There it was.A whispered bullet, shattering everything around him. He didn’t know how to speak, for a moment. Was unsure of how to weave himself around this aching feeling.
“Seth?”
Her soft voice anchored him, regardless of being the catalyst of his despair. Swallowing, he willed himself to smile, even if she couldn’t see him.
“Isn’t that cute?” he said, yet he wondered if he sounded genuine.
He must, because he could hear the grin in Nina’s voice.
“Oh, shut up. It’s…God. I haven’t really had many crushes in a while. Not anyone as much as I liked…”
She trailed off, the answer hanging between them, like an omen.
As much as me. But do you like him more than when you liked me?He wanted to ask.
“Do you plan on telling him?” Seth asked, instead.
“What?”
“Are you going to tell him how you feel?”
Her nervous laugh drifted through the phone’s receiver, and Seth wanted to bottle it as his own. Wanted to live off of it, like an addict. To claim it as his.
“God - I don’t know. I haven’t really thought of that - I-”
She’s nervous. He could hear her shifting atop her bedsheets, could picture her picking at her earlobe, a tell of hers that he’s come to learn. She’d be gnawing at the right corner of her lips, and her eyebrows would be drawn.
“Don’t bite your lip,” Seth whispered.
“How’d you know?”
“I just do.”
She laughed again.God.
“I don’t know if he’d feel that way about me. I don’t want to ruin the friendship.”
He wanted to scream, to cry out that Carlos would be the biggest idiot to not see Nina that way.
How could he not fall for the way her laughter made everything brighter, like sunlight spilling through the window at the break of dawn.
How could he not fall for the way she spoke of the world and everything around her, as if life were written pages sprung from a fairytale?
The crinkle, just beside her eye when she’d smile. The way she held her hot chocolate when she wanted to warm her fingers?
What kind of fool wouldn’t fall for Nina Mendez?
Me.
He was that fool. The greatest fool of all.
“Why wouldn’t he?”
Another laugh. A skeptical one.
“Well, I mean, there could be many reasons why. I could just not be…his fit, you know? Or his type….”
Her words twisted against his gut, reopening a wound that he’d tried so hard to forget
