[WesleyStromberg] Our Flower

Fourteen.

Knitting my eyebrows together, I feel all the anger bubbling inside of me. I want to scream and throw things and slap him. He’s loved turning things around on people all his life. He could never take responsibility for something bad that’s happened. Nodding my head, I bite down on my lower lip. “I left you? I left you, Wesley? All the text messages you sent me telling me that you’re glad we’re over and that one text message telling me that we’re done, that was me leaving you?”

He sits up straight, his shoulders broad and tense. “I didn’t send you any text messages. I called you for five days straight but I didn’t text you.” So he’s going with denial. Of course, typical Wesley. I don’t know what I saw in him. He could never take responsibility. I should have known that all this time he thought that it was all my fault.

“You texted me, multiple times, Wesley. And while I told everyone that I wasn’t reading them, I was, and I got the message loud and clear that we were done. So don’t you even try to blame me for any of this! I was in love with you, Wesley. I was fucking head over heels in love with you to the point that I was considering UCLA because it’s a hell of a lot closer to home and you than Cornell. I didn’t leave you. You left me.”

Combing my fingers through my hair, I shake my head, feeling the tears roll down my cheeks. It feels weird to be in a room with him, and I think my heart hurts, but who knows anymore, I don’t. “Wesley, I just want to enjoy Christmas this year.”

I place my hands on either side of my body on the couch and push myself up. I'm done with this conversation. I'm done with him. I'm done with being home.

Everything he just said to me made no sense and I didn’t want to tell him that I was actually considering giving up my dream school just to be close to him. No one knew that. My best friends from high school didn’t know that and my parents sure as heck didn’t know that. It was a spur of the moment thing, I suppose, when he was getting really big on the show. And I thought, maybe I could have both, an education and a boyfriend. That way he could also have both, a career and a girlfriend. An education was an education. It was just a matter of prestige, which I could have gotten over if I had him.

Would I really have given up my acceptance to Cornell? Now that I think about it, probably not, but the fact that I thought about it means that I was seriously in love with him. Giving up a dream to be with someone is the greatest sacrifice someone can make, but it’s also one of the biggest mistakes a person can make. Would I have resented him? It was my own decision and I couldn’t blame him for anything I would have decided, so no. But I would resent myself if the two of us had split up shortly after I sent in my deposit and was all set to go to school in California.

His fingers wrap around my wrist, and I let out an exhausted sigh. This conversation is so long overdue that I don’t even want to entertain it anymore. It’s time to move on. Dakotah Smithson does not need Wesley Stromberg. Not anymore.

“Dakotah, I never sent you any text messages. I knew you were upset. Anything that I would have said over text message wouldn’t have conveyed what I wanted to tell you.” He tugs at my wrist, causing me to stumble backwards, and I curse under my breath. His eyes grow wide, as if he thought that I wouldn’t lose my footing, and he places his hand on my lower back to steady me. “Just, please, Kotah, sit and let me talk.”

Kotah. If only he would stop calling me that. I don’t want him to do that anymore. All the good memories come flooding back with that name.

I shouldn’t sit down. I know that I shouldn’t. All I'm in for is more headaches and confusion and plain heartache. It would be stupid for me to sit and let him talk, but I'm curious. I want to know what he means. If he didn’t send the texts, then who did? And should I really believe that he isn't the one to send the texts? Who does something like that?

Groaning, I sit down next to him, tugging my wrist out of his grasp and clasping my hands together and resting them on my thighs. “Talk, Wesley. Tell me your version of what happened, because I sure as hell didn’t leave you like you seem to think I did.”

“Dakotah, I love you.”

Holding my hand up, I shake my head. “I don’t want to hear that, Wesley. I want to hear your side of what happened two years ago.”

I want to keep my walls up until I figure out what the hell made me build them.