Say Hello For Me

t h i r t y - o n e || heartbreak

When Nessa realizes that the floor beneath her feet doesn't contain a single answer, she's forced to look into Liam's eyes. To her, it's a strange and foreign place. She's searching for an explanation in an ocean, but all she sees is a hurricane rushing toward the shoreline. It's going to tear down everything in its path, the waves acquiring more and more strength the closer they get to shore.

The mixture of cerulean in Liam's irises is so vivid but chaotic all at once. He reeks of nothing but trouble. And by a miracle, they're standing in the eye of the hurricane. The only problem is that Nessa is starting to feel the wind blowing from all around her, waves curling toward the center of her once stable universe.

"How long have you known?" Liam asks, his shield of confidence now tattered in bullet holes like craters on the surface of the moon.

His mind is working fervently, trying to glue the pieces of this scrambled jigsaw puzzle together before they all slip away. No matter how hard he tries, his hands just aren't fast enough to catch up with the elapsing time. There's no way he can do this singlehandedly, so his eyes flit to Nessa.

She's always had a weak spot for blue eyes.

"I've always had a feeling about this," Nessa responds hesitantly, not quite sure how to explain the emotions surfacing inside her. "But it was never strong enough to confront. What were the chances that you, Liam from the hotline, ended up with Vy, my best friend?"

"I guess you miscalculated the odds," Liam jokes, but neither can find it in them to laugh. "W-why didn't you say something back at Dawson's?"

"Say something?" The question strikes her by surprise, hitting her smack dab in the middle of her forehead. "How could I say anything?"

"Why not?" He doesn't understand where she's coming from.

"Because I know things about you that I shouldn't?" Nessa says in disbelief, her voice crescendoing into the night. She's shaking her head. "Because Vy was sitting right there and she would've known because I've told her things about you—"

The words slip out of Nessa's mouth before she can stop them.

"Oh my God," she mutters under her breath, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her denim jacket. Her head falls to the floor in an attempt to mask her crimson cheeks. Embarrassment floods her system, traveling from her head down to her toes. "I've got to go, Liam."

She tries to rush past him, darting straight for the door, but he grabs her arm before she can even leave the apartment building. He tilts his head, fixing his gaze directly on her expressive, brown eyes. There's a hint of melancholy hiding behind the golden flecks. For some reason, his heart starts to constrict as he looks at her.

"What do you mean you told Vy about me?" he begs for an explanation, some form of an answer—anything.

When Nessa has nothing left to offer, he tells her, "You have to answer my question, Nessa. I was saving it. Do you remember?"

Nessa loosely recalls their conversation over the phone a couple of weeks ago, those memories now fading into the distance as they were buried deeper and deeper inside her brain.

"I'm almost positive that's not the question you wanted to ask me."

"It's still my question," he argues.

"You never called back, Liam. Have you ever thought about the fact that it may have expired? It's been weeks."

She's almost as stubborn as he is, both of their minds clouded by a layer of misjudgment. They can't see what's right in front of them.

"I called back, Nessa," he responds, frustrated. He runs his fingers through his blond curls, tugging at his hair. "Every night for two weeks, I dialed the number and called. But you—you weren't there. And do you know what happened the one time someone picked up the phone?"

He doesn't even give her enough to respond before he says, "I spilled my entire heart out onto the floor, and you weren't even there to hear me make a fool of myself. Do you know how that made me feel afterwards? I felt like a complete idiot because here I was, pining over a girl I didn't even know. A girl who would never know how I felt."

All she says is, "I know."

"I don't even know why I'm telling you this since you obviously don't feel the same about me and—" It takes him a couple of seconds to register exactly what she has said. "Wait, what do you mean you know?"

Nessa rolls in both of her lips, her eyes still locked with his. Her voice is soft and quiet as she tells him, "Cynthia told me what you said, Liam."

"And?" His heart pounds rapidly against his chest as he waits for her to respond. There are so many places this road can lead them.

As Nessa stands there opposing Liam, she starts to understand the butterflies in her stomach and the palpitations in her heart. Right as she starts to think that she finally has it all figured out, someone's phone rings.

It's not hers.

She watches Liam pull out a phone from the pocket of his jeans, her heart breaking simultaneously. Instead of saying what she wants to say, she tells him, "Liam, I don't think we can be friends anymore."

"Why not, Nessa?" he shouts over the sound of the phone ringing in his hand.

Both of their eyes fall to the phone screen in the deafening pause. He flips the phone over after his eyes catch a glimpse of who's calling, but it's too late. Nessa's already seen the picture of Vy attached to the number.

"You should go," she urges him. "She's probably waiting for you upstairs, Liam. We can pretend like this never happened."

But the problem is he doesn't want to pretend. She's gone before he gets the chance to tell her.