"Well, why not?" she asked, taking another sip of her wine.
"Because...because," I paused, squinting my eyes, thinking. "Because I don't do feels, emotions. I don't do relationships."
"You don't do relationships?" Olivia asked, looking extremely confused.
"Yeah, I don't do relationships. I don't believe in the long term." I was feeling confused and a little defensive. I suddenly felt like I was on the witness stand, that my own grandmother was interrogating me.
"Your grandfather and I have been together for over 40 years," she pointed out. "Long term isn't a bad thing."
"I never said it was a bad thing," I retorted. "I just don't think its right for me."
"Why?"
"Because...because I just don't," I said, starting to feel a little annoyed.
"So a boy, a really good looking, famous, seemingly nice boy tells you that he loves you and you break up with him because you don't do long term. Is that right?" Olivia said. She smiled at the waiter as he dropped off our food and shook her head when he asked if we needed anything else.
"Yeah, that sounds about right," I confirmed, picking up my fork and taking a bite of my mashed potatoes.
"Well, I think that's pretty dumb."
I coughed. "Excuse me?" I said. What was with everyone calling me dumb and stupid lately?
"Well, now, I know I don't you that well, McKinley," Olivia said, her Southern accent getting more and more prominent the more she talked. "But I just think that it's silly to break up with someone just because they love you."
"I think it was nice of me to break up with him because he loved me," I said, smoothly. "I don't think its fair to stay with someone when you can never feel the same way about them."
"Sure, sure," she agreed. "But I don't think that's the case here."
"Oh, you don't?" I asked, a definite bite in my tone now.
Olivia seemed absolutely unaffected by my tone. She seemed almost used to it and I wondered for a moment if my mom had been as temperamental as me. "Oh, no. I don't think you were saving Jake Kennedy from any sort of hurt you could cause him. I think it was more of you avoiding getting hurt."
"What on earth are you talking about?" I asked her, incredulously.
"Are you afraid of love?" she asked, ignoring my question and asking one of her own.
"Of course not," I said quickly. "I love Luke. I love Amanda. I love Iris and Dave and Robert and..."
"Family love. Friendship," Olivia cut me off. "What about actual love, falling in love, being in love, that sort of love."
"I'd rather just stay away from that," I said.
"I just don't understand why," she said, taking a bite of her own food. She chewed her food, thoughtfully, staring at me.
"Because I don't want that, okay? I just don't want to have anything to do with love," I shot back at her. "I mean, why would anyone want to be in love? Why would someone willingly let themselves feel that way?"
"You don't really choose to fall in love, McKinley," she said, her voice growing softer. "It just sort of happens. You don't even realize it’s happening until it’s already happened, until you are already in too deep."
I was starting to feel anxious. I dropped my fork on the table and pushed my plate away. Suddenly, I just wasn't hungry anymore. The subject of love was just way too much. "I don't believe in that. I believe that you can keep yourself from loving people. If you keep them at a distance, you'll never have to worry about love."
"Yeah, you know, I don't think that worked," she said.
"Why do you say that?"
"You say you push people away, keep them at a distance. You say you do that so you don't have to worry about love, right?"
"Right," I said, slowly.
"Well, I’m just saying that I don’t think it really worked out that way," she pointed out. "Jake Kennedy still fell in love with you, and he fell hard enough to announce it to everyone in the world on television."
"I...I...you're right," I admitted. "But I just didn't try as hard with Jake. I forgot all my rules with him. I let it go on for way too long."
Olivia looked satisfied, as if I had said exactly what she wanted. "You are exactly right. And McKinley, why do you think that you broke your rules?"
"It's easy," I said, feeling my impatience starting to bubble up again. "I broke the rules because I got so caught up. I was out there, having fun and Jake was so different and every time I tried to use one of my strategies, he just veered off in a completely different direction! And his life was so fun and exciting and chaotic and it was so hard not to get sucked in and I just found myself stuck!"
"You found yourself in love," Olivia supplied for me.
I shrieked in frustration, ignoring the looks of the other people dining in the restroom. "Why does everyone keep saying that to me?"
"Maybe because it’s true?" she asked.
"It's not true. I do not love Jake Kennedy," I said, firmly, rolling my eyes.
"Well, now, I think that's a lie," Olivia said, sitting up and leaning towards me. I had only known her in person for a day and I had already learned that she had a tendency to lean forward when talking about something important or when she felt impassioned about something. "Now, I know love isn't the easiest thing in the world for you. I know that. I know that your mama left you. She left me too. Don't think for a minute that I don't understand that."
"I didn't..." I started to say but she plowed on.
"You're not the only person in the world who has been left, McKinley Evans. But you're the only person who sits here and refuses to let anyone in again. And you're perfectly capable of love. You show love to your friends and your family. You are such a loving person. I don't understand how you can't just open yourself up to love," she said. Her words were impassioned; she definitely felt what she was saying but she remained so calm and her face was so impassive while she said it. She looked so much like a mom that it made my stomach hurt.
"I just don't understand why people keep trying to push feelings on me that I just don't feel," I said, feeling slightly defeated. "I can't help it if I don't love Jake. I can't make myself love him and it would be wrong to stay with him if I didn't feel the same way. Now he has a chance to go and find someone who will love him."
Olivia pulled back, sinking into the cushy booth, and let out a snort. I was surprised for a moment. I didn't think a southern belle like her could ever let out such a noise. "Don't act all high and mighty on me, missy. I'm not stupid. You can't fool your own grandmother. You can say all those words about you being so honorable and sacrificing but I don't believe it for one minute. You were scared. You actually started feeling something for this boy and you got scared and ran. Instead of acting like an adult and walking into this crazy thing called love, you ran away scared, like a coward."
I stared at her in shock. I had never in my life had anyone talk to me like that. Luke had the only parental figure in my life since I was five and he had always taken a sort of hands off approach to parenting, letting me make my own mistakes and figuring stuff out on my own. Amanda had always hesitantly told me what she thought but she had never gotten in my face. Olivia was sitting across, calm as can be, sipping her wine, but she was laying it into me like no one had ever done before. For the first time in my life, I actually felt like I was being yelled at by a parental figure, a grandmother.
"I have no idea what to say to that," I said, honestly, feeling a little ashamed at myself.
"You could tell your ol' grandma that you're sorry and that you do love Jake Kennedy," she said, winking.
I smiled a little at that. "Well, I will say that I'm sorry. I didn't mean to lose my temper. I've never had a break up like this before. Usually, I do the breaking up and cut all ties and they all but disappear off the face of the planet for me. This is weird for me. So I am sorry." I paused. "But I don't love Jake Kennedy."
Olivia sighed. "Well, I'm not going to argue with you anymore," she said. "But I hope you change your mind."
&nb
sp; I smiled weakly at her, hoping that this conversation would never come up ever again.
That night I had the strangest dreams. I was at the diner and it seemed like everyone was there: Luke, Dave, Iris, Robert, Diane, Cassandra, Frank, Oliver, Amanda and Mike but also Pete, Gabriel, Wendy and Adrienne were there, even Olivia and nineteen-year-old incarnation of my father. Everyone was together, having a good time. These people who had all been in my life the last seven months or so were mingling together and having a good time. Luke was dancing with Wendy and Cassandra and Oliver were holding hands. Pete was hitting on Amanda but Mike was constantly throwing French fries at him. I was sitting in the corner booth, smiling at the chaos going around me.
I was feeling satisfied until the double doors (apparently the diner had double doors in my dream) of the diner slammed open and Andrea Tremaine came bursting in. She looked around frantically, an extremely panicked look on her face, before spotting me and racing through the diner. "McKinley, thank God, I found you," she said, her voice sounding echo-y, as if she was standing in a large, empty room.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, my voice echoing in the room. I was surprised at how indifferent I felt at her being in the diner. I wasn't even angry.
"You have to come. You have to come now."
"Why?"
"Please, you have to come. You just have to come now," she insisted, grabbing my arm and starting to tug on it. I stared at her, curiously, feeling more and more indifferent by the moment. I felt nothing; no emotion and no sense of urgency at her frantic tone. "McKinley, what are you doing? You have to come; you have to hurry!"
"McKinley! McKinley! McKinley!" My name started bouncing off the walls of the diner. No one had stopped what they were doing; Luke was still dancing, Oliver and Cassandra were still cuddling in her booth together. Mike was still throwing French fries at Pete. But the only thing coming out of everyone's mouths was my name, over and over again, louder and louder.
"McKinley, listen, please. Jake is dead, okay? He's dead, please you have to come," Andrea begged.
I felt my head slowly turn to hers and though the expression on my face didn't change, I could feel the wetness on my cheeks. "Get out of my diner." She started to protest. "Get out now!" I yelled.
The dream shifted and suddenly Jake was in front of me. I felt a sort of pang at the sight of him but I also felt confused. "I thought you were dead."
"I am dead," he said, his voice even more echoed than mine and Andrea's were.
"Then what are you doing here?" I asked, reaching for him. My hands passed right through him but I didn't feel upset. My confusion was further increased; why couldn't I touch him?
"I had to come talk to you. I had something to tell you." His face suddenly lost the serene quality that he had before and his features become feral, fierce, mean. "It's your fault, McKinley. It's your fault I'm dead. If you had just loved me, I wouldn't be dead. It's your fault. It's your fault. It's your fault."
I felt like I had been slapped. Each word felt like a knife in my back, cutting me deeper and deeper. "No, stop. Stop saying that." Jake kept repeating the words, over and over again. "Stop, stop, stop!"
I woke up, covered in a cold sweat, my heart beating super fast. I glanced over at the clock, surprised to see that it was later than I thought. Instead of being the middle of the night, it was nearly nine a.m. I ran my fingers through the tangles of my red hair and took a shaky deep breath. I reached for my phone, calling the first person that I needed right now.
"Hello?" I had obviously woken her up. She had the sleepy voice.
"Amanda?" I said, softly.
"McKinley? What's going on?"
I could feel tears actually coming. I couldn't remember the last time I had actually cried and now here I was, lying in bed, calling my best friend because of a nightmare, about to cry. "Can you come over? Please? I really need you right now."
"You need me?" Amanda asked, surprise evident in her voice. It registered for a moment that Amanda had every right to be surprised. I had never really needed Amanda before. It had always been Amanda calling me for a crisis but I couldn't imagine ever calling her. "I mean, of course. Give me thirty minutes; I'll be there as soon as I can."
While I waited for Amanda to come over, I climbed out of bed and changed, putting on the first things that I grabbed; a pair of black jeans and a brown V-neck top. I sat on my bed, feeling a little sick to my stomach. I never really had bad dreams and this one was shaking me up. Why did I have to dream about Jake? Why had I been so upset in my dream?
Stupid Jake Kennedy.
It had been almost a month since I had broken up with him and I still couldn't get him out of my head. I had never given Gabriel or Daniel, or anyone before that, a second thought once they were gone but Jake was still at the forefront of my mind. It didn't help that he was everywhere-on TV, in magazines, on billboards off the freeway.
And how could I not think about him? He was one of the most handsome guys in American, maybe even the world. He was so tall, so tall that I had to stand on my toes to reach for a kiss. He was fit and built and strong: muscled arms, broad shoulders, a thin waist and a flat stomach, which made it nearly impossible to resist him in the bedroom. However, he wasn't a gym freak, he wasn't so built that I wondered if he care more about his appearance than anything else. But he was also smart as hell, super talented, able to make me laugh even when I was mad and he handled me and my personality with grace. God, and there was that stupid soft, long black hair that fell into those equally stupid blue eyes.
Those stupid, ridiculously blue eyes.
And then it hit me. It snuck up on me just as my grandma had said it would. But I knew this wasn't a new feeling. I had been feeling this for a while, denying it for so long. How could I be so stupid? How had I not seen this before? How did this even happen; how had I screwed up so badly?
Just then, my door flung open and Amanda came in, my grandma right behind her. "McKinley, hey, did you forget that you were meeting up with Olivia for breakfast?" She paused, staring at me. "McKinley, what's wrong?"
I looked up at both of them, feeling alternately angry and helpless. How did I get myself into this situation? "I'm...I'm in love with Jake Kennedy."
Amanda's face lit up and then became impassive. "You're just now figuring this out?" she said, her tone flat. She crossed her arms across the chest.
"I know, okay?" I said, cradling my face in my hands. "I seriously fucked up. I made a huge mistake. I didn't see it before. I'm an idiot; is that what you want to hear?"
Amanda immediately lost her reserve. "Of course not, McKinley. But...I mean, we all told you!"
"Yeah, and I didn't listen," I retorted. "When do I ever listen?"
"Okay, okay, let's not get hysterical," my grandma said, pushing her way into the room and taking a seat in my desk chair. I felt a fleeting moment of embarrassment at how dirty my room was. "This is not a bad thing, McKinley."
"Its totally not a bad thing," Amanda reassured me. "McKinley, this is good for you. You're in love!"
"This is not a good thing," I said, shaking my head.
Amanda rolled her eyes. "McKinley, you need to just accept it. Stop trying to deny your emotions."
"I'm not. That’s not what I'm talking about." They both stared at me for a moment, looking confused. "I broke up with him! I told him that I didn't love him, that he didn't mean anything to me! He isn't going to want me back."
Olivia sighed. "Oh, is that all?"
"Is that all?" I asked, incredulously. "I obviously hurt him. I wouldn't take someone back who said the things I said to him."
"Yes but that's you, McKinley," Amanda said. "Jake knows the way you are; he knows that you didn't mean it."
"Jake loves you, McKinley," Olivia said, smiling. "Anyone with eyes could see that."
"Maybe not anymore," I said, feeling panicked. "I haven't talked to him in weeks. I can't just call him and tell him that I love him."
"Yeah. You can't really ca
ll him. He changed his number," Amanda admitted.
"Amanda! Seriously?" I asked. I felt a sharp pain in my chest, which I finally recognized as jealousy.
"Oh god, I thought you knew I was way past that," Amanda said. "I didn't text him because of that! Whatever you said, I knew better; I knew you better. So I texted him, trying to get you two back together."
"Amanda!"
"Oh, whatever," she sighed. "I tried calling when I got no response to the text and it was disconnected."
"Perfect," I answered. "It's done, over. He's Jake Kennedy and I...I...it's done."
"No," Olivia said, sharply. "No, it's not. It's not done."
"Yeah, yeah, Olivia is right," Amanda said, firmly. "We just need to come up with a plan."
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