Together (Chris Sturniolo)

53

CHRIS' POV

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay."

Lilliana let out a sigh of relief and wiped a couple of tears off her eyes. The two of us walked around the bench and sat on it. I didn't dare to look at her. I didn't even want to be talking to her but I had to. I wasn't the type of person to break a promise. Mad, or not.

"So," Lilliana started as her knee bounced up and down. "What did you see that day?"

I shift uncomfortably next to her as I thought back to that day on the beach. I was so excited to see her that day. I think I was gonna tell her I was in love with her. Not that it matter now anyway.

I cracked a knuckle on my left hand. "You and Hayden. You were smiling at him and he picked you up. You were laughing with him and you looked... Happy."

"It didn't look like a shoot, did it?" I felt Lilliana's gaze on the side of my face and I refused to look her in the eyes. I knew that if I did, I would lose control over the situation.

"No," I said bitterly as I held my eyes from rolling to the back of my head. "It didn't."

"Well it was," Lilliana responded in barely a whisper. I was getting tired of her short answers. I just wanted her to get her words out so we could get to the hard part of all of this.

I finally turned my body towards Lilliana and looked up at her eyes. Just for a second. The usual brightness her brown  eyes carried was gone. It made me sad.

"How am I supposed to believe that?" I sighed and scratched the back of my head as I tried to find a nice way to say what I was going to say. "You were smiling at him with my smile. It looked like a date, Lilliana."

"Chris, I promise that it wasn't your smile. No one is special enough for it." Lilliana reached her hand out to touch my knee, but quickly pulled it away. She looked down at the space between us before continuing. "I'm going to explain everything from the very beginning, okay? I just need you to listen."

"Alright," I said with a nod, even though I was still unsure of the situation. "I'll listen."

Lilliana didn't waste a second. "Hayden and Logan were best friends growing up. He lived across the street from us up until 5th grade when he had to move to LA for his dad's work."

"How come I didn't know him?" I questioned is a accusing tone. I didn't know of a Hayden Summerall until he  was spinning my girl around in circles. "We all would've went to school together but I don't remember him."

"I don't think many people do remember him," Lilliana looked up at me with sorry eyes. "He was extremely sick growing up. In and out of hospitals all the time, so he was just homeschooled."

"Oh," I simply said.

"Yeah, oh." Lilliana sighed and bit her lip. "So anyway, because Logan was really Hayden's only friend, they kept in really close contact over the years. Music was their favorite thing to do together, so after Hayden beat his cancer about two years ago, they started working on projects together."

Lilliana looked at me to see if I was still listening. I was.

"Fast forwarding to now, they wrote a song together. It was Hayden's biggest dream ever since he was that little kid to make a song with Log, so when it finally happened, I wanted to help," Lilliana said as she looked away from me again. The pieces were starting to come together and I was starting to feel bad.

"That day, I though Hayden and I were just going to be taking pictures because their song wasn't finished yet. But when I got there, Logan told me they were done and wanted to film a youtube video for it," Lilliana looked up at me and paused. "The song is about the teen romance that Hayden never got to have."