Did I Mention I Love You?

by Estelle Maskame

  I hover for a moment. I contemplate pulling him back and telling him that Ella misses him, and that there’s a perfect opportunity waiting in New York for him, and that he doesn’t need to stick around here wasting his time with Tiffani. But Rachael yells my name from the top of the stairs, so I have no choice but to follow the sound of her voice, leaving Tyler behind.

  And at the back of my mind, there’s only this: We are never going to be able to be together.

  Upstairs, Tiffani is standing at the door to her room, her arms folded across her chest. To begin with it looks like she’s blocking us from entering, but then I realize she’s waiting for us to hurry up and get inside, so Rachael leads us in.

  Immediately I notice that the room is different from the last time I was here. There are clothes scattered all over the carpet, and I realize that they belong to Tyler.

  Rachael notices too, and, of course, she has something to say about it. “Is your mom seriously letting him stay here?” She kicks a pair of jeans to the side.

  “Yes,” Tiffani snaps. She’s clearly pissed off by this point, given that I’m here standing in her room, not to mention that we’ve just separated her from Tyler. “Now what is it?”

  She glances between the two of us, awaiting an answer, while I stare at Rachael and Rachael stares at her. I’m not planning on doing any talking whatsoever. If I do, like Rachael said, I’ll only mess up. So I wait for her to execute her brilliant plan, growing even more anxious for the truth.

  “I’m not even going to do this subtly; I’m just going to ask you straight up,” Rachael says, and the atmosphere in the room thickens as we all wait for the question I know she’s about to ask. With her purse resting over her arm, she taps her foot impatiently on the carpet and locks eyes with Tiffani. “Are you pregnant?”

  I stare at Rachael. That’s it? That’s her clever plan? It does, however, do a good job of startling Tiffani and taking her by surprise. She’s so flustered by the abrupt question that she just stares at Rachael with wide blue eyes and parted lips. And then she fires her eyes in my direction.

  They’re like ice as she grits her teeth, grinding them together while fury washes over her. She knows I told Rachael. I’m the only person who could have. She takes a while to respond while the rain batters against the window, the sky an ugly gray. “Y-yes,” she manages to stammer.

  I raise my eyebrows and exchange a glance with Rachael, who nods and then directs her eyes back to Tiffani once more. “Okay,” she says as she reaches into her purse and begins to rummage inside, “you shouldn’t have a problem with taking a couple of these then, right?” Just as the words leave her lips, Rachael pulls out two drugstore pregnancy tests, her expression taut as she waves them in the air.

  And it only takes these two items to scare Tiffani to death. She’s staring at them, wide-eyed and blinking furiously, while the corners of her lips twitch as though she’s fighting for words to rise in her throat. I can see her digging her nails into her palms. “No problem,” she squeaks finally, but her voice is so shaky that it becomes obvious that it is a problem.

  “We’ll just sit here and wait,” Rachael informs her with a tight smile as she passes the two small boxes into Tiffani’s trembling hands.

  Tiffani studies the tests, gives Rachael a shaky nod, and then forces her body toward the bathroom. Her steps are slow and unwilling, her breathing fast and uneven. When she reaches the door, she places a hand flat against it and comes to a halt. Quickly, she spins around and there are tears rolling down her cheeks, her face red. “Fine! I’m not!” She screams the words across the room at us and she bursts into tears.

  Rachael throws me a triumphant grin, but I’m in no mood to start grinning back. I feel numb. Tiffani did lie. It sickens me that she had to resort to such a pathetic act, and it worries me even more that she was planning on misleading Tyler. For how long? What was she going to do? Feign a miscarriage and hope the two of them would live happily ever after?

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Tiffani?” Rachael snaps, and I’m thinking the exact same thing. You have to be a pretty terrible and desperate person to do something like this.

  Tiffani’s sobbing, the rain that’s pelting against the window drowning out the sound of her sniffing. Everything feels so loud all of a sudden and the only thing I can think about is Tyler.

  He’s downstairs, totally oblivious, and still believes that he has quite possibly made a huge mistake. None of this is fair on him. He’s stressing out over the whole situation, wondering how he’s going to break the news to Ella and figuring out what’s going to happen with Tiffani. But now he has no reason to stay with her, because there’s nothing holding him to her.

  “I’m telling Tyler,” I splutter. My heart is beating frantically in my chest and I know I need to tell him as soon as possible, and I don’t trust Tiffani enough right now to let her fix her own mistake, so I throw open her bedroom door. “He needs to know.”

  “No!” Tiffani screams, but I storm my way along the hallway before she can stop me, too furious to worry about what she’ll do. She still knows our secret, but right now I’m so zeroed in on Tyler knowing the truth about her that I don’t even care if she tells or not.

  When I jog down the staircase, Tyler’s lying on the couch staring at the TV screen alongside Jake and Dean, watching some football game that I don’t take notice of.

  “Tyler,” I snap loudly so that it’ll grasp his attention, “I need to talk to you. Right now. Kitchen.” I blurt out the words as quickly as I can, and although they come out blunt, Tyler can hear the strain in my voice, and he immediately knows that something’s up.

  He gets to his feet while Dean raises an eyebrow curiously, but I move away and as far into the kitchen as I can go so that neither he nor Jake can hear us. Tyler comes padding across the carpet in his sweats, a puzzled look on his face. He stops directly in front of me, and I quickly steal a glance over his shoulder to ensure Dean has looked away. He has.

  “Tiffani’s not pregnant,” I hiss, my voice hushed but frantic. “She’s faking it so that you’ll get back together with her.”

  He quickly takes a step back, appearing slack-jawed as he blinks at me. “What?”

  “She just admitted it to us!”

  For a long minute, he just stares at the wall as the expression in his eyes shifts, his breathing slow. I wait. I wait to see which expression he’s going to end up with. I keep waiting. He clenches his jaw, his hands curling into fists, his features hardening, and soon he’s livid. He looks like he’s only just stopping himself from punching the wall, so I place a hand on his arm in an effort to comfort him, but then immediately draw it away when I hear footsteps on the staircase.

  Tiffani comes bounding down, tears streaming down her face, her eyes searching the living room. Both Jake and Dean stare at her with parted lips, because the sight of her crying is enough to draw their attention away from the game. She spins around from the living room to the kitchen, and it’s then that Tyler’s eyes meet hers.

  And she must be able to tell by his expression that he’s furious at her, because she cries even harder as she rushes across the room to us, her eyes swollen. “Baby, please, I’m sorry,” she tries, but it just sounds choked and unintelligible. “I’m so, so sorry!”

  She tries to reach out to touch him, but he swiftly angles his body away from her outstretched hand and yells, “You’re a psychopath!” It’s so loud that everyone falls silent.

  Rachael’s standing at the bottom of the staircase, her eyes fixed on the scene, and Dean and Jake have paused the TV and sat up to watch.

  “I hate you!” Tiffani screams, but when I glance back over to her, she’s not looking at Tyler. She’s looking at me. Her eyes are fierce, and I can place a bet on what’s running through her mind right now. And so I think: Here it goes. She’s going to tell them all our secret, because now she has every reason to.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and wait for it, for her voice to yell out the truth and f
or the rest of them to gasp, but no one’s saying anything. When I steal a glance through my half-closed lids, her lips are pressed into a firm line, and she just continues to stare at me. And then, for the briefest of moments, I swear she almost smiles.

  And right then, I realize she’s not going to tell them. At least not now. It’s obvious she’s planning on holding on to our secret for a little while longer.

  And this absolutely terrifies me.

  She bursts into tears again and buries her face in her hands, turning away from us, spinning back around to the staircase, and pushing Rachael out of her way.

  Tyler’s still furious, and he slams his palm flat against the countertop before pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He exhales slowly, his eyes closed. “I’m leaving,” he mutters when he opens them again. “I’m not staying here. She’s insane.”

  I hear a door slam somewhere upstairs, and the five of us just exchange glances, unsure of what we’re supposed to do. Tyler, on the other hand, knows perfectly fine what he’s doing. He’s making his way across the kitchen to grab his car keys from the countertop, his muscles bulging as he does so, and without another word, he storms over to the front door and wrenches it open. The rain finds its way into the house, leaving drops of water on the carpet, just before Tyler disappears through it, slamming it shut behind him.

  Silence. Tyler’s just stormed out, and Tiffani’s upstairs having a mental breakdown, and we’re all just sitting here in her house trying to process what’s just happened.

  “So I take it they’re not together?” Jake says with a slight laugh.

  From across the room, Rachael’s staring at me with wide eyes and raised eyebrows. I don’t think she was expecting it to play out like this; I don’t think she was expecting me to throw myself into the middle of it. She looks like she’s trying to decide whether or not she should go upstairs and check on Tiffani, because she keeps shifting her weight from one foot to the other, moving up and down the stairs while she contemplates it all.

  Somewhere amid the hammering rain, I hear the sound of Tyler’s car revving to life, its engine roaring from the driveway. My conversation with Ella floods my mind, and I quickly try to remember everything she said, everything about New York. I might not know where Tyler’s planning to go right now, but I do know where he should go. Home.

  I hug my hoodie tight around my body and prepare myself for the run, yanking the hood over my hair and making for the door, praying that I catch him before he takes off. Without a word, I pull open the door and the rain blows into my face, freezing my nose. I hear Rachael calling from behind me, asking where the hell I’m going, but I’m too focused on Tyler’s car to pay attention to her.

  Holding on to my hood, I run along the stone path and come to a halt by the driver’s side, and the windows are so tinted and the rain is so heavy that I can barely see him. I rap my knuckles against the glass, squinting as drops of rain roll down my face. It feels just like an October morning in Portland, only heavier.

  Tyler rolls down his window an inch and yells, “Get in!”

  I jog around to the front of the vehicle and quickly slip into the passenger seat, heaving a sigh when I slam the door shut behind me. I’ve only been outside for a matter of twenty seconds, but I’m soaked straight through. I push my hood down and blow wet strands of hair out of my face, and then I turn to Tyler.

  His hair is wet and ruffled as he presses his lips into a firm line and puts the car in drive. “Ready to go?”

  “No, Tyler.” I shake my head. The rain sounds louder in here as it hits the bodywork of the vehicle, and the pitter-patter begins to drum in my ears. “I’m gonna go back inside.”

  He pulls a face as if to say I’ve lost my mind. “Why the hell did you just come out here?”

  “Because,” I say, but it comes out as a pant while I wipe the back of my hand across my face, “I need to talk to you first, so listen. First things first: please don’t ever go back to Tiffani.”

  He snorts, gripping the steering wheel tighter. “Screw Tiffani. She’s unbelievable.”

  I stare at the windshield, watching the water roll down the glass, and for a moment it feels relaxing. I glance back over to him, but his eyes are fixed on the wheel. “Tyler,” I say quietly, trying my hardest to draw his gaze to meet mine, and he slowly does. His cheeks are a little red, which contrasts with the paleness of his lips. “Please go home and talk to your mom. She’s there alone just now, and trust me, she’ll let you back into the house. She has something she needs to tell you, and it’s really, really important.”

  He clenches his jaw then and turns his head away, staring out his side window to the lawn, but it’s blurred through the rain. “I’m not welcome there,” he says stiffly.

  “I’m serious.” I angle my body around to face him, so that I can see his eyes. They’re vibrant yet somehow calm, and I can almost see the gears in his mind shifting as he considers what I’m telling him. “Just hear her out, Tyler. Go home and ask her about New York.”

  His eyebrows draw together as he glances sideways at me. “New York?”

  I exhale before softly saying, “Talk to your mom, Tyler.”

  “Okay.” He lets out a sigh while running a hand through his damp hair, and right then I want to kiss him again.

  I want to swing over onto his lap just like I did weeks ago at the pier, I want to crash my lips into his like I did the first time in his room before we left for Meghan’s birthday party, and I want to feel his touch the exact same way I felt it on Saturday.

  I want to do all of these things, but I can’t bring myself to.

  There’s something in the back of my mind that’s telling me there’s no point. Just because Tyler and Tiffani are clearly not getting back together doesn’t mean that Tyler and I will automatically get into a relationship. We can’t. There’s just no possible way for us to be together, and this hurts me more than anything else. It hurts more than Dad walking out. It hurts more than Alyssa and Holly’s cruel comments.

  It isn’t painful.

  It’s agonizing.

  It’s all I’ve thought about the past few days. I thought about the fact that I’m going home next month. I thought about the fact that our parents would kill us if they ever found out what we’ve been up to. I thought about the fact that this is wrong, and it’s impossible to convince myself otherwise.

  I want to be with Tyler. I do. More than anything else. I want to be with him more than I want to get into the University of Chicago. I want to be with him more than I want to be skinny. I’d do anything for it to happen. But it never will, and so there is absolutely no point in wasting our time.

  Tyler notices my stare. “What?”

  “I would kill to be able to kiss you every day,” I admit quietly. I will myself not to break down. I know putting a stop to us is the best thing to do for us both. It’ll be too hard to keep going. Too complicated. Too wrong.

  “You can,” he tells me, and he’s almost whispering as he turns to face me, his eyes studying me delicately, like he’d snap my body in half if he were to narrow them. “Every single day. I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Me either,” I murmur. I can feel a dryness in my throat as I build up the courage to just get this over with, to just blurt it all out at once in hope that it’ll hurt less. “But that’s the problem, Tyler. We wouldn’t mind. What about everyone else?”

  He takes a moment to process my words and the pained look in my eyes, to understand what I’m trying to tell him. And when he figures it out, I can see the hurt flashing across his face. He has to glance away as he swallows, and when he looks back, his eyebrows are furrowed, his eyes crinkled at the corners. “We can get around everyone else,” he tries, but his voice is weak and he has to pause for a moment while he finds a deeper tone. “We can figure this out. They’ll understand. Maybe not at first, but they will. Seriously. We’ll manage. We’ll…we’ll do it.” He moves his hands as he speaks, as he babbles an endless list
of reassurances at me, but none of them are helpful.

  “Tyler,” I say, and he stops breathing heavily for a moment while he listens. And it’s then that the tears press at my waterlines, because I know exactly what I’m about to tell him next. I fear that hearing myself say it will only make it feel all the more true. “We can’t be together.”

  And it does feel true now. It is the truth.

  Tyler grits his teeth to stop his lips from trembling. He shakes his head slowly, his eyes squeezing shut as he exhales through his nose. He just sits there for a while, not really doing anything, just holding himself together as best he can. While he does, the tears roll down my face and I have to quickly dab at my cheeks to wipe them away. Crying always makes things seem worse than they are.

  But I think this is the worst this situation could possibly be. So I’m allowed to cry. I’m allowed to stare at Tyler’s quivering lips through blurred eyes and I’m allowed to feel like I’m dying inside. I’m allowed to because I am. My entire body is going numb. My chest is tightening. My heart is contracting.

  Tyler finally opens his eyes again. The emerald within them has faded, his pupils are dilated with pain, and he’s inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly. He lifts a hand to his hair and pulls on the ends. “You didn’t just say that,” he says, his voice a feeble whisper.

  His reaction only makes me cry more. The tears well endlessly in my eyes and fall so quickly that I can’t even keep up when trying to catch them. “We just can’t do this,” I croak. It’s beginning to hurt when I talk.

  “Don’t do this. I swear to God. Please, Eden,” he begs suddenly, his voice fast and raspy. It cracks at the end, and he jerks his head toward the window, breathing against the glass. It steams up. “We’ve come this far already. You can’t give up now.”