Chapter 10

A Chance Taken

My legs turned to lead as I approached Miley, like the descriptions people give when they're running from something in one of their nightmares. I had experienced this myself a few times, and it was nothing compared to the real life feeling. It was no dream that I was in. It was all too real. And it could easily become far worse than any nightmare.

I came closer to her very slowly, but not nearly slowly enough. I already felt sweat accumulating under my shirt like dew collecting on grass.

My heart pounded so hard that I could hear it beating like a drum. In my stomach, butterflies flew around angrily. My breath came in short, shallow gasps, as if I had just repeated the mile run back in fifth grade all over again.

The hollowness in my chest expanded and contracted rhythmically as various what ifs played through my head. To be honest, I would have preferred it to stay open, if anything. It was like somebody holding a chocolate chip cookie in front of your nose. And I'm not talking about any chocolate chip cookie; this was a chocolate chip cookie that your mom had just pulled fresh from the oven, the chocolate chips melted into it, moist, warm, and mushy so that you can pull it apart with as little effort as raising your finger, steam and that hypnotic scent rising from it in tiny little clouds. Then the hand pulls back the cookie just as you are about to snap at it. You feel the sense of heavy loss, but wait - the hand just brought it back right in front of your nose! This time, you do lunge at it, only for your teeth to hit cold air; the cookie has already been yanked back again. It's maddening. You'd rather it just stayed still, even if it was out of reach, instead of tormenting you by giving you some kind of possibility, only for it to be suddenly gone.

Look at me, I thought with something in between guiltiness and embarrassment. Here I am, about to confess my hidden, raging affections to the only girl I will ever love, and I'm thinking about freshly baked cookies.

Little things that I would normally not pay attention to became obvious to me. The way the bees squirmed around on the flower petals, or how the leaves rustled so gently in the breeze, or the clouds all moving at an inch an hour in the same direction.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe. To simply inhale exhausted me, to exhale brought an unholy ache. My lungs had turned into sandpaper, difficult to stretch and chafing my insides.

And then self-consciousness came. Was my hair messed up? How did I smell? What could I do with my arms other than just letting them hang at my sides like I was some kind of ape?

Miley was close now, only six feet away. With every step towards her that I took, the many physical responses for what I was about to do intensified.

She noticed me coming and turned to me. The nervous symptoms doubled. My heart was no longer beating like any old drum now, it was an ancient war drum. There were no more butterflies in my stomach; they had just turned into crows.

Her eyes seemed to pierce right through me, though they still looked like the calm pools that they always did. Lilly, who had been talking with her, saw me too and paused. In her blue eyes, I saw a surprising amount of eagerness and hope. I guess she had noticed something off about me. Which was an understatement, because I felt like I was about to spontaneously die in seven different ways. Maybe eight.

I reached three feet and stopped.

Miley smiled brightly. The crows flapped their wings a little bit harder.

"Hey, Oliver. What's up?"

Definitely eight.

My throat felt like someone had sealed it with rubber cement. If I tried to talk, I knew that the sound would get stuck in my throat before it finally blew it up.

"Can I talk to you for a second?"

Whoa, I actually said it.

My confidence rejuvenated for the moment, I added, "Alone," with a sideways glance to Lilly.

"Sure," agreed Miley, a slightly confused expression crossing her beautiful face. The nervous feelings swiftly returned.

Then I realized that my feet had grown roots that had firmly fastened themselves to the ground. That was obviously what had happened, because my legs wouldn't move. I strained, no matter how much I didn't want to, until the roots snapped.

Ignoring the impossibly large grin that split Lilly's face when Miley turned her back to her, I took Miley's arm lightly. I wanted the roots to come back and take hold of the ground again, because my legs began to turn into jelly. It took most of my strength, but I managed to walk around the corner of the school building so that nobody would see us.

Once we were out of sight, Miley turned to me. "So, Oliver, what did you want to say?"

A sudden wave of suspicion rolled across my mind. I put a finger over my mouth to Miley, then slowly walked over to the corner, making sure not to make even the slightest sound.

When I was a foot away, I sprang out from the side of the building. I was greeted with a yelp as Lilly jumped backwards.

"Leave," I commanded. If I was going to tell Miley, then I was going to do it without any imperfections. Lilly eavesdropping on us would definitely qualify as an imperfection.

Lilly clearly hadn't stopped smiling since I asked to talk to Miley, and she didn't stop when I told her to go away. She turned around to go, stopped, and turned back to me again. To my surprise, she put her hand on my shoulder.

"Good luck," she said completely seriously, though the smile didn't fade from her face at all, and I felt my anger disappear. Lilly turned around again and, to the ruin of her sincere effect, hopped excitedly away.

I retreated around the corner again.

"Good luck?" said Miley, her brow furrowed with incomprehension. "Good luck with what?"

The crows turned into eagles.

How was I going to tell her? I had to get it across somehow, but I couldn't just come right out and say it. Words tumbled around in my head, none of which helped at all.

"Good luck with what I'm about to do," I told her to gain time.

I just had to say it. That was all there was to it. Easy.

"What are you about to do?"

Unfortunately, I had a stomach full of angry birds of prey that were telling me otherwise.

"I need to tell you something," I finally choked out.

The eagles responded by tying my stomach in a tight knot. Now it not only hurt from the knot, but by the fact that the twenty eagles were still inside of it.

"What do you need to tell me?"

This was it. If I finally confessed to her now, I would never be able to go back. Not even with a Time Machine, because after right now, she would always know. If I went back with a Time Machine to change it, she would still find out one way or another. Once I told her, it would be absolutely irreversible. There could be no turning back.

And the fact that the eagles were playing football and that my heart was trying to tear out of my chest like an Alien wasn't making it any easier.

"Miley, I love you."

Wait, did I say that? It must have been me, because the eagles abruptly froze and Miley looked at me with an expression of pure shock.

I didn't know how long the silence lasted. Whether it was several seconds or several hours, it was the most uncertain, uncomfortable moment in my entire life. I was given no clues whatsoever to what would happen next, and what happened next would, for better or worse, change my life. It felt like I was standing on one foot over the edge of a cliff, trying to regain my balance.

Miley decided to break the silence.

"What did you say?" Her tone and face were unfathomable. It was a simple question.

I gulped and took a deep breath.

"I love you, Miley. There's no other way to put it. It's not a crush, and it's not about how you look. It's love."

Miley looked speechless. Her mouth opened a few times as if to talk, then shut. When she wasn't trying to say something, her lip trembled. All the while, I was still balanced precariously on the edge of the cliff.

I decided to talk some more, because Miley clearly wasn't going to anytime soon.

"I know that it's love. A silly little crush could never cause me so much pain. I'm constantly carrying around a sickly hollowness inside of me that is only filled even partially whenever I'm around you. Whenever you smile, it shrinks. Whenever you laugh, it shrinks again. Whenever you hug me, it shrinks even more. But whenever you call me your friend, it grows, because I don't want to just be your friend. I want to be more to you than that, and I want you to be more to me than that. I love you more than anyone or anything in the entire world. ...I wanted you to know that."

Cheesy? Yes.

An exaggeration? No.

Over the top? Probably, but anything less would have been a lie.

To my surprise, I felt... better. Not good, as the eagles had recovered from their stupor, but better; the eagles were now playing basketball. It was like holding your breath for one straight minute, then letting it out. It was a sense of relief.

But if Miley didn't love me back, then I would know what it would feel like to suffocate.

If possible, Miley looked even more shocked than before. Her mouth wasn't even closing at all at that point. Even when it wasn't trying to form words, it still stayed ajar. Little, almost inaudible squeaky noises were coming out of her throat. She was getting much closer to talking. Personally, I didn't think I could say another word without my tongue dislodging itself from my mouth and wriggling away like an earthworm.

At last, Miley spoke.

"Oliver... I... I'm so sorry..."

All relief left me.

I lost my balance and fell off the cliff.

I couldn't breathe.

And above of all, the hole opened wider than I ever thought possible.

This was what it felt like. I had imagined this scene a thousand times, in a thousand different ways. Some ended happily. Others made me clench my fists so hard that my hands got cramps. But my hands and my mood always recovered. The emptiness always faded. It sometimes took a few hours, but it did.

I knew immediately, though, that I would never get over this. The rest of my life would be only an empty void, constantly nagging me about what could have been, but didn't, because that was how real life worked. That I wasn't good enough for her, that I never was, and I knew it, but my own selfish impulse made in desire for something more meaningful had ruined everything. Miley and I would lose contact, no matter how much I didn't want that to happen. Then, alone and without any further use to the world, I would die alone.

And nobody, especially not Miley, would even give a second thought.

"I'm sorry I've been hurting you this whole time. If I'd just known that you felt the same way, I would have said something."

Huh?

"Huh?" said the Alien that had taken the place of my heart.

"Huh?" said the eagles.

"Huh?" said the hollowness, using the hole as a mouth.

Wait, did I just say that out loud? I must have, because Miley gave me a startled look.

She soon regained her composure. "Oliver, nobody could have captured the way I feel about you better than how you just told me. I... I love you too."

At that point, it wouldn't have surprised me in the least if a pterodactyl flew out of the sky and dropped a TV in front of us that automatically turned to the news to show Pikachu sitting at a desk and reporting in Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice that a special squad of Smurf commandoes had just assassinated President Bush with a toothpick.

"You do?" It was all I could think of. Those Smurfs had just injected an anesthetic into my brain.

She gave a weak smile. Her face began to get closer.

Under normal circumstances, I would have been forcefully reminded of the earlier incident at PE. But then again, these were hardly normal circumstances. As such, I couldn't remember PE. I couldn't think at all.

It was only then that I realized that I was leaning forward, straight towards her.

And so was she.

Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Miley's hair waved about in the breeze as slowly as a truck moving through a wall of thick mud.

The Alien was getting angry now. From the inside, it thrust itself forward again and again in substitution of what was supposed to be a normal heartbeat. It was a wonder that my ribs hadn't already been forced outward.

Miley was close, only inches away. As I stared, her beautiful blue eyes, oh so gradually, closed. I followed her example like a preprogrammed machine, without thought or reason. My last image of her was fuzzy and distorted as my eyelashes covered my field of vision before everything went black. I felt my lips part very slightly of their own accord, in preparation of what I knew would happen next.

Our lips met.

A spark ignited when they touched, as though one of us had been dragging our feet across a carpeted floor while wearing socks. But the electric shock didn't immediately leave. It stayed, flowing freely through our pairs of lips in a perpetual circuit, energizing me like I had never known.

Everything else vanished. Whether it was the school building, Lilly's crossed fingers on the other side of it, or time itself, the only things existing were Miley and I.

And the emptiness trembled, shriveled up, and died, leaving behind only a blissfully warm feeling of relief that never really left me.

I presently became aware that our hands had both traveled to each other's sides. I reached up with one hand and began to run it through Miley brown hair. It was so smooth. My hand slipped through it as easily as if it were thin air.

Our bodies were pressed against each other. Not tightly or urgently, but just enough to make shivers run down my spine.

Her mouth tasted like nothing I had ever encountered before. Neither the greasiest piece of pizza nor the lips of any of the other girls I had kissed had ever tasted so good. Okay, so I had never kissed anybody else besides Becca anyway, but she was a bite of celery compared to this buffet.

A feeling of extreme discomfort was beginning to grow at the base of my throat. I tried to ignore it, but it kept on building up until it reached the point of becoming unendurable. I was beginning to panic and was about to interrupt the kiss to do something when I realized that I had forgotten to breathe. I inhaled sharply and let my lungs fill up.

So you can imagine my surprise when I felt the tip of Miley's tongue lightly tap my lower lip. It wasn't until I thoroughly replayed this scene through my mind later that I figured out that Miley must have thought that me breathing in like that was an expression of pleasure.

At that point in time, however, all thought coming in and going out of my mind had been halted, and before I knew it, I had opened my mouth.

And after I did that... well, let's just say that the front of my pants became very tight and her mouth suddenly tasted twice as good.

If I had imagined telling Miley how I felt a thousand times, then I had imagined kissing her several million times. Sometimes I had purposely constructed whole elaborate scenes while I was lying in bed, waiting for sleep to overtake me. More often, the picture of us kissing popped into my head for no reason at all, then abruptly ended. Then, of course, there were all the dreams.

I liked those little products of my imagination. They... entertained me. Quite a lot, as you can imagine. They certainly helped pass the time, at the very least.

But this...

This surpassed all of my other fantasies combined. No question, no contest. Not even my darkest, most R-rated dreams so much as compared to this. And, I admit, there had been more than a few of those.

And so, after an eternity that didn't last long enough, we both slowly withdrew our faces, sucking each others lips lightly before they pulled apart.

Miley gave me the warmest smile I had ever seen.

"I do."

And from the deepest depths of my heart came the warmest smile I ever gave. And to think that prior to now, I had known for certain that I would never smile again.

To my alarm, Miley's smile suddenly vanished, replaced by a look of concern.

"You're crying," she stated matter-of-factly.

I cocked my head in confusion, touching the corner of my eye before I looked down at my fingertip unemotionally. A tiny dome of clear liquid sat on it contently. A tear.

So I had been crying. How about that.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

I smiled again as I wiped the tears from my face and shook my head.

"How could anything possibly be wrong?"

Miley smiled back.

Her face was still very flushed from that kiss. Then again, I could have probably made Superman's cape pretty jealous at that moment.

We both just stood there, smiling at each other, for what seemed like an hour of a perfect moment. We didn't say a word; words were unnecessary.

When Ms. Duke's whistle suddenly pierced the air, I almost jumped out of my skin. It was time to go in. I checked my watch. True enough, there was only one minute until we were dismissed to 6th Period. How had time kept going on? It had disappeared during the kiss. It must have.

I mentally shrugged. If time wanted to keep going, then I wasn't going to get upset about it.

Miley and I finally came back from behind the corner of the school building. It seemed like so long ago since I had gone behind it. So much had happened in what turned out to be such a short amount of time. Anything, no matter the size, can happen at any moment.

My legs carried me towards the door back into the school. I was in a daze, not unlike the one I had been in after PE.

I saw Lilly as if she was on a mildly interesting TV show that I was only diverting a small fraction of my attention to. She must have, once again, seen something different about me even though I was still about twenty feet away, because she was doing twice as many backflips and somersaults as she had when she had been at cheerleader tryouts, all while producing a long series of very loud and jubilant noises interrupted only with an occasional, "YES!"

Ms. Duke looked slightly frightened.

At the sight of Lilly, hyperactive or not, some actual thoughts, miraculously, entered my brain. I owed her. Bigtime. I owed her my life. I had no idea what I could possibly do to repay her, but I knew that I would come up with something. And when I did, I wouldn't rest until it had been accomplished.

Everything looked like a dream as I entered the school. The classroom was mostly empty and there were many moving figures outside. The bell must have already rung.

I felt no physical strain as I picked up my books and went into the hallway, Miley close behind. We turned to each other, and the whole hall seemed to light up like a Christmas tree when she smiled. I smiled back. Wordlessly, we turned away from each other and to our lockers.

There was no thought involved in making my way through the crowd of noisy students to my locker. None of them mattered. Not now. They were just objects. Nothing existed to me except the incredible feeling of fulfillment.

Complete fulfillment.

My hands switched my Science book for my backpack and a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird and shut my locker.

I sat down when I entered Mr. Corelli's class and just waited, head placed on the desk, for the bell to ring. Not an ounce of boredom entered my mind as I was completely still for four minutes, doing absolutely nothing.

The bell rang, and the classroom door shut.

"To those of you who aren't in my Focus Reading class, happy Valentine's Day." Mr. Corelli's voice seemed so far away.

I looked up. He was walking around the room and placing a Sweet Heart on each desk as he passed it.

Miley stole a glance at me. We both smiled again. It was like looking in a mirror.

There was a small tap as a purple Sweet Heart touched the surface of my desk. I looked down at it.

XOXO.

For what seemed like the millionth time in the last ten minutes, a smile spread across my face.

Well, one can only hope.

Like so many other things I had done that day, I didn't think as I popped the Sweet Heart into my mouth.

And it tasted great.

It's over! A month and a half after I started, it's finally over!

I've had so much fun writing this story. The hours and hours of my time sacrificed just to make this story are all entirely worth it. I would like to give a special thanks to everybody who ever reviewed this story for keeping me going on: SingingHeartOut 7, apparox148, iheartdisney128, mmvok, MileyXOXOliver, Person who loves ur writing, elveswithattitude, Boeremeisie, Sidhe-Anomaly, DlnSprFan101, Beautiful Mess x3, icechains55, Kerbie Roman, weeziebomb, .forever, Perfectionista, Chaotic-obsession4eva, QueenOfBlah, casey, , argentinipinki, risingstar9328, .ObsessionXx, MangoFlavored x3,and moliverlover, in that order.

Also, I have good news for those of you who have enjoyed this story: I'm planning a sequel, as I hinted slightly at above with Oliver saying that he'd find a way how to repay Lilly. So he and Miley will try to hook up Lilly and Jackson. Sound interesting? If you do, then let me know, because I will only write the sequel if I get ten requests. Also, if you have any ideas for the title, then tell me that also, because I have no clue as of yet.

So please review (it's your last chance to tell me what you thought, after all), and goodbye for now!