Disclaimer: Still don't own it. Still penniless.
She's in love. He's in denial. How it could have been.
Hesitation – In Love
By Lizka
She's in love, and she can't stop herself.
She tells herself that she doesn't know him; that it's impossible to know him, that she merely loves her idea of him. Since he doesn't say much, it's easy to read into him all the things that she wants him to be. She tells herself that the person she loves doesn't exist, not really. So every night she gets over him, but spirals into the same sick longing when she sees him in the morning.
It's starting to get pathetic.
Rayanne told her to just go for it, but Rayanne also told her to dye her hair bright red. She didn't dye her hair, and she didn't go for it.
Sharon told her to get over him, and fixed her up with a friend of Kyle's. They've been dating for a few months now, and, well, she likes her boyfriend, really she does, but it's not the same.
Her friends got tired of hearing about her obsession, so she stopped talking about it. Instead, she focused on teasing Sharon and Rayanne about the fact that they're friends.
Both still deny it vehemently, which amuses her.
Rickie tells her to take a chance, but Rickie's a hopeless romantic, and she doesn't want to hurt her boyfriend. Or herself.
So she tries to ignore the feel of his fingers on hers when she hands him a pen, and she's almost grateful for Brian Krakow's constant interruptions. It doesn't mean anything, she tells herself, that maybe he leans a little closer than he should, that his foot sometimes brushes hers. It's only in her imagination that he smiles differently when he's with her, and that Cynthia Hargrove looks at her with stark dislike. It's a random series of occurrences of which he has no awareness, which mean nothing to him.
For instance, she knows that he doesn't notice that sometimes, like right now, he would rest a hand in front of hers on the table, their fingertips only slightly touching. It's only half an inch of skin contact but she feels it like an electric shock. He acts like it's nothing.
She settles for being a friend, because he'll never feel the same way she does, and she tries to at least get past her idea of him. She was surprised by how quickly he catches on and how he writes songs as easily as she writes essays. He knows what an adjective is. He's smarter than most people give him credit for. He's bored with his life and doesn't know why.
She knows these things, but they're only bits and pieces, and she'll never learn the whole, but that doesn't stop her from wanting to. She's nauseated because she can't stop.
The tutoring session is over, and they start to gather their things. Somehow, they're always the last people to leave the room.
"Need a ride?" he asks as they step outside.
For a moment, she is tempted - horribly, painfully tempted to get into that car and spend the next ten minutes torturing herself. She tells him instead that her parents are coming to pick her up and that she'll see him tomorrow.
She watches him drive away, never knowing that he's watching her through his rearview mirror.
