A Hundred Ways to Love

by Ellie Wade

  I don’t have to turn around to know who just walked in. I remembered the second I woke today that it was Liam’s seventeenth birthday. But I turn to look anyway.

  My heart plunges in my chest to a place so dark that it’s hard to see straight. I swallow hard and plaster on a face of nonchalance. Liam is more beautiful than he was last year. Seventeen looks good on him, though I personally think he looks more like twenty. He looks years older than he did last summer. He’s taller, wider, and more muscular—no doubt due to the hours he spends working on the ranch.

  His face is still Liam, beautiful in all the ways that make me long for him. He’s the boy next door on steroids, and I suppose he literally is that for me—minus the muscle-enhancing drugs. He’s lived next to Mimi his whole life, and for a time—which passed far too quickly—he was mine.

  Yet how could I keep him when he wasn’t mine to have?

  I have a plan, and though it makes me ache, Liam’s not a part of it. It has to be this way. Every time I want to pretend that it doesn’t, I think of my mom and my dad, and it strengthens my resolve. I have to remind myself that a little bit of him would never be enough.

  I’d want all of him.

  I’d stay for him.

  Give up everything for him.

  I’d turn into my mom for him.

  Liam lifts his chin. “Hey. How are you?” His words speak to indifference, but I hear the slight quiver to his voice.

  “Fine. You?” I press my lips into a line, my endeavor to smile falling short.

  Westley clears his throat. “Yeah, I’m going to grab another beer. You want one, Liam?”

  “Sure. Thanks, man,” Liam answers.

  Emily and Westley retreat toward the other end of the barn, leaving Liam and me alone in an awkward silence.

  He lowers his gaze and kicks the toe of his brown Ariat cowboy boot into the dusty earth, the cadence of the worn leather hitting the ground shrouding the rampant beats of my heart.

  He swallows and brings his hesitant stare to mine. There’s so much there—worry and want mixed with an underlying familiarity. His gaze reflects my own. Part of me wants to throw my arms around him in an embrace because he’s my Liam. But then I have to remind myself that he’s not—at least, not anymore. He can’t be.

  “How’s your summer been?” he asks, keeping the tone of the conversation safe.

  “Fine.” I shrug.

  “Mimi’s good?”

  “Yeah.”

  He eyes my hair. “It looks good on you.”

  I shake my head. “No, it doesn’t. It’s ridiculous.”

  A smile finds Liam’s lips, and the ache in my chest intensifies.

  “You could pull off pretty much anything. Was your mom pissed?”

  “Completely. I’m going to go green next.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Green?”

  I nod.

  He shakes his head. “She’s going to love that. Your dad, too.”

  “My dad pretty much ignores me at this point. The only reactions I get are from my mom.”

  I should ask Liam about his family or himself, but that would lead him to believe that I care, and though I do, I can’t, not when I’m this close to leaving Texas behind.

  “So …” Liam’s thoughts fail him.

  “So …” I repeat.

  Years of my unpredictable behavior bury us in insecurity. Every summer, I play the game of pushing Liam away when my heart wants to hold him close. He’s dealt with unwarranted anger and outbursts from me, evident now in our silence.

  What is there to say?

  Where do we go when all I’ve been pushing for is an end? The apparent closure of our strained relationship is so close that I can feel it. I sense it in Liam’s stolen glances as he memorizes my features—not sure if or when he’ll see them again. There’s a hesitancy in our conversation that’s in line with awkward strangers meeting for the first time, not lifelong friends.

  Liam’s chest rises as he pulls in a deep breath. He stands tall, emitting a calm resolution. My skin prickles, and I feel the confrontation coming.

  “So, what’s the deal for this summer?” he asks, his voice steady. “Are we friends? Are we not? We should probably establish that now, yeah?”

  “Nothing’s changed on my end.” I let out a sigh.

  He stares off as he bites on his bottom lip. He returns his attention back to me. “In that we can’t hang out because it’ll affect your ability to leave? Is that the story you’re still going with?”

  “It’s the only story there is—the truth,” I say.

  Liam scoffs and drags his fingers through his hair on a long exhale. “You’re insane. You know that, right?”

  “Whatever.” I shrug. “I don’t need you to understand.”

  He shoves his hands in his pockets. “I don’t understand because it doesn’t make any fucking sense, Len. Like, none. How does our friendship affect anything in the future? Your logic is idiotic.”

  “Maybe to you it is. Not to me.” I shake my head. “You don’t have to understand it. You just have to accept it for what it is. Our friendship isn’t good for me. That’s it. Not all relationships last forever, Liam. It’s time to let it go.”

  Liam pins me with his stare, full of hurt, and it almost breaks me. “I’m not going to try anymore.”

  “Good. I don’t want you to,” I force out the words.

  If a heart shattering had a sound, it would be one of silence. With these final statements, all of the broken pieces of my heart plummet to the dusty floor where I know they find Liam’s destroyed fragments. Yet we don’t utter a word.

  Fear changes a person. It can rob one of everything if it’s great enough. As much as not having Liam in my life kills me, the alternative—loving him—would be worse. I owe it to myself to keep fighting even though I want to surrender, to be strong when I want to be weak, to push him away when all I want to do is hold him close. I deserve happiness. I can’t give up when I’m so close to breaking free.

  Fear has changed me in ways I’ve yet to understand. The truth of my reality is that I’m very afraid.

  “Well, have a good summer,” Liam says, his tone contradictory to his words.

  “Yeah, you, too,” I whisper.

  I watch Liam walk away. On the other side of the barn, he’s greeted by drunken cheers. Beer is shoved into his hand. He smiles, seemingly unaffected by our conversation, though I know he is anything but.

  He’s surrounded by people while I stand alone, but I’ve always been more comfortable that way.

  Camila and Bella approach him. Bella grabs his arm in flirtation, and I can only watch from a distance. Pride tells me to avert my gaze, but desire holds it steady on Liam. I’ve met these girls before, typical Southern belles who wear the right clothes, look perfect, and carry themselves with an air of superiority. I hate girls like them, though they are exactly who my parents wish I would be.

  Bella, with her short shorts and long legs, takes Liam’s hand and steals him away from the group. The two of them stand in the opposite corner, their conversation intense. They’re locked in a private moment, and I continue to watch like the creeper I am. What does he have in common with her? I am—was his best friend, and I’m clearly nothing like her. Though Liam and I haven’t been close for a couple of years. He could’ve changed.

  She stands up on her tiptoes, and her hands splay across Liam’s chest as she leans toward him. I want to yell at her to stop, but that’s not my place. I have no place where Liam is concerned.

  Don’t, I hope.

  But he does.

  Her lips press against his. He stills for a fraction of a second and then brings his hands to her hips. I see the moment he gives in to the kiss, his movements becoming more confident, secure. My eyes fill with tears as their kiss intensifies, but I don’t let them fall. I won’t cry over William Moore. I pushed him away, so I’d never have to shed a tear over him. I should want him to be with someone else.

  Unable to lo
ok away, I back up until I’m at the large barn door entrance. I step out into the night, ripping myself from the sight of Liam’s lips, his hands, his body wanting her. I lean my back against the rough wooden siding of the barn. Pressing my hands to my chest, I breathe in the hot night air. It’s of little relief to the agony raging within my chest, but I continue to breathe.

  In. Out.

  In. Out.

  The pain will abate. It will. It has to.

  This is what I don’t want. This is exactly why I close myself off.

  Loving Liam would ruin everything, and that’s why my only option is to hate him—and I do. I hate him so much.

  I hate my mom and my dad and their messed up expectations. I hate everything about Texas, especially the self-centered teenage girls who live here and are everything I’m not. I hate that doing the right thing for my future hurts so much.

  My heart is a traitor, but I always knew it had the capability to be one.

  I despise the small fragment of my treacherous heart that wants to ignore everything just to have Liam. It makes me weak.

  I’m so full of hatred, but I hate being weak the most.

  eight

  Leni

  It’s been a couple of weeks since I stood in this kitchen, pushing my hands against Liam’s chest. I haven’t seen him since, though he’s rarely left my mind. It’s frustrating, to say the least. I’m trying to change things up, as Emily suggested. Though I’ve come to realize that change is real damn hard, especially for me. As much as I despise my father, I can’t deny that his stubborn streak is thriving within me.

  I’ve decided that my first step to the new me is focusing less on Liam and more on myself and what I need to be happy. So far, I’m failing in that endeavor. I haven’t had any interaction with Liam, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been obsessed with him nonetheless. I sometimes hear him working in the barn and see him driving his truck out toward the pasture, but I don’t dare let him see me. I’ve pretty much become a twenty-three-year-old recluse. Besides the afternoon I spent with Emily, I’ve ventured out to the city only once to buy a cell phone charger. Mimi shoved a twenty-dollar bill in my hand and insisted I go get one, so I could catch up with all my friends. I know she’s worried about me.

  So, after a week of zero contact with my New York friends, I power up my phone, expecting to see hundreds of notifications and text messages. Okay, maybe not hundreds but at least a few. There are none. Literally not one call, text, or tag. I truly thought I’d have plenty of text messages and social media tags and notifications to reply to. There wasn’t one photo compilation post of me and my friends on Facebook where they tagged me in a heartfelt message of how much they missed me.

  I’ve never felt lower or more lost in my life. I’m a hamster stuck on a wheel of never-ending failure. I left Texas five years ago—angry, lost, and friendless—and I’ve returned just the same. The only thing that’s changed is, I have a college degree to my name, but I’m coming to find out that a piece of paper entitled as a diploma isn’t in fact the key to an amazing future.

  I was so determined to make it, to break free of who my parents wanted me to be, that I became jaded and perpetually stuck. I don’t know how to find myself.

  My phone has been shut off for a few days now since I haven’t paid my bill, and I have no desire to turn it back on. What’s the point? I’m twenty-three, and I have nothing to show for my life. I have an expensive college degree that I can’t use and no true relationships. My entire existence is a facade.

  My days are spent watching daytime soap operas, which, truthfully, I had no idea still existed. Mimi doesn’t have cable, so there is no HGTV or A&E. There are three numbered channels—four if the aluminum foil antenna is pointing directly toward the eastern corner of the living room. I’ve also been helping Mimi can everything from peaches to pickles. We have more jars of tomatoes than I could eat in a lifetime.

  “All right, Mimi. Last box.” I pick up a cardboard box full of glass jars of mushy red tomatoes from the kitchen counter.

  “Just put it in the pantry with the rest, Leni love. Thank you. I’m going to run into town for a few things. Would you like to come with me?”

  “No, go ahead, Mimi. I have stuff to do here.”

  She presses her lips together and squints her eyes but decides against arguing about it. “All righty then. Any requests for dinner?”

  “You know, whatever you make, I’ll love,” I answer.

  “Okay, I’ll be back in a bit.” She lays her apron on the counter, grabs her purse, and heads out.

  Opening the side kitchen door, I cautiously step out into the small addition that Pops put in for Mimi years ago. I’ve always found this part of the house so creepy. The floor is a cold concrete, and the walls are made of stone. It’s dark and musty—the complete opposite of the rest of the farmhouse.

  I begin to remove the jars from the box and place them on the appropriate shelf. It’s like a library of Mason jars. As I pull the last one out of the box, I feel something run across my bare foot. I shriek, yelling out as though I’d just been stabbed, and the glass container slips from my hand and crashes to the floor.

  Globs of tomatoes, water, and shards of glass now cover my foot as I turn to run back into the kitchen. Running past the dining table, I race out to the back porch and start shaking my body, my hands rubbing across my arms and down my body to make sure nothing is on me.

  “Yuck! Yuck! Yuck!” I yell.

  I consider myself pretty tough, but I cannot do mice or rats or whatever it was that just scampered across my foot.

  Gross!

  Liam appears before me, winded. “Are you okay? I heard screaming,” he says quickly before he pulls in a large breath.

  “I’m fine. It was just—nothing.” I nonchalantly wave my hand, the gesture contradictory to my racing heart. I’m not a wimp—or at least, he doesn’t need to know that.

  “Oh my God, Leni. Your foot!”

  My eyes bulge when I look down to see my foot covered in blood. My adrenaline subsides, and I can feel the intense throbbing pain radiating from the top of my foot. The jar must have dropped right on it. In my frantic fight-or-flight reaction—where I clearly chose to run like hell—I didn’t feel it.

  Suddenly, I’m overcome with emotion—pain and sadness. I drop my chin to my chest, and I start to cry. I’m powerless to stop the tears now streaming down my cheeks.

  I’m lifted off the ground as Liam takes me in his arms. I don’t question it. I wrap my arms around his neck and bury my face against his shirt. One of his arms holds me under my knees, and my bloody foot swings as he walks somewhere.

  I melt into him. My tears continue to fall, but now, they’re quickly absorbed by his shirt. He smells amazing—an intoxicating mix of fabric softener, hay, and work. He feels so powerful and strong beneath my touch. I know I hate him for some reason, but right now, I need him.

  He sets me up on a countertop.

  I look around. I’m in a bathroom but not one in the farmhouse. “Where are we?”

  “In the barn,” he answers as he looks through a cupboard.

  “No, we’re not,” I say, confused.

  “I had a bathroom built out here after I bought the property. I spend more time here than I do at home, so it comes in handy.” He pulls a big blue box with a red label that reads First Aid Kit out of the cupboard. “This is what I was looking for,” he says to me with a kind smile. He wets a towel and starts to gently clean my foot. “So, what happened?”

  “I dropped a jar of tomatoes on it.”

  Liam nods. “Must’ve hurt really bad. That was quite a scream.”

  “I actually didn’t feel it hit my foot.”

  He brings his gaze up until he’s looking directly at me, and his intense brown eyes stare at me in question. And, all at once, I don’t care about any of it anymore—my need to seem tough or in control, my commitment to hating him, any of it. It’s all just so stupid, and I’m so tired.

 
; “Well, before I dropped the jar, a man-eating mouse ran across my foot. It was quite terrifying. My adrenaline must have been pumping through me in full force because I didn’t realize I’d hurt my foot until you pointed it out.”

  “Man-eating?” Liam asks with a solemn nod. “Yeah, we’ve had quite the problem with those monstrous rodents around here lately. I saw a barn mouse yesterday, and I barely escaped with my life,” he says seriously.

  I can’t help but laugh. “I’m not a fan of mice.”

  “Evidently.” He grins back.

  He focuses his attention back on my foot. I watch in awe as he takes such great care of me.

  “Well, I don’t think you need stitches. It’s just a surface cut, and it should heal up fine. Sometimes, those surface ones are the biggest bleeders. You already have some bruising starting here though.” He lightly traces his finger across my skin, and it causes me to shiver. After he bandages me all up, he hands me an ice pack. “This will help keep the swelling down.”

  “Thank you, Liam.”

  He raises his arm toward my face, and I hold my breath as I watch his hand get closer. With his thumb, he wipes the stray tears still resting beneath one of my eyes.

  “You’re welcome,” he answers.

  When he pulls his arm back, I’m able to breathe again. “You know, you don’t have to be so nice to me. I don’t deserve it.”

  “Whether or not that’s true, it doesn’t matter. You’re a person who needed help. Of course I was going to help you. It’s called being a good human being. I realize that you have built me up to be this awful person in your head, but I promise you, I’m not him.”

  He smiles, and as always, it says so much. He’s such a good man. Besides Mimi, he’s probably the kindest person I know.

  Why have I always pushed him away?

  Chalk it up to me being an emotional wreck, but I keep talking, “I know you’re good, Liam. It’s me who’s the horrible one.”