I lower my voice and start softly. “That summer Drew and I visited, things were…different. You were so unexpected and so pretty and it threw me. You’d meant so much to me before I left and then I was back after four years, feeling all these new things, but I couldn’t act on them because you were sixteen.”
“So, you proceeded to ignore me for a month.”
I throw out my arms. “It was all I knew to do. Every time you were around, I wanted to be closer and I-I…couldn’t.”
She slaps away a tear. “You couldn’t even be my friend?” The whispered words—the pain there—have my arms straining at my sides, aching to hold her. “If I hadn’t run into you by the pool that night, you would have left the next morning without a word.”
I take in a long breath, chin dropped to my chest. “I had already promised Drew that he could trust me not to cross that line with you.”
Her eyes flare before narrowing. Expressions of confusion, frustration and anger sweep over her face as she mentally recounts that whole visit, looking for the pieces she missed.
“As it turns out,” I continue, “I didn’t do a good enough job of ignoring you because Drew sensed something.”
Mouth pulled into a tight line, anger tenses her jaw.
“It’s not his fault, Gretch. You were sixteen, he’s your brother and he was only looking out for you.”
“What did you tell him?” she grits through clenched teeth, voice unsteady.
“I told him he had nothing to worry about. That you were just a kid and that I cared about you the way he does. I promised him I’d look out for you.”
She wants to run—I see it in the tears welled in her eyes, her hands and feet that she can’t keep still. But I won’t let her run from this. She deserves to know everything.
“And that’s how you see me, isn’t it? Just a kid,” she says.
“Not now, of course not! But then…I…What the hell was I supposed to say? He caught me staring out the kitchen window atyou!In your green two-piece, braid hanging over your shoulder, running your hand through the floppy hair of some asshole kid who was one cannonball away from getting my fist in his face.”
Her gaze bores into me, steady as steel. Every warring emotion comes to a halt as she remembers.
I remember it all; every detail.
“So, yeah, I told him it was nothing. I told him he could trust me. He asked me to promise.” I shrug. “And I promised.”
“And the black eye?”
“It’s like I said: the punch wasn’t intended for me, but the message was that you were off-limits.”
Animosity creeps into her features again—the same thing that appears every time I mention her brother.
“Gretchen, please understand that Drew was only trying to prot?—”
“He was only trying to protect me!” she shouts. “Yeah, you’ve made that as abundantly clear as the fact that I was sixteen. I get it.”Her outburst gives way to a softer plea. “But I wasn’t sixteen when we talked for a year.” Softer now. “And I wasn’t sixteen at Drew’s rehearsal dinner.” Barely a whisper. “I wasn’t sixteen when you kissed me.”
Her hurt scars my own wounded heart anew. I drag a hand through my hair then down my face. The damage I’ve done, the pain I’ve caused—dammit, I’m a sick bastard for making her carry this for three years.
“Connor!” she demands and all I can do is brace myself for what comes next. “Is he the reason you invitedher?”
“Yes,” I choke out. Her body deflates. Agony settles in my bones and I refuse to try and escape the pain because I deserve it.
“Explain, please.”
I remember how close we were then, how I grossly mishandled that whole weekend and the months that followed—it all amounts to a series of the worst things I’ve ever done. Even though I want to, I can’t stop here.
So, I keep talking. “From that first message you sent me at the beginning of that year, I was yours. I know that sounds ridiculous and I can’t explain it, but it’s true. Every message, every text, every phone call, every video chat…Gretchen, I lived for the next time I would get to talk to you. I’d moved into my own place by then and, I don’t know, maybe it was the distance from Drew that gave me a false sense of confidence that you could be mine someday.”
She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes.
“My plan going into Drew’s wedding weekend was to talk to you about the possibility ofus.”
