7 minutes into the drive, and all had been silent.
Me, because I couldn't form any words that would make sense despite the situation. Everything was spinning through my mind in a tailspin, all whacking into each other and mixing and clashing. I couldn't form a coherent sentence.
Levi, probably because I'd ruined his night. Probably because I'd, again, neglected to offer him apart of my life, refused to share what apparently a lot of other people knew about, but he didn't.
Finally, I spoke up. "I'm really sorry that I-"
"What are we?" He interrupted suddenly.
It took me a few moments to speak. "What?"
"Us." He pointed between the two of us. "What are we?"
My heart began to flip in my chest, and with every jump it made it's way higher to my throat. "What do you mean, us?"
He gave me a sudden pointed lips. "Are we friends?"
"Yeah... Of course we are. Why..." I said slowly, trailing off in confusion.
"Just friends?"
My stomach did a little somersault and I swallowed hard. "Levi..."
"I mean, we haven't been acting like friends. God, I though we were just more than that, you know?" He shook his head. "Well, I guess you don't, actually."
"Why are we having this conversation now, Levi?" I asked in a small voice.
"Because you just told everyone we were friends!" His voice raised to almost a shout. "Is that all I am to you... Just your friend?"
I closed my eyes and pressed a hand to my forehead. This was it. This was the time to do it. "Yes."
I saw it flash in his eyes, the hurt, the anger, the betrayal. We'd been anything but friends over the past few months. He knew that, I knew that. And I'd just ended that.
"You're lying." I almost reeled back, my head twisting almost giving me whiplash.
"What?"
"You're lying to me. You're lying to yourself. Hell, you're lying to anyone you tell that what we have," he pointed to the space surrounding us. "Is just friendly."
"I'm not lying Levi-"
"Yes you are." Suddenly, the car was swerving and we were parked at the side of the empty road. "I know you. Better than you think I do."
"Stop-"
"I may not know all the things in your past, but as far as I'm concerned, that was just that- the past. I don't need to know all them things to know who you are now.
"And by knowing you, I know that this means more to you than just friends. Just like it does for me. So why are you doing this?"
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're pushing me away. It's built into you, I can see that. I've always seen that, but I can also see that we're not just friends."
"We can't be anything more." I whispered.
"And why is that?"
I sighed, my heart heavy. "Because you don't know me."
"I do."
My hands were shaking. "So who am I?"
His chest was rising and falling with his heavy breathing. "You," he said quietly. "are the most amazing, beautiful, intelligent, unique and independent person I've ever met. You're not this... Broken person you think you are- you're more than that. There's so many sides of you, so many things I want to know every detail of, every aspect of."
I wasn't breathing.
I realised then that Levi represented everything I was. He was the family I'd lost, the family I'd managed to make. He was my repair, the example of how I'd mended myself, healed, just to be around him. He was at the very peak of my heart break, and the very middle of the repair. He consumed my mind, my being, my everything. In him, I found myself. The honest self. He deserved to know everything.
"And..." Levi carried on slowly, unclear of the very words echoing through my mind at that moment- what decision I had come to.
"They're dead." My voice was harsh in the silence, and to my own ears they sounded like a door of a thousand years finally being opened.
I heard Levi's breath as it sucked in. And it was like a damn, torn through my heart and everything fell through the cracks. "My mom, my brother, my dad." My voice cracked. "My mom died during birth. She was ill, and it weakened her too much. My brother was in a car accident on my 9th birthday. He was in a coma for 14 weeks but he had so much internal bleeding and a brain hemorrhage, they couldn't keep him alive any longer. And then my dad."
I was crying. Everything single wall I had was torn. There was nothing I could do to stop the words coming out. I don't think I would if I could, anyway.
"He died 11 months ago." I whispered. "Cancer. Late diagnosis, too far gone for treatment. I mean, he had chemotherapy, but it was just to ease the pain a little.
"We lived in Sommerset. We were going to travel when I left high school, go around the world but... When I finally left, he was too I'll to even walk. When he died I moved here, but I didn't... I knew nobody. I didn't have any family, any friends worth staying in touch with."
Levi was still silent, but I saw out of the corner of my eye as he reached out with his hand to hold mine. I pulled away. "I need to keep going before I can't." I saw him nod slowly.
"And then I met you. You were just this arrogant, charismatic son of a bitch who I really wanted to dislike." Hot tears streamed down my cheeks, wetting my lips and my chin. I reached up and wiped them away. "But I couldn't. And that was the worst thing. I could feel myself growing attached to you, and that was the one thing I couldn't let happen. But it couldn't be stopped, no matter how much I tried.
"And then you told me that you liked me too and I had to push you away. I told you I needed time but that was a lie. Right then I'd made a decision that you were better off without me- you still are-"
"No I'm not."
"Shut up." I said with a ghost of a watery smile. "But, things changed and now we're here." I took a deep breath. "And I lied to you, so many times. I told you my family were alive but you have to understand I only said that because I only wanted you to see me the way I was. I didn't want all that bad coming in and poisoning everything."
I paused, and I needed him to talk. He did. "I'm sorry." He said slowly. "If I had known..."
"But you didn't." I said almost harshly. "Because I neglected to tell you."
"Lake... This is why you think you don't deserve? Because you've suffered?" I didn't say yes, but the answer was clear. "No." He said sternly. "You know what that makes you? Not a bad person, or less deserving, it makes you a goddamn saint. It makes you stronger than a million men and women out together. I know you don't want to hear all of that 'you're a warrior' crap, because that's not you. But believe me you, there is not a single spec in you that cries unworthy."
"You don't know the full story."
"I don't need it. What you've gone through is enough for me to know."
"No, it isn't. When my brother died, I wasn't... Me. I wasn't even recognisable, not at all. I was always out, drinking, sleeping around, partying." I bit onto my bottom lip. "My dad hated it, god I'm surprised I didn't give him a hernia. And Meghan... The Meghan we just saw?" He nodded. "I slept with her boyfriend. I was out and he was there and I was just a mess. I couldn't even remember doing it."
Levi wasn't looking at me. He couldn't. The news was disgusting to him, I knew.
"But I sobered up. I made sure I did when my dad was ill. But it... Couldn't be undone."
The night had reached it's peak. Few cars passed by, and only the dark surrounded us. "What are-"
"I don't care." He said suddenly.
"What?"
"I don't care about any of that. We all make decisions. Some decisions make us, some change us, and some ruin us. As far as I can see, yours made you. Because without them, you wouldn't be you. And the you you are is pretty spectacular."
"But I lied." I whispered. "I lied to you and I was such a bad person."
"Choices." He said airily. "They're just choices."
Just choices? Was that really all they were? "But..." I couldn't find any words to speak.
"I need to say something now."
"Okay."
"This is... Gonna sound weird."
"Okay."
"I've liked you since the day you told me I was a moron. I thought you were... Odd, in an intriguing sort of way. So I tried getting closer to you. But after that first date night, when you told me you were only 19, and how you lived alone, I was full of this, strange feeling. Not strange because I'd never felt it, or didn't know what it was- strange because, I was always told pride came with the person you loved. And I'd never felt more pride in someone my entire life before that night."
Time stilled. Was he...?
"And that's it. That's what I want to tell you."
"I'm not..."
"I love you, Laken. I am completely, wholly and absolutely in love with you."