So Totally by Gwen Hayes Page B

if I shut you out now than wait until…until whenever.” Back to the window he went, leaning against the sill.
    Silence consumed the room, magnifying the thoughts yet unsaid. I’d done everything wrong. I wasn’t brave or honorable. If I were, I wouldn’t have dragged the people I care about into the quicksand that was my life. Nate was the smart one. He’d thrown me a life preserver by cutting things off, and instead I discarded it so I could worry about drowning.
    “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. He turned back to look at me. He wasn’t crying, but his eyes were rimmed in angry red. My tears, on the other hand, rolled freely down my cheeks. “I’m so self-absorbed I didn’t stop and think about what I was doing to you or even to Heather. I didn’t realize that you felt…the way you feel. The other girls told me you’d never really had girlfriends, but you’d had a lot of girls. A serial dater. I assumed you’d break my heart because you would never care about me the way I care about you. It never occurred to me that I could hurt you. I never wanted that.” I wiped my nose on my sleeve. Heather’s sleeve. Wearing borrowed clothes and living on borrowed time.
    “I’m not a serial dater. I just never got close enough to anyone to have a relationship.”
    “You got close enough to do other things,” I said. He raised his eyebrows. I guess he didn’t know that word got around. “You have a reputation. You don’t exactly love them and leave them, because you keep them around as friends…but there are stories. Apparently you really know what you’re doing. And yes, I am jealous. But that doesn’t really matter now anyway, does it?”
    “I like that you’re jealous.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Let’s focus. I’m about to be added to the stockpile of friends.” And I needed to get out of there and blow my nose and eat a ginormous amount of ice cream.
    “I don’t think so.”
    My heart plummeted to the arch of my foot. We couldn’t even be friends? God, this day totally sucked.
    “Carrington, I don’t want to be your friend.”
    “Right.” He was absolutely right. Clean break equals better for everyone. I stood up. “I need to go now.”
    “Will you never let me finish what I’m saying?” He grabbed my arm. Mr. Intense had returned. “I want to be more than friends. I want you to be my girlfriend.”
    If they made a horror movie about my life, it would be called I Was a Teenage Yo-Yo.
    “Didn’t we just decide that this was a mistake?” I asked.
    “Maybe it’s not.” My blank stare must have prompted him to keep going. “I kind of think that I’d rather take the pain later and get the good stuff now.”
    My eyes widened.
    He smiled and stood next to me. “Er…that came out badly. By good stuff, I just meant you and me together stuff…not…”
    “Right. But what if I disappear tomorrow…next month…ten years from now?”
    “What if I get hit by bus next Tuesday?”
    “You should stick to dating nice girls like Macaroni and Sleaze.” I gestured to the direction Joy had left in. “The only way we can end is badly.”
    He reached for my hand. “I have to believe that we aren’t just some happy accident. I dreamed of you.” He put my hand on his heart. “Can we work it out somehow?”
    How do you say no to a boy with eyelashes long enough to paint a house?
    “We need ground rules,” I said.
    “Ground rules?”
    I nodded. “If…when…it happens. That’s it. I don’t want you hanging out watching me at recess—and I won’t interfere with the grown-up life you have either.” Because…ewww on both counts.
    “All right.” He turned on his heel and, with my hand still in his, crossed the room, dragging me with him. His sketch pad was on the counter, next to my unopened Coke. He flipped through it, finding the page with me on it and tearing it out. “You should keep this.”
    I was a little bummed that he didn’t want it.
    He folded it and put it in my hand. “Can