~ Shaking things up and posting up here this time! Because this chapter got very awkward very fast, and I just wanted to warn you ahead of time. Sometimes, when I don't plan, crazy things happened in my stories. And I'm excited to finish this story up (like four more chapters till the end, people!!) and I needed something to happen . . . so this happened. Thanks in advance for reading, if I haven't scared you away :) ~
Since thinking about Cillian hurt, I tried to think about my father instead. He was already dead. The thought of him couldn’t hurt me anymore. The memories of him had long ago stopped hurting, the realization that he was never coming back turning the sadness to numbness.
It would have been nice, if you just disappeared when you died. If all the memories rotted away with your skin, and no one remembered you. So no one could cry over you anymore.
I was still daydreaming when Ronan hopped up on the rock beside me.
I kept my eyes closed, ignoring him and focusing on the warm sun hitting my back. The sun was warm, everything was beautiful, and I was not going to let Ronan wreck that.
“It is nice?” he said awkwardly. I laughed. Talking about the weather. Talking about the weather with a selkie.
“The sun feels good.”
“We are getting married,” he said, even more tensely this time.
“Yeah.”
“Then we should . . .” He waved his hand through the air, trying to find the right words.
“Then you should give me some reasons why I shouldn’t hate you, and they should be damn good reasons.”
I didn’t think that was what he meant to say at all, but Ronan nodded slowly. “Yes. We should be . . .nice.”
“Friends? Is that was you’re trying to say.” His inability to converse in a typical human way was more annoying now.
“Friends. Yes.”
“Well if we’re getting married, I think we’re gonna have to be a lot more than friends.” I finally rolled over to look at him. “We’re supposed to love each other.”
“You do not love me.”
“No. I do not.”
Ronan sighed. “Why do you love the other one? If you love him, why can you not love me?”
“Because it’s different.” Why did I love Cillian? I loved him because he was Cillian. He was the shaggy haired little boy who made Christmas cookies with me, who taught me how to ride a bike, who protected me from monsters, and he grew up to be the boy who crossed a gigantic ocean every summer, just for me. I loved him because of his smile and his scar, and the warmth of his hands. I loved him because I always had, and I didn’t know how to live, if loving Cillian wasn’t part of my life.
“I just do,” I told Ronan.
“But you do not love me.”
“You don’t understand what love is!” I said, finally exasperated. “Just because I love one person one way, that doesn’t mean I can feel the same way about everyone. I love Cillian because I’ve known him all my life. I love him because he’s nice to me. I can’t love you because I don’t know you. I can’t love you because I feel like we’re from different planets. I can’t love you because you don’t understand what love is, and think it’s something you can force on people.”
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The Souls of Drowned People
Teen FictionMoira knows there has to be a reason why she was forced to leave Ireland after her father's drowning, and the secrets her mother keeps aren't calming her curiosity and desire to learn the truth. Her only link to the past is her best friend, Cillian...
