by S. J. Sylvis
“I did come see you, Dawson. And you know what?”
His eyebrows furrowed, mouth softening into a frown.
“You were fine. You were fine without me, so don’t you dare act like you’re so angry with me for just “disappearing,” because when I came back for you, you were with BREANNA, laughing, and nudging your stupid shoulder with hers.”
Dawson let go of my arm as I hastily snatched it away. His lips parted as he stared down at me. He looked so confused and appalled, but I knew what I had seen all those years ago. I knew he was fine without me, and I knew that if I did go to him, in the state that I was in, he would just be stuck trying to put my broken pieces back together and he didn’t deserve that.
“What? When did you see me with Breanna? That can’t be right…” he pleaded, his eyes roaming around, like he was pushing through hazy memories.
I smiled sadly. “It doesn’t matter, Dawson.” He flicked his eyes up to mine. “I knew, after seeing you happy and laughing, that nothing good would come of me going back to see you.”
The corded muscles along his neck flexed, as did his jaw, but he kept his mouth set in a grim line.
“Dawson, you were right that night.”
His voice was strained. “What night?”
A blissfulness moved the muscles in my face, remembering the kiss we shared and the feeling of pure happiness I had, before everything literally went up into flames. “The last night we were together. We said that things would change…”
“I remember,” he said softly, scrutinizing me, waiting for me to continue.
“Things did change. When I came back to see you, after everything, I wasn’t the same girl I was that night in your room.” My voice began to break at the end but I hurriedly covered it up with a small cough. “I was this hollow shell of a person, completely numb. I was so beyond broken that even you wouldn’t know what to do with me.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. “I’m sorry if it hurt you when I didn’t say goodbye, but honestly, after seeing you happy and smiling with.... Breanna…” God, even saying her name felt gross. Bleh. “I knew I wasn’t good for you. I came back so you could fix me. I went to you because you were my safe place. When everything came crashing down, the only thing I wanted was you.” I looked away, feeling my cheeks flush. “And this had nothing to do with that one kiss… I don’t know if you even really remember it.”
Something resembling a laugh mixed with a sigh escaped his lips. “I remember.”
Looking away, unable to keep my eyes trained on him, I finished what I started. “I just wanted my best friend, but everything was changing so quickly around me. I loved you so much, more than anything else in my life…and I loved you enough, despite the pain of seeing you move on with your life, to let you go. I needed to just… fix myself.”
I hadn’t realized it then, but I had done what I needed to do to in order to save the very last good part of my life. Over the last few years, and after some serious dissecting of why I hadn’t just yelled at him from across the street, or why I didn’t just run into his arms, even with Breanna there, I realized that I was saving that little part of me that loved him.
He was the only part of my life that I didn’t want to ruin. I just wanted him to be…him. Happy and carefree. I would have brought him down faster than my actual house when it burned to the ground.
“Ivy…” Dawson’s tone was so full of hurt that I couldn’t help but look up. I suddenly felt exhausted after putting everything out in the open like that.
I didn’t expect to ever tell him those things. They were so imbedded in my heart that I was surprised I could even conjure them into words.
“You don’t have to say anything, Dawson.” I took a few steps back, leaning against my porch rail.
He looked like he wanted to say about a million things, but I didn’t want him to. That’s not why I’d told him. I actually didn’t know why I told him. He always could coax secrets out of me.
Old habits die hard, I guess.
“I just wanted you to know that I would never not say goodbye for the fun of it. There was a reason why I did it. So…” I looked down at my Converse. “Just stop being so angry with me because I don’t deserve it. Whether you think I do or not, I don’t.”
The sound of him gulping caused my gaze to leave my shoes. His eyes were clenched tightly and he was biting his bottom lip with his teeth. He used to do that when we were younger, too. Except now, instead of it looking adorable, it looked… hot. My face burned with the embarrassment of thinking something like that in such an awkward, intense moment.
Dawson didn’t say anything to me. He pulled his head up and then looked me dead in the eye with such a powerful stare that I almost wanted to retreat backwards. His eyes traveled down to my mouth, then even further down to my legs, and then back up to my face. It was like he was really seeing me for the first time since I’d been back, without all the harsh anger clouding his vision.
A wave of heat gushed through my body and I instantaneously felt like I was sweating, even with the cool, fall breeze rustling leaves behind me.
I was about to say something, anything really, but he took his eyes off of me and walked down the porch steps. I watched him walk all the way to the end of the street and when he turned out of my sight, I lowered my head into my hands.
That was totally not the way I had that planned out in my head.
Not at all.
Chapter Twelve
Dawson
After seeing Ivy again for the first time in six years, I was feeling all sorts of fucked up shit. I was happy, and pissed, and then upset that we’d fought and even more upset when I realized I’d hurt her. I was painfully aware of the hurt I’d caused by the way her face looked. She was good at hiding her feelings but not from me. Even after all this time, I could tell she was hurt, plain as day. I recognized it by the way her mouth pinched just slightly and the way her eyes crinkled.
And that led to me aching, again, which just led to me being even more angry and confused. It was a vicious cycle.
When I got home that night, I expected Breanna to roll her eyes and scoff as soon as I entered the door. It was after eight, and she had come over at five to cook us dinner, which meant I was painfully late. Not that it would be a big surprise to her anyway, but now that we were trying this whole “boyfriend and girlfriend” thing, she would likely be pissed. But, I didn’t even give her a chance to mumble a “whatever.”
Instead, I pulled her up off the couch and slammed my lips onto her greedy ones. I buried myself so deep inside her, right there on my living room floor, that she couldn’t even form a sound. I told myself I was trying to make it up to her, but deep down, I knew I was being dishonest.
What I was trying to do, was to forget the entire day. I pushed away every wicked thought as I wrapped my hands around her waist and plunged into her warmness, working her body until it blissfully fell into a puddle of mush. I thought it would clear my head. I thought it would just take away every ounce of anger and pain that I felt after seeing Ivy, but it didn’t work.
I still thought of Ivy even with Breanna pinned beneath me.
It made me feel like shit. I felt so guilty afterward that I actually cuddled with her. We went to the bedroom, landing softly on the bed, and I traced lazy circles over her bare skin as she fell asleep curled up onto my chest. God, I was so fucking guilt-ridden. I mean, I highly doubted that thinking of another girl while boning your girlfriend was cheating, but it sure felt like it. If Breanna had known I was thinking of Ivy, she would fucking gut me.
I’m not even kidding.
Breanna was so insanely jealous of Ivy. She always had been, even in high school. I can still remember very clearly how she had gone after Ivy’s ex-boyfriend, Tyler, right after they’d broken up. Then, after Ivy had left and I was miserably pissed at the world, Breanna would constantly talk about how Ivy wasn’t worthy of me and try to pick me up. Everything she ever said about I
vy had been conniving and it always led me to believe that she was simply jealous.
It was understandable for her to be jealous of Ivy. Ivy was everything. Beautiful, smart, funny, nice, caring. She was the only girl who ever truly broke me and the funny thing was, we never even dated. We kissed, once, but it was enough to hook me – as stupid as that sounds.
I was truly messed up after she’d left.
She was my very best friend, the one person I loved more than I could even admit, and then she left and I was devastated.
Breanna was the first girl I’d hooked up with after Ivy. It was almost exactly a year after she’d left, and I was at the point of no return. I knew she wasn’t coming back. I was trying to move on and Breanna all but threw herself at me any chance she got, so I finally took the bait. We spent a few years sleeping together randomly when she’d come home from college, and we had this friends-with-benefits, no-strings-attached type of relationship until a couple months ago. We officially started to “date,” although nothing had really changed except for the fact that now we ate dinner together a few nights a week.
I sometimes thought I loved Breanna. I thought I had grown to love her because she helped me through a wicked heartbreak, but after just one tiny glimpse of Ivy at the office, I was thinking I may have been severely wrong.
Every feeling that Ivy had given me years ago festered and exploded right in front of my very eyes.
I was a shitty boyfriend.
And then the next day, after mindlessly fucking Breanna, all because I was flustered about Ivy, I grew even angrier about the situation. My fury intensified when I thought back to how I’d treated her just because of Ivy—the girl who’d left without any word, whatsoever.
Breanna might have been a little conniving and she might have made Ivy’s life a little rough in high school, but at least she never left me high and dry. She cared about me and that’s more than I could say about Ivy.
I was becoming more irritated by the second, so right after lunch I stood up from my desk and stalked over to the crappiest house on Burbank. I was prepared to hash it out with her, demand a reason as to why she’d just… left.
Then she dropped a fucking bomb on me.
Now I couldn’t even pretend that I was blistering with anger. I really hated that, because now all I felt was regret, and that’s way, way worse.
I wondered while walking back to the office, after seeing Ivy looking so extremely adorable in her stupid overalls and pink-tinted cheeks, what life would have been like if she hadn’t seen me with Breanna that day.
That’s another thing that pissed me off. It wasn’t like Breanna and I hooked up right after Ivy left. I waited. I waited for an entire year before finally letting some of my hope go. I couldn’t remember the exact moment that Ivy would have seen Breanna leaving my house, but it definitely wasn’t what she thought it was.
So what would have happened? Would we be together, today? Would our friendship have grown into something long-term? After kissing her that night, so long ago, I knew I wanted to have all of her. I didn’t just want her friendship, I wanted her to be mine and I wanted everyone to fucking know it.
My mind kept drifting back to the way Ivy looked, standing on her porch, explaining her side of the story. Explaining why she’d left, and how she didn’t want to burden me with her pain and sadness. Her posture told me that she was still hurting, and still festering over our lost friendship. I still meant something to her, and that did only one thing to me: it gave me the slightest bit of hope… and I had absolutely no business feeling something like that because I had a girlfriend.
Something I had to keep reminding myself over the last three days.
As each day passed, I kept wondering when I’d see her again. What I should have done was tell my father to handle the renovations of Ivy’s house, because nothing good would come of me being so close to her again. I was already having very vivid thoughts about her and I’d only been around her twice. That’s it. Only two times and she was already edging her way back into my head, as if she’d never left.
I had a plan, though. A shitty one and one that was probably going to bite me in the ass sooner or later, but I was raising a white flag—a truce. I would make it up to her. All the pain I had involuntarily caused her. All the pain that she’d involuntarily caused me.
I had the blueprints ready. I would show her what we could do to her shabby home (which by the way, I couldn’t help but notice needed a shit-ton of work done to it) and then we could just go back to being… friends.
My heart was galloping in my chest like an Arabian racehorse as I clutched the blueprints in my hand. I was standing just below her house, staring at the stupid, cracked, missing-pieces, concrete steps that she’d fallen down a few days ago, completely high with exhilaration.
I ground my teeth, reminding myself that I was here to fix her house and to be her friend. Nothing more. Would I love to go back to being best friends with Ivy? Yes. But I knew that wasn’t possible.
Breanna would probably lose her shit, and although she surprisingly hadn’t been the jealous type regarding our sex-lationsip, I had a feeling that now that we were trying to make a relationship work, she’d show her true colors. Especially since it was Ivy and she and her family loathed the Collins, what was left of them, anyway. I didn’t know the specifics as to why except for that Ivy once told me that Breanna hated her because their fathers were rivals in the car dealership industry.
Breanna wasn’t even aware that Ivy was back in town yet. I didn’t think many people knew other than my father and I. It seemed Ivy was secluding herself in her house, which made sense; it was probably a little difficult for her to be out and about in a town that she used to call home.
I was certain she hadn’t been on her old street yet.
I definitely would have known.
As I walked up her front steps, I listened for a sound in her house, but the only thing I heard was the low rumble of a TV or radio.
I rapped my knuckles along the dull white, wooden door, which was in desperate need of a paint job, and paused. I clicked my tongue back and forth in my mouth, waiting, hoping she’d be just as down with being friends again as I was.
I mean, it wasn’t like we were bouncing back from a long-term relationship full of sex and all that intimate stuff (let’s pretend my dick didn’t just stir thinking of Ivy and sex in the same sentence). We’d been really, really good friends back in the day. We shared one epic kiss, and that was it.
I was certain that we could at least be acquaintances again.
Finally, Ivy opened the door, but all I could see was a sliver of her shining face through the crack. Her emerald eyes widened, dark eyelashes fanning the skin below her eyebrows.
“Dawson,” her voice was breathless, like she had been working out… or something else.
Hesitantly, I asked, “Is this a bad time?”
I turned my body slightly to peek inside her house but before I could, she placed her hand on my chest and shoved me backwards, following me outside and slamming the door behind her.
What the fuck? I’m aware that we had a little tiff and left things on a weird page but she wasn’t allowing me inside now?
Then my blood started to boil.
…Does she have a man inside? That would make total sense. How could someone like her be single?
“Bad time? Should I come back?” I shut my eyes briefly, hoping she didn’t notice the sharpness that fell off of every single word.
Ivy was quick to answer. “Oh no! It’s fine, did you need something?” She crossed her arms over her white t-shirt and that’s when I noticed the smudges on her face.
My mouth twitched as I reached my bare hand up to brush her cheek. Excitement hit my fingertips as I felt her soft skin and I unknowingly let my fingers linger for far too long.
“What’s this?” I asked, finally pulling my hand back and looking down at the white dust on the pads of my fingers.
Ivy started to stutter s
o bad that I had to bite back a laugh.
“Oh! That? Ur… um, it’s nothing!”
I rose an eyebrow, watching her cheeks fill with a blazing red.
“Why are you nervous?” I pestered, voice full of laughter.
“I’m not!” she shouted.
I pulled back, a smile playing along my lips. “You are. I can tell you are.”
Ivy placed her hands on her hips, sassy as ever.
“How can you tell?”
I snickered at her attitude. “Because even though it’s been six years, I can still read you like a freaking book.”
A conniving smile formed on her flushed face. “Oh, you learned how to read in the last six years? That’s wonderful, Dawson.”
As I scanned her face, I couldn’t help but lose the hold I had on my laugh.
After my laughter subsided, I shook my head and I asked her again. “What’s going on? Why did you push me out of your house?”
Her face dropped and then I remembered my earlier thought. Fuck, what if there really is a guy in there?
“Is there a guy in there or something?”
She gasped, bringing her hand up to her mouth. “No!”
“Then why can’t I come inside?”
“Why are you here again?”
I pulled the blueprints up and waved them in front of her face. “I came bearing a white flag.”
Her eyes slanted. “I see you learned to read but you forgot your colors. How sad.”
I couldn’t help it. I barked out another laugh.
“Someone has gotten quite sassy over the last six years.”
Her soft giggle filled the air, and something inside me came alive.
“I thought maybe…” I pulled my lower lip in my mouth, feeling as nervous as I did the night I kissed her, which was completely pathetic that I still remembered how nervous I’d been, even this many years later. And Jesus, fuck, I was a man now; there was no need to be nervous around a female like I was still going through puberty.
“You thought what?” she asked, looking at me so sweetly that I felt my body visibly relax.