Unsteady (COMPLETED)

FOURTEEN

Then - Carmella

I avoided Mike after that night. I couldn't face him. I didn't want to hear him say those words again - I couldn't hear him say them. 

The truth is, I loved him. I loved him from the moment he spoke to me and it just grew and grew with each late night conversation we shared in our tree. 

But after his little confession, something changed. I was angry at him. I was angry because he wasn't sober when he said those words. I was angry for him just springing them onto me like that in an almost joke-like manner. I was angry at him for waiting so long to say them. 

And I was angry for not saying them back. 

I'm not sure if it was the anger or if it was the embarrassment that kept me away from him, but for days, I avoided him like the plague. I would see him standing at the bottom of our tree, waiting, but I would never go out. 

He would wait for an hour or so, then climb over the fence and go home. It was like a nightly ritual that he didn't stop. It went on for months. Until a year later, it just stopped. 

And I'm not sure how to describe the emotion I felt when I didn't see him there that night - I wasn't sure if it was anger, disappointment or sadness - but I felt something in my heart that night. 

It was so strong, a lone tear slid down my cheek as I walked out the back door to our tree and climbed it for the first time in three hundred and sixty-five days. It was so strong as I sat there and looked at the back of his house, searching for any sight of him. It was so strong that, after an hour of waiting, I climbed down the tree sobbing when I realized he wasn't coming. 

And it was so strong that I screamed in anger when I finally found out he moved that day. 

For a whole year after he moved, I sat in our tree and reminisced about our conversations and memories that resided in that tree. I thought about him and that twinkle that the moon made in his eyes. I thought about his curly hair and how he kept it a little too long. I thought about his sideways smile and his deep laugh that made my heart soar with happiness. 

I missed him. I missed him so badly and I knew it was my fault that we stopped talking. I shouldn't have shut him off like that. It was wrong and I wished I could apologize over and over again.

Unfortunately, it was too late. He was gone and he wasn't coming back. He wouldn't be here whenever mother yelled at Dad on a Friday night. He wouldn't be here whenever Dad broke another promise. He wouldn't be here to make me laugh and smile. 

I really messed up. 

*****

"I don't know about this," I say to my friend, Amber as she runs the straightener through my hair again.

"Oh come on, Carm. You are going to be seventeen in a month and you still haven't gone to a single party. It's time to live! You need to get out there, meet some new people. Maybe even meet a guy!"

I laugh. "Yeah, that's just what I need," I say. 

"It totally is. Maybe he would be able to get you to loosen up. Now go put this on and meet me downstairs. Billy will be here to pick us up in like five minutes." She says, handing me a short, red dress with a plunging neckline and off the shoulder straps. 

"Well, isn't this something." 

"It is. Go put it on." She orders before skipping out of her bedroom door. 

I quickly do as she says and meet her downstairs. Amber is waiting for me on the couch, her phone in her hand as she texts away - probably to Billy. 

She looks up when the floorboard creaks below me, her eyes widening before her mouth curves up into a large grin. 

"Fuck, you look amazing! The guys won't be able to keep their hands off of you!" She exclaims, clapping her hands. "Let's go, Billy's outside."

"I really-"

She interrupts me by grabbing my hand and dragging me out the door to an old, black Pontiac Sunfire. 

"Hi, Billy!" She shrieks as she throws the passenger door open. "And who is your friend here?" 

My eyes look into the tiny coupe and fall on the one boy I haven't seen in two years. The boy who stole my heart and ran away with it. The one boy who still makes my knees weak and my heart race. 

And he's glaring at me with so much hate, it makes my eyes leak too.