Till There Was You

Till There Was You [ 2 ]

"What do you think you're doing, Jay?" she hisses through gritted teeth, panic clear in her voice. "Your date is going to be here any minute now."

"Don't you think I know that?" I throw back. I'm not angry or frustrated, contrary to how annoyed my response may seem. In fact, right this very second, I'm feeling quite the opposite – and it's all thanks to what I'm about to do. The next time I walk out of this restaurant, the deed shall be done. While it may not seem like a big deal to others, for me it is. For the past five years, I've kept this secret to myself, and after this confession, my conscience will finally be cleared and the tremendous weight I carried all this time will be no more. I sigh, relieved by the prospect.

"Since you seem to have an answer to everything, please Jay, tell me why in the world are you dragging me in here?" Claire asks, motioning to our hands (well, more specifically, our intertwined fingers). "It's Valentine's Day. People are going to get the wrong idea about this – and us."

"You're my best friend, right?"

She tips her head to the side, a tad unsure. "Of course I am," she says. "What kind of a stupid question is that?"

"You promised that you'd always be here for me, no matter what, right?"

"Yeah, I did, but what does that have to do with any—"

Without much of a warning, the host suddenly comes to a halt in front of me. Fortunately, thanks to my quick reflexes, I stop on a dime. But Claire . . . oh, Claire . . . she isn't so lucky. She wasn't paying much attention to begin with and winds up walking straight into my back.

And, as if the entire thing couldn't get any worse, it does, and soon afterward, Claire loses her balance, falls to the floor, and inadvertently brings me down with her.

Hundreds of eyes are trained on the two of us as we take in—well, more like crack up—at our current situation. With all of my weight pinning her to the ground, I am literally lying on top of her, leaving our faces mere inches apart.

"Jay?" she rasps, her voice strained.

I lift my head away from hers. "Yeah?"

She coughs. "I . . . I can't b-breathe."

What?

Oh.

Oh . . . "Sorry." I pull myself up from the ground and brush off my clothes. As I turn back, I notice Claire is still on the ground and . . . laughing? "Um, Claire, you good?"

She snorts. "Of all people . . . of course this would happen to me," she says between bouts. "Just my freaking luck!"

"Regret breaking that mirror now, don't cha?" I tease. Back in high school, Claire attempted—and ultimately, failed—to hang a gigantic full-length mirror on her bedroom wall all by herself. "The whole 'seven years of bad luck' superstition really is a bitch."

She shoots me a look, every bit of lightheartedness now wiped clean from her face as shock masks the soft contours. "I didn't break that mirror," she states, her eyes narrowing a smidge. "It fell."

I laugh. "No shit, Sherlock. You used duct tape to hang it up. What else did you expect it to do?"

She shrugs. "Stay put—" I level her with a look that says are you serious right now? and she immediately backtracks on her words. "—well, at least for a little while."

Wow. For someone who has never received a grade lower than an A-minus in her entire life, my best friend sure is an airhead when it comes to things that aren't academically related.