"I love you, Nina."
There. I finally said it. In person, without any hint of sarcasm and farce. It was just the two of us, sitting on the thick sides of this abandoned and unstable bridge. We hang out here often, usually with the gang, but they all left because of various reasons now it's just us, and I took the opportunity.
The silence was too long. The silence felt so deafening and awkward that I could barely even hear myself breathe. "Well you could at least just say something."
"What do you expect me to say?" she asked. I looked at her face glazed with moonlight, contrasting the dark night behind it. I don't know. That's why I'm waiting for you to say something, because I have no fucking idea what's going on in your head. I shrugged, and slowly looked away back at our feet dangling against the edge.
"This could only end in two ways," she said. "With an I love you too or and I love you not."
"So, which is it?"
"You know what's weird, Jack? Saying that to someone who has been in a relationship for amost a year." The silence was back, but not so deafening this time. I could hear the breeze, I could hear her breathe, and I could here the creek creep ever so slowly.
"I still loved you first.. I think."
"Well you most certainly didn't ten months ago," she said as-a-matter-of-factly.
"How would you know, huh? We knew each other a lot longer than you did."
"Yeah, by a lot longer you mean six months."
"That's not the point, Nina."
"Then what is, Jack. Tell me."
I let out a heavy sigh. I looked at her again, with her face now slightly shadowed. Her round, brown eyes were heaviily fixed on mine, which made me tremble deep inside. She sucked her lips into a straight, which revealed her wonderfully planted dimples. Oh it was always such a marvelous sight. She called it a flaw, but I called it a blessing. She always seemed flawless to me, even though she had always looked down on herself. A meow from behind brought me back from my distraction. Turns out I was gawking too long.
"My point is, is that in those six months, I already fell for you. There's something about you, that made you different from other girls I met. It's not just your pretty face, Nina, just in case you we're thinking that 'cause believe me, I've seen you in your worst. I just have this special happy feeling whenever I see you, whenever I'm with you even if you're like two paces away from me, even now, I feel that special happy feeling, and it goes away with you, and I only feel it again when you're around. Since then I've dedicated myself to making you happy. Like those times you're sad, or sick, or unwell, I bring you your favorite box of spicy pizza because you love the burn, or a handful of romantic movies because I know how much you love to diss on the lovesick, or just tell you the corniest of jokes just to make you laugh at my loserness."
"Well this is unfair. You're making this sound like my fault when it was you who didn't let me know-"
"Didn't let you know? Oh that's feces. Hard stubborn feces that has to be scraped from the toilet to be removed. I know that you knew, Nina, you knew all about it. It was the most obvious thing in the world and you just had to let it pass as a 'maybe' or even a 'nah'. You're just in denial. You didn't want to think that I was in love with you, 'cause you don't want to ruin this whole thing. You'd treat all of my almost-confessions as jokes just to save yourself from the unwanted possibilities. You didn't think that I'd do all those things for you just because I see you as a friend? Bullshit. I just love you period, even when you have a boyfriend. I still loved you even if you held hands while walking before me. I still loved you even if you kiss each other in front of me, all gooey eyed and in love. And who knows, Nina, even if you two get married I'd be that poor guy who'd get his hard pounded into pieces with every ring of the wedding bell."
"So what Jack!" she exclaimed, which startled me. "So what, okay? What did you expect to happen? Let's just say that I loved you too back then but was confused or yeah maybe I didn't want to ruin things for everybody so I ignored every thought of possibly loving you and ended up loving someone else. Let's just say that I still love you, but I am just in complete denial. What would happen next huh? We kiss passionately under this lame moonlight, and I'd call Darren right now and break up with him and we'd live happily ever after?"
I fell silent, but later on a few words found its way to my mouth. "Uh, kinda."
"Well too bad for you. Maybe half of what I said was true, but that doesn't change the fact that I still love Darren with all my internal organs. Darren and I, it's a different story, but unless he doesn't want me anymore, I'm never gonna leave him. I love you, but I love him more, and the love I have for him is a different kind of love that's far stronger. So what now? What's the point in all this? Confessing your love for me, when, just as you said, I already knew?"
She brushed a tear which fell from the pail of tears she was trying to stop. She stood up and brushed her favorite floral skirt. "You just made things more complicated, Jack," she said, and took fast steps away, leaving me alone at almost two in the morning.
I sighed, and took the time to absorb all the things she said, and all that has happened. And it hurt, so bad.
"So what now?"
