If You Love Me

36

a v e r y

I ALWAYS FOUND IT INTERESTING HOW THE words and feelings of dismissal can give off different effects. One can be happy to be dismissed, fleeing the class, and embedding themselves into the outside world; one can be hurt to be dismissed, feeling as though they had more to say as they were shut down by other; and one can feel empty by feeling dismissed, feeling as though they have no belonging anywhere. Those words that mimicked goodbye, no matter how they were thrown together, meant the ending of something and ultimately the resumption of another.

The people around me rush towards the door, packing up their belongings and fleeing the classroom as if there was fire beneath their feet and flames in the hairstyles they had perfected this morning. I follow the rush, heading towards the tree that I always found myself making a home underneath in between the classes that it did not make sense to go back to my dorm or library for.

Just as my bag is thrown against the bark and I make contact with the ground, my phone begins to ring in my pocket. I take a hold of it, seeing the image of fiery red hair flash across my screen.

I answer before it reaches the second ring. "Hey Millie."

"Avy, hi," her smile is bright through the phone as she shuffles on her end, never quite being able to remain still for too long. "How are you?"

"I'm okay," I say. "How are you? How's Will?"

"We're both good, missing you like crazy," she responds. "Can I officially start the countdown before Christmas break?"

"I still have a few more weeks and then finals..."

"What I am hearing is a yes," she laughs, and I cannot help but laugh alongside her. "Would it be okay if I had your grandparents join us?"

I have felt more at ease with my grandparents since Thanksgiving; more at ease hearing their names and the possibility of us being in the same room for over a minute. My grandmother has called me twice since then, the first half of both of our conversations spent with her trying to figure out how to use a video call before resorting to the regular phone to the ear kind of call. She talked about my grandfather and asked me how school was, and both times before we hung up, she told she that she loved me. The first time that she said it, I thought that I had heard wrong, but when she said it for a second time, I knew that not only had she said it, but she also meant it.

"That's fine, Millie."

Her smile seems to increase tenfold as she gazes at me through the screen. "Is Dean going to be coming home with you?"

"No." I answer way too quickly.

"Well, did you ask him? Or are you just assuming that he will say no?"

I let out a small sigh. "He has his own family."

"Is that the only reason?" Without me even having to answer, she picks up on my silence being my response. She finally pauses her pacing and takes a seat on the couch. "Sweetheart, what's wrong?"

"Why do you assume that something is wrong?"

"Because up until this very moment, you have had a smile on your face, and I know that I am far too beautiful to be the cause of it wiping away."

I let out a small sigh. "We aren't together anymore."

"Why?"

"We hurt each other."

"Hurt each other how?" She pries. "He didn't—" I know exactly what she is insinuating without her having to finish her sentence.

"No, Millie. He would never do that," her shoulders relax a bit. "I asked him to trust me and he couldn't, and then he said something that really hurt me."

"Can we start with you?" She asks and I nod. "Would you have trusted him had the roles been reversed?"

I know that Dean would never hurt me like, but the truth is that I don't know how I would have reacted if I had heard Mackenzie or some other girl in the background while on the phone with him or seen one of them in his bedroom before the sun had officially even come up.

"I like to think so."

"That's not a yes, Avy," she gives me a small smile. "Did I ever tell you about Will's first girlfriend?"

I shake my head.

"She was a total bitch," Millie has never been one for swearing. She has spent so much time scolding Will and I whenever we let the occasional curse word out, so for her to say that I know that she means it in every sense of the word.

She takes a moment before continuing, her eyes leaving mine before she looks back at me. "She cheated on him a twice, broke his heart a few more times," she pauses. "When I met him, he was completely broken. He never made eye contact with me for more than a minute and could barely hold a conversation. The first couple times that I asked to hang out with him, we would just sit in silence, or he would just simple nod along with whatever I was saying, because despite all the things that his ex-girlfriend did to him, he still cared about her. He spent three years of his life caring about her. When she came back, we had only been seeing each other for a month. He hadn't even told me that he liked me yet. I had to put my trust in him and in the fact that if we were supposed to be together, we would be."

"What did Will do when she came back?"

She smiles to herself. "He told her that idea of them ever getting back together was no longer a possibility as he had met someone who didn't make him question himself, or if love was real. He skipped right over telling me that he liked to me and went straight to confessing that he loved me," she speaks. "Now on to Dean. How did he make you feel when he said those things?"

"Sad." Heartbroken. Awful. And everything in between.

"Has he ever made you feel that way before?"

"No."

"Not even once?"

"Never," I respond. "Dean...he is..." she smiles at my inability to form a concrete thought. "He's my safe space."

"Can I give you a piece of advice, Avy?" She doesn't wait for my response before continuing. "Hurt people hurt people. The brain is genetically wired to always protect oneself that it can shut down completely when things get too much. This can cause us to do things that we don't want to, say things that we don't mean," she continues. "The difficult part is finding out if their brain permanently remains shut off when they are around you."

Dean has been everything that I could have asked for. He has been kind, warm, understanding, and given me something that I thought had long been gone and had no plans of returning: happiness.

Dean has made me the happiest that I ever have been. He made me realize that with my mother at times, I was pretending. That I was pretending to be completely content with it just being her and I; pretending to be completely content with no knowing much of the circumstances surrounding my father's departure and her want for him to stay gone; and pretending to be completely content in art being my sole passion. Dean reminded me what it felt like to not pretend and to just be.

"It's not always shut off."

Her brown eyes are soft when they meet mine. "Good."

"I walked away from him, Mils," I whisper. "I left him."

"So, tell him that you regret it and ask for him back," she is quick to say. "Tell him that having space made you realize just how much you didn't want space."

"You say it like it's easy."

She smiles. "It can be. Love can be easy, Avy."

I nod glance at the time at the top of my screen. I have ten minutes before my next class.

"I have to go."

"No worries," she responds. "Talk soon?"

I nod. "Tell Will that I say hi."

"Will do, sweetheart."