All Of This

Chapter Nine

But I'm Always Wanting You

The next night, Freddy went over to Mackenzie's, yet again, for another night of the usual. He wasn't exactly looking that forward to it, but he didn't really care as he had nothing else to do.

Like before, they sat in Mackenzie's basement, just making out as the movie played and they didn't seem to pay any attention to it. That was basically what their relationship was built on, though, just making out on nights and during lunch.

That was all that they seemed to do, but for Freddy... it was just an act. And as much as people would like to pin it on him that he's a user and that he's using some innocent girl, it wasn't like she wasn't either. She just used Freddy to show off to all her friends and everyone in the school that she could get the most popular guy in school and made out with him quite often to show it. He, however, felt that he was using her for the right reasons- to try and stop his heartache that never seemed to die down.

As they were doing so that night, Freddy didn't even have his mind on what he was doing, because all that he could think about was... Katie. He spent his nights with Mackenzie to try and get rid of his times where he would sit at home and constantly just think about Katie. He did everything in his power to try and make sure that she wasn't on his mind and that he had nothing to do with her. But as much as he tried, the nights that he spent with Mackenzie that were supposed to be getting his mind off of Katie didn't exactly work... he just kept thinking about her even more and wishing that she was the one that he was spending his time with. But... your mind can't change what in your heart, you're really feeling.

As said before, it was just another night with her... but forever and always, through everything in his life no matter what- he would always want Katie. Always.

Seeing as Freddy was a man of secrets, of course no one knew that he still had feelings for Katie like this, or that he would just think about her non-stop, or that he was just with Mackenzie all that time to try and hide his feelings about Katie from the world. He had thought over a million different ways to try and tell her or confront her and came up with a hundred different scenarios of what would happen if he had told her. Never did he expect for himself to still be thinking about it after this long.

"What's wrong Freddy?" Mackenzie asked him, licking her lips after noticing that Freddy was just staring at the ceiling and not moving at all.

He didn't answer.

"Freddy?" she asked.

"Huh?" he said, coming out of his trance that was full of his thoughts, definitely not about what was going on in front of him.

"Never mind..." Mackenzie said, irritated as she pulled herself away from him and sat down on the couch beside him.

Freddy sat up and turned himself around to look at the TV screen. He just sat there, hands in lap, feet on floor, no expression on his face whatsoever.

"What's up with you tonight?" she asked him. He didn't look at her.

"Nothing." He paused. "I think I'm gonna go home. My mom wanted me back early tonight," he said, not waiting for her reply or going to kiss her before he left, "Bye," he said as he just walked away, somewhat in his own world, not paying any attention to the real world around him.

His walk home was just like any other walk home, depressing at the thought that he would have to go through many more nights like that one, but happy that he got through another.

He wrapped his jacket around him tighter as the night breeze was freezing. He continued to walk down his street as the late summer air didn't seem to wrap it's warmth around him on those nights like it used to. As he was walking, he saw someone sitting on the curb of the street with their skateboard. As he got closer, he noticed exactly who it was. 'Why do I always see her everytime I walk home?! Can I not walk home without going through this everytime?!' he thought to himself.

She didn't see him coming, she was just sitting there with her skateboard under her feet as she moved it back and forth.

"Katie?" he said. He didn't know why he said it, but she was gonna notice him someway or another if he walked right behind her on a quiet night like this.

She turned around, staring him in the eye from underneath her black winter hat covering her ears, and some of her eyes. Then, she didn't say anything to his face, she just turned her head around and stared at her feet moving the skateboard which seemed to be quite interesting to her. "Figures..." she said calmly as she let her long black hair hang in front of her face from under her hat.

"What?" he asked, then decidedly, he sat down beside her. He looked at her, and couldn't help but smile. She didn't want to look at him, but she did, not being able to help it.

"Figures that after all this time, you still don't even know what to say..." she said, a crude sound in her voice.

He sat there now staring at the ground, thinking of millions and millions of things to say back to that. That was the time where all of those scenarios and different ways of confronting Katie were supposed to come in... but they just weren't coming to him.

She looked at him, a small tear starting to form in her eye. "Why do you always do that?" she asked him.

He looked up from the ground, "Do what?"

"Come sit down next to me, or bump into me and start everything off like you're about to say something that I've waited for you to say for the last year and then just sit there like you don't even know why you said hi in the first place or like you feel sorry for yourself that you still don't know what to say so you get scared and run off. I mean, you're always so paranoid... always having that look on your face that makes you look like you're afraid... scared of the outside world, like you have to build something around you because you think they can hear your thoughts..." She paused and looked up at the night sky. "I don't know even know you anymore, Jones..." she asked, still looking up at the starry sky. "It's like you've always got something to say but are too afraid to say it. It's like you lose your words..." she said, Freddy still having his head down and staring at the ground. "Why don't you ever know what to say?"

He looked down at his feet as she looked up at the sky, and finally decided to speak, which was something new between them. "I never-" he paused with hesitation on his face as she looked at him, surprised that he was actually going to tell her the truth for once. "I never know what to say becau-" hesitation filled the silence between them. Then, he looked up at her, to see her eyes pleading with him to just once get it out of him. "I never know what to say because everytime I see you, you steal my words away..." he paused as she looked to the ground again and at her skateboard. He looked up at the stars, "You make me speechless, Katie..." he said, a cloud of air around his mouth when he spoke from the cold air. "I mean, I've spent most of my time just thinking about what would happen if I ever spoke to Katie again and I thought of millions of different scenarios and ways to confront you and tell you what I think for once, and everytime I see you with that glow around you I... I lose all words. I lose everything inside of me because all I can think about is... you."

She looked at him. Total shock across her face that Freddy finally told her at least something about how he's feeling. He actually spoke to her for once instead of just running off scared. He would always just try to run away from his troubles instead of just facing them and that was how he became a man of secrets. He kept everything inside of him and bottled up everything that he was feeling. He didn't tell Zack, his best friend, he didn't tell anybody... and obviously not Katie. He was a mystery to everyone since he and Katie had broken up.

"Why are you with her?" she asked him, and he knowing that she was talking about Mackenzie.

He swallowed and looked away from her, and focused his attention again to the ground.

"Freddy?" she asked. He continued to give his attention to the asphalt.

"I never really loved her... or even liked her for that matter," he said, as you could hear the nervousness in his voice. "I-I don't want people to think that I'm using her just to 'get some' like I know people would say. It's just that... I didn't want the spotlight to always be on the fact that me and you would always have something between us and that we'd never get over it at all. I needed something, or should I actually say someone, to hide behind. I couldn't take it everyday seeing you and knowing that we'd never be together again so I tried to like her... god, I tried so hard to get over you Katie... but no matter what... I did I couldn't do it."

He paused, afraid that if he said what he knew was coming up next it would scare her and make things worse between the two. But he knew that she wanted to know what he was feeling and that she wanted him to let everything out and not keep everything hidden and bottled up inside of him. So, he said it. Not really thinking about what she would say back, but just wanting to let her know that that was how he really felt, and that was how he'd always felt. He had always thought that the stupidest thing that he had ever done was let her get away from him when they broke up. He couldn't believe how stupid he thought it was that they had in the first place... over a stupid thing, too. He should've known that she trusted him...

He looked at her, then her noticing that he was looking at her, she turned and looked at him too. He sat there for a while, thinking and thinking it over thousands of times in his head. Then, he couldn't hold it in any longer, so he said it. "I love you, Katie..." he said, as her eyes seemed to be as watery as a rainy April morning. He then got up and just left. Not running like he usually did. He didn't need to run anymore. There was nothing left to run from. He just walked away... but what he didn't know was that he was walking away from something that he had wanted to hear all along.

"I love you, too..." she said, tears falling down her cheeks as she picked up her skateboard and walked up her driveway and into her house, shutting the door behind her.

(A/N: I know I Know! It's short! But I couldn't think of anything else to put into this so I ended it like that! I hope you all liked it... and remember to REVIEW! Hopefully this chapter won't mess up like me last two that didn't go up with any paragraphs! Anywhoo... hopefully another chapter to be coming soon! Toodles.-Brooke)