“Promise?”
Giving me a blinding smile, she says, “I promise.” Her fingers gently play with the rogue hair falling on my forehead.
“Good girl.” Then I haul her back into the cavity of my chest.
I gently rub her back, releasing the lingering tension. She sighs into me, snuggling into my chest. “I don’t ever wanna come between you and your friendship with my brother,” she confesses, lightly in the dark.
God! This woman keeps pulling me right to the cliff with nosafety net.
She’s still thinking about others, not caring how their relationship would be affected when he finds out.
Because hewill.
Andie isnotmy dirty secret, and I’ll never keep her as one. And so we’ll tell her brother, but only whenshe’sready. Not a second early.
I pull back and whisper against her lips, “It’s never a choice with you, Andie. I only ever want to be byyourside.”
Then I kiss her soft lips because I can’tnot.
She’s my lifeline. And each of her breaths my oxygen.
Thirty Three
Andie
My days without Noah are filled with both longing and glee.
Longing because I earnestly miss him, and I hate that he had to go away for a week for his games. Even the nightly phone sex isn’t enough to carry me through. That actually makes me miss him even more, knowing that I can see him, but not touch him. That he’s sleeping in a bed that’s not mine.
Glee because I can’t stop replaying his words over andover again.
“It’s never a choice with you, Andie. I only ever want to be by your side.”
I don’t know what exactly that means for us. But I do know that Imeansomething tohim. That’s enough for now.
I stop typing and squeal into my hands for the hundredth time. He may have gone away for a week, but he’s given me enough swoon-worthy material and motivation to finish my manuscript.
Not sure if and when it’ll see the light of day, but I know I want to finish this manuscript. I want to pen down everything the characters are screaming at me, spinning a tale I relate to.
So, for the last few days after school, I’ve been working on it. I stopped believing and writing it altogether when one of my ‘friends’ read a short story I had written.
One day, I accidentally took my journal to college, and when it slipped out of my bag, she picked it up, read it, and scoffed at it—called it a‘silly pipe dream’.
‘It’s not even good,’she said.
After already being called out for my increasing weight, I believed her. I believed that nothing I wrote was worth anything. Thatnothing I wrote would matter.
When you’re told something enough times, you eventually start to accept it as the truth.
I shoved away all my desires and dreams in a box and stuffed it in the deepest trenches of my heart. I didn’t pick up a pen for the longest time.
Then something happened—I met Noah, and suddenly I found myself hoping again.
He didn’t do anything differently. He behaved exactly how he does with everyone else—grunted as a response to almost everything, took care of people around him, and treated me no differently than he would any other person.
It’s his natural way of looking at the world around him and valuing the people in his life that makes a difference. His attention makes you feel like you can be anything you want, and anything you do or say won’t be subjected to ridiculous judgment.
He makes you want to beyourself.