One Week Older: Turning Pages

The Sound of a Door

I ceased walking and turned around abruptly. "You don't know that."

With a respectable distance between us, he reached his hand out towards me, "The past doesn't matter anymore. Can we just live in the right now, this present moment?"

I pushed his hand away, "No, I can't pretend the last few months didn't happen. You abandoned me. You let Liv get in between us. I might have been able to get over all of that before, but I... saw you with her. Whenever you look at me, like you are doing right now, I think about how you looked at her that way."

"So, what you're not the first girl Banks hooked up with," he argued. That was probably the worst thing he could of said to make himself look better in my eyes.

My mouth was left agape, "I haven't been in love with him since before I knew what love was. I haven't walked in on him having sex with someone else less than a day after he told me he loved me! He hasn't tried to kiss me while he had girlfriend! Banks actually stood up for me and asserted himself!"

He got close up in my face and proclaimed, "Okay, fine he's the best guy in all of Deering High! Don't play yourself Daya! You know if I would've dumped Liv a week before I did things would be very different! You wouldn't have given that guy a second look!"

"Yes, you're probably right!" He looked around to the people around us at the park, but I was fixated on him. "That's exactly what I'm saying! A week ago, I didn't know Banks and I still had hope for us! That hope is dead!"

I pushed him away before he countered with, "I still believe in us. I love you, Daya. I want to be with you, Daya!"

For so long I've wanted to hear those words but they were only desperate pleas to keep what he had lost. "We don't have to be together for you to try to make things right. And I have not hooked up with anyone. Because I know that I wouldn't be able to give myself to anyone while I still have feelings for you. I'm not you."

"Don't lie. I saw you with him yesterday," he dropped his book bag, which I only then saw, into the snow.

"We kissed. I'm not in love with him, but I like him. I like him a whole lot. He's been wonderful to me and we are just in the beginning stages. Despite that, I feel more romantically connected with him than we ever were. I spent years telling myself that you saw me as another sister. I told myself that earlier this week because that's all you have ever shown me," I shoved my finger into his chest.

Jay sighed, "I can't change any of that. I already told you that I'm sorry."

He just wasn't getting it so I explained, "Listen to how this sounds. I spent eleven years liking my best friend and then one day he gets a girlfriend. He leaves me completely alone, knowing that he's my only friend and that I depend on him. After a few months of limited contact, I finally make new friends. One of those new friends shows a romantic interest in me, public displays of affection and everything. Then, and only then, does the best friend tell me that he does like me back. What does that sound like to you?"

"You don't think I'm being sincere." I shrugged my shoulders, "Convenient timing, don't you think? When I feel like I can move again, you drop a bombshell on me."

"You're choosing him over me? You barely know him," he said like he knew everything about who I was.

I was starting to think that he was the most dense person I've ever met. "I'm choosing myself. Banks and I aren't dating. I told him that I'm not ready for that right now. And now I'm telling you the same thing."

He stepped closer to me, and I didn't move back. "I don't want to lose you," he reached out for my hand again, and I let him.

"I need to show you something." He walked backwards to his bag, before bending down and digging through it.