But I Love Him

by Amanda Grace

  “So do you … do you want to do it again sometime?”

  I turn to look at him, and he’s staring at the road as if it takes every last ounce of concentration and he can’t tear his eyes away to look at me, but I know his heart is probably beating out of control like mine is.

  “Yes. Definitely.”

  And then his lips curl into a smile and he looks over at me. “Sounds good.”

  And when we get to my house, he walks me to the door and we kiss a few more times, and all I can think of is our next date, when we can do it all again.

  For the first time, someone is seeing me, and I want to catch up from a thousand days of being invisible.

  September 3

  four Days

  Today I’m going out with Connor. I can’t believe it. He actually called after I gave him my number. I fully expected to be blown off. Guys just don’t ask me out like this. I’m not outgoing enough to be noticed.

  And now I’m a ball of nerves, practically bouncing off the walls. I’ve been on, like, four dates in my whole life, and two of them were homecoming dances where I went with someone “as friends” even though I wanted it to be more.

  And I don’t even know where we’re going. It’s a surprise. I tried to get it out of him, but he held fast, and I have no idea what we’re doing tonight, if it’s going to be dinner and a movie or something totally different.

  I kind of like that. School starts in two days, and when all I can think of is our date, it makes it seem so far away.

  Connor said to dress casual, so I wear a cute pair of jeans, low heels, and two layers of tank tops, one baby blue and one yellow. My hair is swept up in a messy bun and I wear dangly little earrings. Stars. I hope I look okay. I hope he doesn’t take one look at me and change his mind and decide he was totally crazy for asking me out.

  He pulls up in a beat-up Ford F-150, the one he was driving the day I met him. I can see him from my window. It rumbles at the curb for a minute until he kills it and climbs out, and I can hear the door squeak. I want to watch him but I don’t want to keep him standing on the porch, so I don’t. I grab my bag and take the stairs two by two, and swing open the door just as he makes it up the last step.

  He looks amazing. He has on dark jeans and a blue T-shirt and the biggest smile I’ve ever seen. It lights up his eyes. His hands are behind his back, and when he holds them out I see what they contain: daisies and baby’s breath. Yellow and white, the perfect summer mix.

  Warmth spreads through me and I have to fight not to drop my jaw, I’m so surprised and pleased by his gesture. Instead I just grin, and I hope it’s half as amazing as the smile on Connor’s face right now. “Thank you!”

  Before I know what I’m doing I stand on my tippy toes and kiss him on the cheek, and then we both turn a little red. I have no idea why I was that forward.

  “Let me toss these in water and then we can go.”

  Too late, I realize I should have invited him in, because he just stands there on the porch while I rush off to the kitchen and drop the bouquet in a vase. But it only takes me seconds and I’m back in no time.

  He walks to the truck and holds the door open for me, and I slide over the cracked vinyl seats as his cologne washes over me. I breathe deeply, enjoying the scent. Before I’m buckled he’s around to his side and jumping in and firing up the truck. It’s even louder inside, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He just puts it in gear and before I know it, we’re winding down Snob Hill, our windows rolled down and the salty ocean air whipping through the cab.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  He just shakes his head and smiles, this cute half-smile that lifts the edges of his full lips. Why am I staring at his lips? “Still not telling.”

  I roll my eyes and smirk a little, enjoying the playful way he says it, but I don’t ask again. I kind of like that he hasn’t told me yet. Everyone always gives in and tells their secrets.

  He turns right at the bottom of the hill, away from town and the beach, and now I’m really curious. He takes a few turns, winds back up toward the mountains and then down a gravel road, then parks on the edge of the pavement. “Come on. It’s a short hike.”

  I nod and slide out of the truck, realizing that heels, even low ones, do not count as casual wear. Now I look totally out of place.

  We don’t walk far before I start having trouble. Late summer rains have made the ground moist and my heels are sinking, and I’m walking with my arms out for balance like some crazy lunatic, my hands waving whenever one heel sinks further than the other. This is definitely not scoring me any points.

  “How ’bout you put this backpack on and I’ll give you a piggy back ride?”

  My face heats up a little at the idea of jumping on his back. I’ve known him for all of three days. But if I want to know what his secret is, I need help. “Okay.”

  He kneels down and uses a tree trunk to keep his balance, and then he stands with my arms looped around his neck and my legs wrapped around his waist, and then we’re walking again, much faster than before. “God, you weigh like two pounds,” he says.

  My face burns now. This is both awkward and really, really nice, and I can smell his cologne again, masculine and musky, and I have to fight the urge to rest my face against his back. His shoulders seem even broader, more heavily muscled, from this angle.

  He weaves his way through the woods, stepping carefully over rocks and tree roots, and we end up at his destination in a few short minutes. Something is roaring. Loud.

  “It’s a waterfall,” he says as I slide off his back. “We just have to get to that landing right there. There’s steps built in. Planks. You should be able to get down without a problem, just grab that rope for balance.”

  I follow his directions and make it, wobbling on my heels all the while, down to a landing about fifteen feet below the trail we’d walked in on. There are a few fallen logs gathered around a big round chunk of tree, like a table and benches made by nature.

  Connor unzips his backpack and reveals his secret: a picnic. He spreads out a tablecloth on the big round stump and starts laying out sandwiches and chips and a big thermos and some napkins. “There wasn’t much at the house to choose from, so it’s just some turkey sandwiches and lemonade …”

  “It’s perfect,” I say. “Thank you.”

  This is the best date ever. It hasn’t even started and it’s the best date ever. Dinner and a movie? Forget that. I’d rather have a picnic and a waterfall.

  I take a seat on one of the logs and watch as he arranges it all and hands me a paper plate, and then he sits down across from me, a plate in his own hands.

  I can tell he’s a little nervous, and it’s cute. His face has the slightest red tinge and he keeps messing with his spiky blond hair and twisting his watch around his wrist in between bites.

  “So … what kinds of things are you into?” I ask, after it seems like we’ve sat here too long without talking.

  “Basketball, guitars, skateboarding, cooking—even though I’m horrible at it—working on cars—especially the classics—baseball cards, state quarters, sailboats, fishing, concerts, and movies, I guess.”

  “Wow,” I say, laughing. “That’s a lot of hobbies.”

  He nods. “Yeah, I guess so. I like to stay busy … and I get interested in a lot of different things, so I figure, why not? I hate when people talk about things and don’t go out and do it, you know?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I’m just into running. I could spend every moment running if it wouldn’t totally kill me. I do cross country and track.”

  “That’s cool,” he says. “I did basketball for a while. It’s nice having people who just get why you’re so into something.”

  “Exactly.”

  The silence stretches on for a few moments, and I want to fill it. “Any brothers or sisters?”

  He shakes his head. “No. Just me. Thank God.”

  I laugh, but then I see he’s serious. “Why thank God?”
/>   He shrugs. “My dad’s just … my dad’s an alcoholic,” he says. So simply. So concise. And yet I see that those words were hard to spit out.

  “Oh.”

  He half-heartedly shrugs. “I don’t know why I just told you that. That’s not really … that’s not really first-date material. So … let’s change the subject.”

  The waterfall still hums, sending gentle mist of river water over us. It feels … ethereal? I’m not sure what it is, but this date feels like a dream, like I’ve conjured up every fantasy I can think of and turned it into real life.

  “You look beautiful,” he says.

  Wow. How’s that for changing the subject? I smile and stare at my hands. This is definitely a dream.

  “Even when you blush.”

  It only makes me turn redder. I can feel it, my cheeks and nose, all warm.

  “You’d think a girl like you would be used to compliments.”

  Yeah, not so much. No one ever notices me long enough to compliment me.

  But somehow Connor is sitting here right now, and he sees me.

  And I think I could get used to it.

  August 30

  One Year

  When I awaken, the room is completely dark. The storm has lessened some, enough so that I can almost see the street lamps through the streaming raindrops on the window. I wait for a long moment, but the lightning doesn’t come.

  I wonder if he will return.

  I wonder if the world still exists outside this room. I wonder if everybody else out there still remembers how to laugh. My smile is broken. It shattered a long time ago.

  How long ago was it? Was it the first harsh word? The first bitter smirk or the first time he shoved me?

  I close my eyes and push it away. It’s over now. What’s done is done, and why it happened—or when—is inconsequential.

  It won’t change anything if I figure it out, anyway. Connor is who he is, and no matter how many ways I look at it, he still hurts me.

  This isn’t love. It’s something broken and ugly. I wanted it so badly I didn’t care what it looked like.

  He did this to me. He chose to do it. Maybe he’s broken and maybe he needed an outlet, but he still had a choice. He knew when he threw his fist what he was doing.

  He knew when he spit those ugly words what they would do to me.

  And I hate myself for hoping he’s still in the parking lot, for wanting to open the door and let him back in.

  I’ll never be the person I was before him. But I don’t have to be this girl, either.

  With my left hand, the only piece of me not pulsing with pain, I reach into my pocket. My cell phone. When I flip it open, it lights up so brightly I have to blink several times before I can see clearly.

  I have to do it. I have to call.

  With shaky hands, I dial her number. I stop on the last digit, my finger hovering over the five. I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I want to talk to her, to know that she’s thinking I told you so and hating him.

  She is harder to face than he is, even when his features are contorted into an ugly mask of rage. She is the proof of every wrong choice I made. When I look at her, I want to crawl into a hole and forget all the mistakes.

  But I can’t stop myself. I push the number anyway. I know she’s not going to wrap me up in her arms and tell me everything is going to be okay, but I still want her to.

  Somewhere inside me, I am still twelve years old, and I still need her.

  I know she’s sleeping. I know the phone will ring out with its shrill tone from the place beside her bed.

  “Hello?” she answers, in a groggy voice on the second ring.

  “Mom?” I don’t realize I’m crying until I say that word, and it comes out so weak and wobbly it belongs to a child.

  “Ann? Is that you?” She’s awake now. Her voice is clear, filled with concern and, maybe, hope.

  She wants it to be me on the line. Does she miss me like I miss her? Does she feel that distance between us—not caused by one year of fighting, but several years of silence?

  The tears are pouring, sliding down my cheeks and dripping to the floor. I can’t stop them.

  “Come get me,” I say, my lip quivering. I’m shocked at the surge of relief I feel as I say the words; I’m surrendering control.

  Save me. Please, just make this all go away.

  For a long second she doesn’t say anything. The buzz of the phone is deafening. My heart flips around for a moment. Have I made a mistake? Is she too angry about the last twelve months?

  “Ann?”

  “Yeah?” I can hardly speak with the lump in my throat. It’s choking me.

  “I love you.”

  I can’t even say it back, because those three words just make me sob even harder.

  I am going to be okay.

  I don’t know what is going to happen next, but somehow, even after the year I’ve been through, I am going to be okay.

  August 30

  The First Day

  My car won’t start. This is lame.

  And so not good timing, considering I drained my cell phone while talking to Abby during lunch break, and I already set the alarm at Subway. If I go back in to use the phone, the alarm company will call and I’ll have to tell them why I went back inside, and then tomorrow I’ll have to explain it all to my boss.

  Today has not been a good day. I only work here during the summer, and for some reason everyone thinks that summer equals Subway, because I didn’t stop moving for six hours and the oven was cranked so we could keep up with baking the bread, and at one point the thermostat said it was ninety-nine degrees inside.

  Ugh. Now I’m sweaty and tired and I just want to go home, but no, I had to leave my lights on and now I’m sitting here, trying to figure out what to do. I don’t even have jumper cables to use, if someone had a running car.

  So … plan B. My car is a stick shift. The parking lot is pretty flat, but maybe I can get it going enough to push-start it. I’ll get it rolling, and then I’ll jump into the seat, put it in gear, and pop the clutch. It’s worth a shot, since I have nothing else to do. It doesn’t have to roll that fast. Hopefully.

  So I jump out and lean against the door frame, but the car hardly budges. It’s like there are blocks under the tires or something. I strain a moment longer, shoving with all my weight, but it doesn’t roll an inch.

  This is not going to work. I’m way too tired for this crap. Maybe I can get my cell to work long enough to call Abby and she’ll come get me. She won’t know how to use jumper cables and neither do I, but she can give me a ride home and I can deal with this on a day when I’m not so exhausted.

  “Need a hand?”

  I whirl around to see a boy standing there. He’s probably around my age. Maybe a year older. He has spiky blond hair and a tall lanky body, like a basketball player or something. He’s got on wide-legged blue jeans, the front all faded, and a plain black T-shirt, with a silver chain necklace hanging over the front.

  And he’s cute. Really, really cute. He has thick lips that sort of curl up a little bit, so it’s hard not to stare at them.

  And I’m standing here like a total tool, trying to push-start my own car. Great.

  “Um, yeah. I left my lights on all day and so I was going to push-start it, but I can’t really get it going.”

  “I have jumper cables, if you want. Or I can push you.”

  I nod my head and then realize he didn’t ask a yes or no question. “Oh, um, yeah, jumper cables are fine.”

  He turns and walks away from me, and for a second I think I might have scared him off and he’s just leaving. But then I see he’s climbing into a big white truck over by the pizza place. He fires it up and drives it next to my little blue car.

  It takes me almost five minutes to figure out where the hood release is, my hand blindly swiping across everything under the steering wheel, but I manage to pull it and before I can even say or do anything he’s popping it open and atta
ching the clamps, and we both just stand there, staring at the engines.

  “Give it a second, okay?” His voice is kind of rough-edged and masculine, and I find myself liking the sound of it and wishing he had more to say.

  I sit down at the curb, reveling in the fact that I’m off my feet for the first time in hours. They actually throb. I close my eyes and rest my chin on my knees, my eyes closed for just one second.

  “Rough day?”

  I look up at him to see him leaning against my car, his arms crossed in a way that makes them look much bigger than they did when he walked up. He’s kind of built.

  “Yeah. Just a long one, really.”

  “Guess no one wants hot food on a day like this. They all want sandwiches. But none of ’em want to make them.”

  For a second I wonder how he knows that I make sandwiches, and then I realize my ugly purple polo shirt says SANDWICH ARTIST right on it, like that’s a real occupation or something. Why does it have to say something so stupid?

  “Yeah. I only have to do this gig for another week and then once school starts, I’m off the hook.” I wipe some bread crumbs off my polo shirt and try not to wince at the fact that I have a big stripe of bright yellow mustard down the front.

  “Sweet.”

  “Uh-huh.” I wish I had something intelligent to say, something to show him I’m not just some idiot who leaves her lights on all day and accessorizes with mustard, but nothing comes to mind.

  He just keeps leaning against the fender of my car, looking equal parts relaxed and hot. Or maybe it’s just a severe case of knight-in-shining-armor.

  “So, you live around here?” I ask.

  “Yeah. By Larriot Park. You?”

  I nod. “Yeah. On Snob Hill.”

  He laughs. It sounds beautiful. “I didn’t think you guys called it that. I thought it was just us little people.”

  I grin. “Well, my neighbors would probably hate me if they heard me call it that, but I don’t care. They’re all snobs.” I grin at my joke, and he smirks back, and I finally feel like I’ve said something worthy of conversation. “But at least my room has a nice view of the ocean,” I add.