March 17, 2013 – Reflection Day.

March 18, 2013 – Word Prompt: Image.

. . .

Dear Bella,

Thank you for your letter. I've been reading it and rereading it for days, and I feel like there's so much in it that I still haven't really wrapped my mind around. There's no doubt you're in the right profession – your words, even when they make me feel an inch tall, are beautiful.

First and foremost, I'm sorry. Again. Always. I know you're tired of hearing it, and I sort of feel like a broken record, but I am. For what happened, but perhaps even more for how it's made you feel. I'm sorry your first time wasn't special. I'm sorry that my impatience made it impossible for you to share that experience with me. For equal parts selfish and selfless reasons, I'm sorry it wasn't with me, and I always will be.

Here's what they don't tell guys about losing their virginity – and by "they," I mean everyone: the media, the so-called role models, the older guys, the peers – it matters. It matters who, it matters when, it matters where. For guys, there's so much focus placed on losing it that hardly any importance is placed on the details. Nobody talks about the fact that it would mean so much more if you did it with someone whose eyes you wanted to stare into all night long afterward. Someone you wanted to wrap up in your arms and feel your hearts slow together at the same speed. Someone with whom it wouldn't matter that it was embarrassing or uncomfortable or awkward, because you'd be so consumed by the love that everything else would just fade into the background. Someone you'd want to go slowly with, because even though your body might be screaming at you, nothing in the world could matter more than not wanting to hurt her.

Nobody tells guys about that part of it – that those things matter, and that they're worth waiting for.

I've screwed up a lot in my life, Bella, but if I could go back and change just one, it would be that: I would have waited. For you. For us. You were worth waiting for. If I had it to do over again, I'd wait forever. You certainly don't owe me any apologies for not being ready. I let you down, and that's the simple truth of it. I should have waited. I should have been more patient. I should have done a lot of things that I didn't do, and that's on me. Not you. I'm so, so, so sorry. For all of it.

I admit, though, to being relieved that you truly know that I regret what happened with Rosalie. I regretted it immediately, and I've regretted it every day since, and I never realized how much it mattered to me that you genuinely knew that until you acknowledged it. So thank you for that.

And there's a part of me that will always be the eighteen-year-old boy who hurt you. Who was careless with what mattered most to him and lost it as a result. I'll always carry with me more than a little bit of that guilt, that self-disgust, that pain. Part of me will always be the eighteen-year-old who let down the most important person in his life.

And part of me will always be the eighteen-year-old who loves you. No matter what.

I can't bring myself to sign it "your friend," but I don't want to shove the word "love" at her twice in two lines, so I end it with just my name, folding it without rereading it and slipping it into the envelope waiting at my elbow.

. . .

It's been over a month, and it still hurts. But I'm trying to take my father's advice to heart, trying not to wallow in self-pitying misery. I try to live, try to accept the responsibility for my actions like a man, even as I watch Bella for the smallest indication that she might be softening, for the tiniest hint of a thaw.

It doesn't come.

Other things do: the end of baseball season, my acceptance of the scholarship offer from UIC, senior prom. I don't go with a date, because I can't stomach the idea of a night beside a girl who isn't Bella, a night dancing with a girl who isn't Bella, an image like the one that still hangs in my bedroom, but which would feature a girl who isn't Bella. I tag along with my friends, single and trying desperately not to feel like a loser – not because I'm going stag, but because the girl I want isn't with me. The dance itself passes in a blur of bad music, bad food, and bad fashion choices, and when Ben and Mike suggest an ice cream stop on the way home, I agree, if only because they've been good sports about letting me tag along all night.

The moment I step through the glass doors of Ben & Jerry's, my entire body warms despite the chilly interior. Because there, standing and staring at me in pajama pants with ducks on them and a Forks SPCA t-shirt and looking a thousand times more beautiful than any of the girls in fancy dresses I've been surrounded by all night, is Bella. She gazes at me for a minute, eyes unreadable, and a million scenarios race through my mind: me apologizing for the millionth time and her, finally, mercifully, forgiving me; me offering to buy her ice cream and us starting over, like two high schoolers who just met instead of two kids whose lives are so intertwined that we can't find the individual threads; her crying and yelling at me, and me taking it, just grateful for any words she wants to throw at me.

But instead, she turns away and mumbles something to Alice, and they turn and make their way toward the door, Alice's tiny body between Bella's and mine like a laughably small shield.

"Hi, Bella," I try, desperate for her to look at me again, desperate for anything besides this cold, standoffish stranger of a girl, but she replies with a simple "Hey" without even looking at me and then she's gone.

And I finally admit the truth I've been trying to deny for what feels like ages: it's over.

Then graduation comes, and she isn't in the crowd, and the truth is absolute.

I let myself get drunk again, this time because I'm a coward: I need to see her, to talk to her, and I don't have the courage to do it sober. And I learn another life lesson: that there are pains in the world that even the strength of liquor can't numb.

I tell her she's beautiful, and it only makes her look sadder.

My traitorous eyes scan her body, and she hides herself from me with an irritation she never had before.

I tell her I love her, and for the first time ever, she doesn't say it back.

She cries, and yells, and cries some more, and every tear, every sob, every word she lobs at me in that thick, heartbroken voice is like a dagger running me through.

She tells me she hates me, that she'll never forgive me, and I wonder if she can tell that I'm crying, too, as my mother leads me away from her.

And through the windshield, I watch her, not-my Bella, hazy through my own tears, standing with her dad, her shoulders rounded in pain.

And I say goodbye.

. . .