoever he wants. Just… please give him a chance. Give yourself a chance. You can be both. The Blond Arrow and just Arrow. And do you know how I know that?”
This time, he doesn’t say anything.
He simply stares at me with so much emotion that my knees get weak.
&n
bsp; But I hold on.
Because I want to see him one last time, study him one last time.
I focus on his wicked jaw and sharp cheekbones. I focus on his tight broad shoulders. The sleek biceps, his muscular, powerful thighs.
The body built to be the best.
The Blond Arrow. Just Arrow.
My Arrow.
I reach my hand out and comb his sun-struck hair back for the last time. I lean in with my lips and kiss his cheek before whispering, “Because I believe in you too.”
And then, I spin around and I run.
I run, clutching the envelope to my chest as tears stream down my face. As my heart pounds and pounds in my chest and my legs, making me run faster than ever.
I run even when I hear him call out my name. Not once but twice.
In fact, I run harder.
I don’t wanna hear whatever he has to say to me because I know it won’t be what I want to hear: that he’ll stay.
So I keep going.
I scale the fence that I’ve done a thousand times before. I run through the grounds and race back to the dorm building and turn the knob again like I’ve done a thousand times before.
But when I get in, everything is different.
I haven’t seen this before, everything bright and loud, instead of dark and silent. Crowded hallway instead of a sleepy, empty one.
Up ahead there are girls, a large group of them.
All in their night clothes, their hair rumpled, faces turned away from me because they’re all looking at something.
A commotion of some kind.
There are voices and screaming and murmurs and gasps.
It takes me a moment to figure out that it’s Callie’s sweet high voice. “Can you just put that down? Is that really necessary?”
“Yeah, why are you being such a fucking bitch?” That’s Poe in her husky troublemaking voice.
“She deserves some goddamn privacy,” snaps Wyn, the soft and quiet one.
Crazily I think that it’s weird how I can tell all of them apart by just their voices. It’s a testament to the fact that I love them so much and I should go to them because they’re in trouble.
I would’ve too, if not for the nasal voice that raises itself above all else. The one that I hear in trigonometry class every week and in our one-on-one sessions.
Mrs. Miller.
“I’m being a bitch, Poe, because a student is missing. And if a student is missing, Wyn, then she has no privacy and yes, Callie, this is absolutely necessary. Especially when we’ve just found boxes and boxes of letters addressed to whom I can only deduce is the principal’s son. Who also happens to be the coach. And I know that you three definitely had something to do with her disappearance. Which means you’ll all be getting detention along with her. The girl cops are looking for right now, Salem Salinger.”
My name goes off in the corridor like a bomb. That grenade in the song that I’ve been humming for the past two days.
Maybe it should freeze me in my spot. Maybe it should chill me to my bones and make me pass out with shock.
But it doesn’t.
Because they’ve got my letters.
Just then a gap opens up in the huddle and I see Miller. I see her with an orange envelope, and I see her retrieving a folded page before reading, out loud, “My Darling Arrow…”
And then, the envelope in my hand, his belief in me, slips out and falls to the floor and I’m running again.
I’m running down the hallway and I realize that the thump of my feet is the loudest in this space of chaos, even louder than Miller’s nasally voice, reading out my letter.
The letter that belongs to me. The letter I wrote for him. And I need to get it back.
That’s the only thought in my mind. Get that letter back.
I realize that girls have started to turn away from Miller and focus on me. They’re gawking at me.
Gawking at the crazy girl who not only wrote these letters but was also missing. Who’s now dashing toward a teacher with red eyes, screaming, “Stop. It’s mine. It’s mine. Mine. Mine.”
But I don’t care.
I need that letter back.
It’s mine. It’s fucking mine.
I’m so close to it. So close to that piece of paper, the only thing that I can see right now, but something jars my body.
Something binds itself around my stomach and stops me in my tracks and that gets me so enraged, so angry, so devastated that I kick my feet.
I claw at the band around my waist, all the while screaming and staring at that letter, clutched within foreign fingers. “Let me go. Let me go.”
But they don’t.
They don’t let me go and that’s when the explosion hits me, the explosion that happened two days ago and the one that occurred just now.
It all hits me like an earthquake and everything goes black.
I’m not leaving.
I can’t. I can’t leave.
Because I have to tell her.
I have to tell her that the guy she was talking about, the guy who can be angry and mean and fucking sweet, the guy who inspired her, that guy didn’t exist.
Not before her.
Not before seeing her at the bar, looking so luminous and stunning. Not before she marched up to me and changed my whole fucking life.
She brought him into existence.
Her.
She built that guy. She created his wildness, his temper, his needs, his wants.
She created his longing.
His cravings.
Such deep, great cravings that when I saw her walking away last night, I realized something.
I realized that the pain I’d been feeling, the hurt that wouldn’t stop pressing into my body ever since that night in LA was want.
It was the result of my newly born cravings. Something that I’d never had before.
Something that made me call out her name, howl it out like a wounded, desperate animal but she didn’t stop.
She kept running, filling me with such panic, such terror…
And I know now that I never would’ve been able to leave. I never would’ve been able to board that plane and leave her behind.
Because all my life I’ve only ever wanted one thing – soccer – but she made me want something else.
In the time she was with me, she taught me to want something other than a trophy, a goal or a game. She taught me to crave something more than cold and lonely perfection.
Something warm and cozy and sweet. Something wild and savage and provocative.
Her.
I crave her.
I crave her laughs, her voice, her challenges and dares. I crave how she breaks the rules, how she scales the fence to come see me. I crave seeing her drowning in my leather jacket and sitting on the back of my Ducati.
I crave taking her to the Lover’s Lane that she’d talk about, but never got the chance to go. I crave teaching her all those moves I had made a list of: Elastico, Maradona, Forward Pull, V-Pull.
I crave her notes. Her letters.
All the things she inspires in me.
I crave them so much, so fucking much that my heart won’t stop thundering.
It hasn’t stopped ever since that night in the snow when she told me that it was alive, and I have to tell her all of this.
I have to tell her that I want her, I crave her but I don’t know how to keep her. How to not fuck this up because this is the first time I want something.
Something other than soccer, and I’m fucking panicking.
I’m quaking in my boots.
But I’m willing to believe in myself.
Like she believes in me.
That’s what she told me, right?
She told me that she believes in me and if she can believe in me, then I can learn to believe in myself too.
I can learn to believe that I can be whoever I want to be.
I always
thought that if I accepted my flaws and forgave myself for my mistakes, if I didn’t beat myself up or shame myself for screwing up, I wouldn’t be my father’s son. Or if I focused on something else even for a second, I wouldn’t be my mother’s son.
I wouldn’t be The Blond Arrow.
But maybe there’s another way.
Her way. My way.
A way that I can embrace all parts of me and be whole. Be hers.
Her Arrow.
So yeah, I have to tell her all of this.
In fact, I’m going to her now, right this second. I know it’s Monday and school is in but fuck it.
I’m not waiting.
I’ll pull her out of class if I have to but I’m talking to her and maybe she’ll reject me.
After everything, I wouldn’t blame her.
But I’ll take it. I’ll take it like a man and I’ll keep trying.
I’ll keep trying to be her Arrow.
But just as I’m about to kickstart my bike, my phone rings in my pocket. I almost ignore it but something makes me fish it out.
It’s Mom.
I don’t really want to talk to her right now but it could be important. It could be about Salem and her time at St. Mary’s.
My mother is out of town for some conference or whatever but a day ago, I called her up and told her that she needs to get Salem out of that hellhole and bring her back home. My mother was reluctant – because every mistake has to be paid in full – but I was adamant. She can punish me all she wants and she can keep punishing me for the rest of my life but no one is touching Salem.
No one ever touches Salem.
Even my mother, the woman who raised me and the woman I owe everything to.
So I’m already expecting to shut her down but as soon as I pick up, she says, “Arrow.”
Just my name.
And my fingers clutch the phone tightly. Forcefully.
I think she knows that she has my attention because she sighs. “It’s about Salem.”
Something grabs me by the gut. Something vicious and unrelenting. Something that makes me grip the phone even tighter.
“What about her?” I ask slowly.
“They found letters,” Mom says. “They were addressed to you.”
I write you letters…
My Darling Arrow Page 32