by Ashley Love
I leave the room, but not before I see the wounded look on Blake's face. But I close the door on it, too confused to do anything else. Too confused by everything I feel, and everything he's doing. I light up a cigarette on my way to the coffee shop, and I text Cadence and Emma, asking them where they are, begging them to come meet me.
Only there's no consolatory party this time. When I explain what happened this time, Emma slaps my arm hard enough that it stings.
"You're an asshole," she says. "You better not have actually said that to him."
I gape at her for it. "What? But—"
"No," Emma says. "You know, through this entire thing you've been acting like Blake's the only one who's done wrong. And I'm not saying he hasn't, because he has. You've both fucked with each other a lot, and you've both done and said some pretty shitty things. But you don't own up to it, Aubrey. You act like you're a victim, and Blake's here to make your life hell when, in reality, you've done as much as him."
Both me and Cadence look at her in surprise. My mouth feels dry, and I'm possibly going to throw up the sandwich I'd had for lunch. "Em—"
"Don't," she says, and I have no idea where this side of her came from. I didn't know Emma was capable of looking like that, fierce and angry, lips a thin, tight line. And I definitely didn't think Emma would ever get like that with me. "You know what you both need to do? Before anything? You need to fucking apologize to each other."
And with that she stomps away from the bench we were all sitting at, heading in the direction of our dorm. I'm too numb to call after her, or follow her. I feel sick and cold and tears are prickling my eyes. But I deserve it, don't I?
Emma's right, I know it. I've been a complete ass to Blake this whole time. And I've been aware of it, I have, but...maybe I do need to own up to it. And maybe, in some weird, confusing way, that's what Blake's trying to do. Maybe he's trying to apologize for all of this shit that's happened.
"I need to go," I mutter. "Sorry, Cadence."
Cadence looks up from her phone. "You really are a bitch, you know."
"Yeah."
"Blake's with Lucas. You won't find him in the room."
"How do you know that?" I ask.
Cadence holds up the phone. "It's this wonderful new invention called texting. Lucas told me that Blake just got to his room, and apparently he's cursing your name to the heavens, babe. He's pissed at you."
I chew my lip. The thing is, I know myself too well to think that I'll still be willing to apologize later. Know that I'll overthink it, come up with excuses not to. Know that I'll chicken out and run from this all like I've been trying to do for weeks now, ever since that night with the paint when I realized that I couldn't keep emotions out of it anymore.
"Can you...can you ask him to send Blake to the room?" I ask, soft and hesitant, not fully sure, even now, that I want to do this.
Cadence's fingers blur over the keys, and a second later her phone beeps with a new message.
"Lucas says he likes you but right now you can go fuck yourself," she relays. She types out another message. "Now Lucas says that Blake says that he doesn't want to talk to you." More typing. "Okay, now Lucas says that he's trying to convince Blake, but Blake is ignoring him. And he also—"
I snatch the phone from her hand and press Call. I wait a beat, as it rings, wondering if Lucas will even answer, but he picks up seconds later with a snapped, "Blake doesn't want to talk to her, okay?"
I suck in a breath. "Can you put Blake on?"
Silence. Then, "I'm not sure if that's a good idea. He doesn't want to talk to you, and I don't blame him."
I swallow my pride. "Please."
There's rustling on the other end, a heated conversation that I can't hear because Lucas must be covering the receiver. Silence falls for a moment, before more rustling and finally Blake's voice, thick and quiet, "What do you want?"
"Can you meet me in the room?" I ask. "To talk. Please."
"Talk about what? What's there to talk about, at this point, Aubrey? Really? Because I don't see any reason why I should anymore, and I don't see any reason why you'd even want to."
"Please," I say again. That's it, nothing else.
"Okay," he sighs. "I'll be there in a minute."
"And if you're an ass to him again, Aubrey, I swear I'll—" The call ends, cutting off Lucas in the background. I hand the phone back to Cadence.
"He's meeting you, then?" she questions.
I nod. "He said he would, anyway. He might not. I wouldn't blame him if he didn't."
Cadence stands up, resting her hand on my shoulder. "You're welcome to stay at ours if things go bad, okay? Even if Emma yelled at you, we're here for you."
"Yeah, I know," I reply. "Thanks."
Cadence waves me off. "Anytime. Now I'm gonna go get some pizza. Your relationship drama is exhausting."
The walk to my dorm is far shorter than I had hoped it would be. My hands may be shaking, just a bit, as I pull open the door to our floor. And I get halfway down the hall to our room before panic sets in. What if Blake doesn't want to hear me out? What if he just yells at me instead? Or, what if I can't think of the right words to say? What if it all comes out as a jumbled mess and I only make things worse?
Fuck it. I push open the door anyway. And Blake's not there.
I chew my lip, looking around, as if he could be hiding somewhere. But unless he's under the beds, he's not. So I sit down at the desk, turned to face the door, and I wait. And the longer I wait, the more nervous I get, until I'm ready to jump out of the chair and leave the room.
Blake comes in before I can. He's wearing a thick hoodie and sweatpants, and I'm pretty sure half of that belongs to Lucas. He softly shuts the door behind himself and leans against it, head ducked. He looks...
He looks hurt, is what he looks. Like what I said to him earlier had truly, deeply wounded him. So I suck it up, close my eyes, and say a sincere, genuine, "I'm sorry."
When I open my eyes, Blake's still got his head ducked, but his gaze meets mine. His brown eyes are narrowed and distrustful. "For what, exactly?"
I squirm. "Um. A lot of things?"
Blake nods. "You should be."
"Yeah, but so should you," I point out.
Blake nods again, pushing away from the wall. His feet drag across the floor on the way to his bed, like he's too tired to fully lift them. He falls onto it, leaning forward to put his head in his hands. I don't bother him, figuring he needs a moment and let him have it. When he finally lifts his head again, he says, "I was trying to win you over. With the chocolates, and the..." He waves a hand.
"Song lyrics," I suppy. Once more, Blake silently nods his confirmation. "I thought you were fucking with me, that's why I reacted that way. But Lucas said you weren't, and Emma yelled at me, and—"
"Emma yelled at you?" Blake looks completely shocked.
"Right? I didn't see it coming, either." I slide a hand through my hair. "She told me I should apologize, too."
Blake stiffens, expression going blank. "So that's why you're doing it, then," he says coldly. "Because Emma told you to."
I'm out of the chair in seconds. I kneel in front of him, hands hesitantly resting on his thighs, in case he doesn't want to be touched. But Blake doesn't push me away, so I take that as encouragement.
"That's not why I'm apologizing," I say lowly. "I mean, that's why I'm doing it now, but that's...I'm not saying it just because Emma told me I should. I'm saying it because I mean it."
Blake snorts, disbelieving. "Right."
"Blake," I plead.
"What are you sorry for, then?" he asks. He's sitting with his back straight, hands clenched on the bed at his sides, eyes on the wall above my head. "If you mean it, then what are you sorry for? Specifically?"
I chew the inside of my lip. It makes me sick, how many things could fill in the blank here. So, so many options that it's really no wonder Blake hates me. Maybe I was justified in my hatred for Bl
ake, too, but that doesn't make it okay. We'd both fucked up, as Emma said.
"For not thanking you for the chocolates," I decide, going with the last offence first. "And the song lyrics. Even if it was cheesy as hell."
Blake groans. "Can we just pretend that never happened, please? God, that's almost as bad as the Christmas party when I set up the lights and got your present and you never showed up. You make me do a lot of embarrassing things, apparently."
"The lights?" I ask, completely lost.
Blake's face flushes. "I, uh, borrowed a few Christmas lights from the party and hung them up. I thought it'd be romantic."
"And I didn't show up," I state.
"And you didn't show up," Blake repeats. "I felt like an idiot. It...it was definitely one of the lower points of my life. Here I was, ready to spill my heart out to you, and you didn't even show. Like, I could have handled the rejection just fine. I don't expect you to feel things for me just because I feel them for you. But you didn't even come, and I realized afterwards that I was stupid to think that you would."
I can picture it, my eyes going out of focus. Blake setting up lights around the room, nervously jiggling his leg as he waited for me to show up. And then me, sitting in the car, looking down at the message and leaving it for almost an hour, until I was far away from the school and from Blake, before telling him that I'd left. Had he sat there the whole time, waiting for an answer?
"I'm sorry for that, too," I say. "Fuck, Blake, I didn't know."
"It's fine," he assures me. "I'm over it."
I inhale deeply, resting my head on Blake's thigh. "I'm sorry for a lot of other things, too. Like treating you like you're stupid, because you're not. Or looking down on you for getting so into football and working out."
"I'm sorry for making fun of you for actually working hard," he counters. "And for those times that I hit snooze on your alarm so you were late for class."
I lift my head, looking up sharply. "You what?"
Blake chuckles sheepishly. "It was only a handful of times," he defends. "Only because you'd really pissed me off, and your alarm is annoying."
I stand up, pushing at Blake's shoulders. He falls back on the bed, a big, silly grin on his face.
"I can't believe you did that," I say, sounding as scandalized as I feel. How many days did I have to run to class because of him? How many times did I wake up confused, thinking maybe I'd hit the snooze button myself? And all that time, it was Blake. "Prick!"
He reaches out, wrapping a hand around my wrist. He searches my face for a moment, unsure, and then his smile smoothes out again and he tugs me down on top of him. "I'm sorry for that time I hid your glasses for an hour too," he adds.
"You—" I glare at him. Or, I try. It's hard when Blake looks so…blindingly happy, all of a sudden. "Fucker," I say, but it's not harsh at all. "I'm sorry for that time I locked you out of the room for six hours and pretended to be asleep when you forgot your keys."
Blake's eyes widen. "You were awake?!"
"Maybe," I admit. "We really enjoy fucking with each other, huh?"
"Yeah." Blake's voice gets softer, and the smile morphs into a serious look. He rolls us over until I fall off him, landing on my back, legs dangling off the side of his bed. He props himself up over me, and I can't do anything but look up into his eyes, my stomach clenched tightly. "I'm sorry I fell for you. I know that we probably weren't supposed to have feelings, or whatever, not that we ever really discussed it, but...I'm sorry I screwed everything up by falling for you."
Maybe Lucas wasn't wrong, I realize. Because the way Blake looks at me, more than his words, is what makes me believe that maybe it's true. That maybe Blake really does have feelings for me.
"What if I don't want you to be sorry for that?" I whisper. I clear my throat. "Or what if I'm sorry for doing the same thing?"
Blake's eyes drop to my lips for a moment. "I'm sorry for kissing you."
I snort before I can stop myself. "Which time?"
Blake's lips press against my own, and my eyes widen in surprise, for a moment, before I let them fall closed. He kisses me slow and thorough, gently coaxing my mouth open. And then he pulls back, unexpectedly. I push myself up, trying to capture his lips again, but he shakes his head and smiles. "That time."
I groan, grabbing at the front of Blake's shirt to pull him back down. "Can we stop apologizing?" I beg. "Can we move on to the part where we just admit that we don't hate each other anymore?"
Blake raises his eyebrows. "I still hate you," he says. "You get up at insane hours of the morning, and you go to bed earlier than my eighty-year-old grandpa. You hit your keys on the keyboard way too hard. You do that annoying thing where you tap your pen on the desk while you think. You're a neat freak. You—"
"You snore," I say. "And you're a slob. Plus, you watch sports, like, constantly. It's ridiculous."
"Nothing wrong with sports," Blake argues. "And you do that pretentious thing where you correct people when they use 'who' instead of 'whom' even though you do it all the time yourself."
"Once," I say. "I corrected you once. And you never lock the fucking door, even though I've told you a million times—"
"You're naggy." Blake grins, chin tilted defiantly. "You're worse than my mother."
"You always work out when I'm studying."
"You're always studying. And you hog the desk like it's yours, but it's ours."
"You constantly touch my stuff."
"You always flop onto your bed."
"You get pissy on game days."
"You always slam the door."
"So do you!" I say, indignant. "All the time!"
Blake's eyebrows draw together. "I'm running out of things that you do that piss me off." He chews his lip. "You look cute in your glasses."
"You look hot when you're sweaty," I admit.
"I like your hair when you don't brush it after you've showered and it gets all messy."
"I think it's sweet that you let those kids put makeup on you just because it made them happy, even if you looked ridiculous."
"I think it's brilliant that you're not afraid to like what you like. That you don't care if other people think it's dorky or nerdy to like reading or comic books, or spending time in the library."
"I like that you didn't quit the art class, just because you were bad at it. I would've given up, but you never did, no matter how frustrated you got. And I liked your painting. I liked painting with you," I admit.
Blake closes his eyes tightly. "I bought your painting," he confesses.
I freeze. "What?"
Blake nods. "I made Mrs. Kensington bid for me. I gave her the money. I wanted it, but I didn't want you to know because I hadn't told you how I felt yet, and I thought it might scare you off."
"Blake," I breathe. My chest feels tight, and there's a sinking feeling in my stomach, but for once it feels like a good thing. "You paid over a hundred dollars for that!"
All Blake does is shrug, like he doesn't care. "I liked it."
"I like you." Nothing else. Plain and simple. The honest truth.
Blake's free hand tangles in my hair, and he nods slowly while gently tugging his fingers through the strands. "I like you, too. More than like."
"I'm sorry that I screwed up your chance to tell me that sooner," I say, eyes on my own hands, slowly tracing patterns on Blake's forearm, outlining the tattoo there and filling it in with the tips of my fingers.
"I'm sorry that I honestly thought calling this off and seeing someone else would work," Blake says right back. "Because it didn't. Not at all."
I smile faintly up at him. "So we're back to apologizing, then?"
"We have a lot to apologize for."
"That's true," I say. "But I'd rather kiss you instead."
Blake grins, leaning down until his lips are almost touching mine. I sit up the rest of the way, hand resting on the back of his neck. Until Blake kisses me, hands pushing down m
y shoulders so I'm lying flat against the bed, giving him room to crawl on top of me. My hands move up his back as my lips part, and I can feel him smiling into the kiss, can feel myself doing the same.
"Wait." Blake pulls back just an inch, and my gaze moves to his slick pink lips. Why did we stop kissing, exactly? That's a bad idea. We should kiss, like, always. "Does this mean we can't fight with each other anymore? Because I kind of enjoyed the fighting."
"And the angry sex?" I smirk.
"That," Blake says, words whispering against my jaw, "I definitely enjoyed."
I shiver, shifting under him a bit. "I don't think we'd be able to stop fighting with each other even if we wanted to."
"Good." And then Blake writes the word out on my neck with just the tip of his tongue, and goosebumps break out along my skin. "One more thing." I groan at him. "Can we maybe do more than just, um, have sex with each other, though?"
I prop myself up on one hand. "Like what?"
Blake shrugs, not meeting my eyes. "I don't know. Go out, maybe. Kiss without it leading to sex. Date."
"Are you asking me to be your girlfriend?" I tease, because it's easier to joke than to get my hopes up or let Blake know just how giddy those words make me. Ridiculously giddy, actually, and warm. It's embarrassing, but I can't help it.
"Can't you go easy on me just this once?" Blake whines. "Why do I have to ask you?"
I roll my eyes. "Fine. Blake, will you be my boyfriend?"
"No."
I snort out a laugh, slapping at his shoulder. "Asshole."
He leans down so we're almost kissing again. "I do want that, though. I want to be able to hold hands with you. I want to be able to curl up with you on the couch in the common room while we watch my shitty sports shows and you complain the entire time. I want to sit with you in the library and watch you study and distract you until you threaten to kick me out, even though you wouldn't really do it. I want to sleep with you. Not sex, just sleeping." He pauses, taking a shaky breath. "I want it all, Aubrey."
And I've never had that. Never had anyone want that with me. But I want that, too. Want to pull Blake into every part of my life, even if we argue sometimes. Even if we shout at each other and get angry. I want there to be happy moments too, when we're not fighting. When we're just happily wrapped up in each other. I want that.