I’ve been cleaning my room for an hour.
I want it to be perfect.
I shouldn’t care, probably. This afternoon, for all intents and purposes, Seeley will carve out my heart and feed it to me, while having basically zero idea that she’s doing it. I mean, she’s going to know she’s gutting me as a friend, but she won’t know that she’s also gutting me as a girl I’d like to spend a lot more time kissing and snuggling and generally staring at with goo-goo eyes.
Anyway, deep breath and all.
I flick my eyes to the mirror, staring at the five billion or so pictures of us shoved between the frame and the shiny glass beneath it. And because I’m a total glutton for punishment, I sorta wonder when exactly I fell in love with her. Because the whole thing feels so inevitable and eternal or something, now that I’ve gone ahead and wrecked it before it even got off the ground.
To be honest, it sorta feels like maybe I was born loving her, like “property of Seeley Jendron” was stamped across the bottom of my heart this whole time—in a tiny hidden place where I couldn’t read it without the right perspective. I wonder what name’s written on hers. Probably not mine, at least not anymore.
I mean, thinking back, I broke up with Malia last year because she wanted me to hang out with Seeley less. And I was always jealous when Seeley was with Sara and was all distracted and wrapped up in that. And I don’t really think there’s been like a single day since we met that we haven’t at least talked or texted. So, I mean—
No, I have to stop. I can’t think about this anymore. Because like five minutes after I realized that I was absolutely, totally in love with Seeley, it hit me that telling her that would probably be the worst thing I could ever do to her. And I’ve done some pretty terrible stuff to her already this summer.
I’ve sort of been obsessing over that all afternoon, running through everything that’s happened. And wow, okay, I don’t think I’m a terrible person, but I’ve definitely been acting like it. I’ve been selfish, the most selfish person in the world probably, I’ve been a liar, and I’ve been an all-around shitty friend. Which means, as much as I want to run up and tell her I’m in love with her, I know I shouldn’t. There’s no way she feels the same way, so telling the truth would just be one more selfish thing. It would ruin everything even more.
There’s that word again: everything. I hate that word.
I wipe at my eyes—I’m not crying, you’re crying, or whatever—and go back to cleaning my room. When she shows up here this afternoon, I’m going to apologize until her ears bleed, and I’m gonna find a way to make it up to her. Like, sure, I fell in love, but that’s on me. I didn’t think it would ever happen, I didn’t at all.
I Just Didn’t Think: An Autobiography by Elouise May Parker, and all that.
No, what Seeley deserves—what I hope she still wants—is a real best friend, someone that puts her first and doesn’t drag her into schemes all the time. And I think I can be that. God, I want to be that.
So I sit in my chair, and I twist it from side to side, and I think of all the very perfect and not at all weird or revealing things that I am going to say to get our friendship back on track. And, maybe once or twice, I think about what it would be like to look at her and say, “I love you,” and imagine what it would feel like if she said it back. But mostly the other stuff, the friendship stuff, because that’s what matters the most, and I almost sort of have it figured out, the perfect thing to say . . .
. . . when I realize that it’s getting dark, and she’s not coming.