Perfection, Beauty and Flaws

24- A Crime Amongst Friends

Chapter Twenty Four:

A Crime Amongst Friends:

~Danielle~

Ryan is amazing. I used to be really bored when my friends were at school, but now Abu keeps me company. He’s a little bigger but not much. I’ve had him almost two months now. Already I can’t imagine not having him.

Dad isn’t a huge fan of Abu, so naturally Abu loves him. But Dad puts up with Abu because he knows it’s something I’ve always wanted.

I’m really excited. Next week school is out so I will be able to spend more time with my friends. I want to put that on my list.

I moved Abu off my lap and reached under my bed to find my notebook. I hadn’t added anything since the first day I made the list. But I knew now I wanted to add, ‘At least talk to friends once a day’ and ‘write letters to the people I love’.

I flipped the book over on my lap and then I gasped at what I saw. Under ‘Find out if he loves me or not’ someone had written ‘He loves you back’. And I had a pretty good idea who had written it.

“Oh my god,” I breathed.

What was he thinking? Did he think this was all a joke to me? Did he think I would never see this? Did he think I was talking about someone else?

What happens if he really did love me?

The notebook fell from my fingers and sat in my lap. Abu crawled into my lap, on top of the notebook, and looked up into face worriedly. He lapped up the tears I hadn’t realized I was shedding.

I hate Ryan! I know I had told him that I couldn’t handle knowing if he liked me back or not, but if he was stupid enough to write on paper that he loved me, why couldn’t he say it to my face?

And I had told Ryan that I didn’t want him getting too attached to me, it would make everything harder. I had only had that point on the list because I thought he didn’t love me! As a friend maybe, but not as anything more. I had been the stupid one to fall for him. He wasn’t supposed to fall for me.

I had wanted to know he didn’t love me. That’s what I had meant by closure. I could live, or technically die, with knowing that the guy I loved didn’t love me back. But knowing that I had ruined one of my best friend’s lives, because he fell in love with me and then I died? That was terrible. I couldn’t do that. But it was happening, nothing could stop it. Ryan had made that point clear.

~Ryan~

“Hey Dan…” I stopped when I looked in through her bedroom door. She sat cross legged on her bed. She spent a lot of time in her room because she said it made her feel less alone. Her house was pretty open so she could see how empty it was when she was home alone, and she didn’t like that. She normally waited for us before emerging from her room.

Right now she was on her bed with Abu cuddling close to her. At first I thought this was just another one of her random crying episodes she had when she thought no one would be around to see, but then I saw what was also on her lap. It was the reason for her tears.

Her notebook sat on her lap. Without looking I knew it was open to her bucket list. I also knew what I had added to that list a couple weeks back. Was she only just seeing it now?

I had checked the book every couple of days to see if she had added anything new. But the list never changed from that first day. After a while I had gotten tired at looking at the point about me, so I had written that I loved her back underneath it.

At first I had been upset that she hadn’t seen it, I was tempted to erase if before she could see it. I had convinced myself that she had seen it and was just mad at me. But then she didn’t act any different around me and I realized I just had to wait for her to look at it.