Paper Flowers (Pretty Plastic People) ★

014. Taylor

Taylor flicks on the lamp on the nightstand and sits down on the edge of the made bed—it looks like we're in a guest room. "I don't regret you coming. I've been wanting to talk to you."

I think about the note again, and then what happened the last time we were alone together. It had been almost too much for me to handle, us being so close together and sharing so much.

"Sit down," he says, so I sink down onto the mattress beside him. We sit in silence for a few moments and I lace my fingers together, studying my chipped blue nail polish. Staring at the color reminds me of the Post-It note on my locker, the one that only today finally became a ten.

"Why can't you tell me who's leaving the Post-Its on my locker?" I ask, glancing at him out of the corner of my eye. He's staring straight ahead, his gaze focused on nothing, so I press harder. "I know everything else about you, Taylor. Why not this?"

Finally he looks at me, those eyes as intense as ever. "You don't know everything. You have no idea how much I'm in love with you."

My heart pounds to match my head. I never imagined he'd say it like that: so openly, so suddenly, so frankly. His feelings for me were things that I denied except in my head, that I read on piece of paper I'd snuck from my sister's bedroom. Now they were things we spoke of out loud, locked in the guest room at Liam's party?

"I did know that," I say. "I saw something from you in Allison's room. A note."

"A note?"

I stare down at my bare feet. "Yeah. It was just scribbled on a scrap of paper. That you didn't like her anymore—that you liked me instead."

"I wrote that a long time ago," he said. "But it's still true."

"I take that to mean you've been the one putting the Post-Its on my locker?"

He doesn't say anything for a few seconds. When I look at him I see now he's the one staring at the carpet. His eyes are lowered so that all I see are his long eyelashes—I can't see his expression clearly.

I let him stay silent for a little while longer before I gently pry, "Taylor?"

"Yes." His voice is abrupt and borderline harsh. "Yes, I've been leaving those on your locker all year long. Happy?"

"Why is it harder for you to admit that you were leaving those than to tell me you're in love with me?"

More silence, except this time, I don't think he plans on responding. There's a bang against the bedroom door, but Taylor had the foresight to lock it and we aren't interrupted. The sound, though, seems to snap him out of his reverie. Slowly, he swings his head to the side so that he's studying me intently.

"Telling you how I felt about you, to your face, is easy. It's what I was supposed to do all along. But the Post-It notes? That was me being a coward. I started that system because I wasn't brave enough to say it to your face. I kept hoping one of the guys would leak to you that I liked you. The secrecy oaths, the fancy meetings? All of that was just a shield. A shield for me, because I was an idiot."

I let him keep talking—he hasn't paused to take a breath yet and I doubt I'd be able to get in a word edgewise even if I wanted to. "After everything that happened last summer...once I realized I liked you, I knew it was impossible that we would ever be together. I'd look like a fool to tell you how I felt. I was lost and I didn't know what else to do."

"You could have said something," I say. It's true that I would have never given him a second glance if he'd confessed his feelings for me last summer. I'd still been furious with him, and the burning in my chest every time I looked at him could be classified as hatred. He made me sick to be around—except now, I see a more vulnerable side. There is more to him than the administrator of the notorious Post-It system, than the boy who cheated on my best friend.