Cole was.
Finally I exploded. Since I couldn’t hit him, I punched the wall as hard as I fucking could. The drywall crumbled all around my wrist, blowing a hole directly in the wall. When I pulled my hand out, it hurt like a son of a bitch. I shook off the pain and wish I could tell you that I felt better, but I didn’t.
I felt worse.
The blood from my knuckles slid down my arm and when I heard a loud gasp from behind me. I didn’t have to turn to know who it was, but I did.
Alex lunged into action, grabbing a towel from the floor and wrapping it around my hand. “Oh my God, Bo, what were you thinking?” she fumed.
I forcefully pulled my hand away from her touch. It burned, fueling only the fire inside of me. The already burning flames didn’t need more gasoline. She had to feel them. They surrounded us in a fit of despair and desperation.
She raised her stunned eyes to my face.
“What the fuck do you care?”
“What?” she half-whispered, stepping back.
I should have left. I should have never spoken to her the way I was about to, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to hurt Cole, and since I couldn’t do that, I did the next best thing.
I hurt her.
I wanted to ruin the memory of her fucking date with him at all costs. I had no excuse for it, other than the fact that I was young and stupid. I had too much time to think about them, too much time to dwell on how much I fucking hated him. Too much time to focus that she wasn’t here, when she was supposed to be, and too much time to concentrate on her not being here for me.
For us.
She was with him. It gripped inside and all around me.
I could see it, feel it, and breathe it in.
I suffocated in the knowledge that I felt her slipping away from me, right from my grasp that I held so tightly around her heart. It hammered in my core, from my head down to my toes, leaving nothing but a loss of what I thought we were to each other. It made me believe things that I prayed not to be true, but every time I wanted to express the sincerity of what I felt to be real, of what I wanted so badly, I remembered them laughing and flirting blatantly in front of me and I drowned in an emptiness of resentment and fury. Adding to the facts.
I couldn’t take it out on Cole.
I couldn’t take it out on myself.
I couldn’t take it out on the boys or our families.
All that was left was her.
She stood before me exactly where she belonged, and all I was about to do was push her further away.
The exact fucking way I always had.
It was just too much. I didn’t know any better. I reacted and it formed into chaos, so much fucking confusion I couldn’t see straight. I never meant to say things that would make her cry.
Or maybe I did.
I don’t know.
“You heard me. Where’s Cole, Alexandra?”
“Bo…”
“Don’t. Where were you?”
She bowed her head.
“ANSWER ME! Where the fuck were you? I’ve been here for hours waiting for you. What, Alex? Am I not important to you anymore? Do I not matter now that Cole is around?”
She shook her head, still not looking at me. “That’s not true,” she muttered, only pissing me off further.
“At least look at me when you’re lying.”
She immediately raised her teary eyes to me and they glimmered with a burn I had never witnessed before, and for the first time I didn’t want to comfort her. I didn’t want to ease the worry that was clearly written across her face. All I wanted to do was add to it.
“Did you do it to hurt me? Because if that’s what you wanted then you succeeded.”
“I would never hurt you, Lucas, you know that. You’re upset and you’re being mean.”
“I don’t give a fuck what I’m being. You knew what you were doing today and then not being here when you knew I would be waiting. Explain that. Who’s being mean now, huh?”
She frowned. “That’s not true.”
“Then prove it. Stop seeing him.”
She shook her head again. “That’s not fair. He’s my friend.”
“You don’t even know him,” I roared.
“I know enough. You have Stacey—”
“Fuck. Her.”
“You already do that!” she shouted back at me. “Did you do that today, Bo? Huh? Did you have sex with her today?” Tears fell down the sides of her beautiful face and it was now my turn to bow my head.
“Exactly! You can’t have it both ways. It’s not always about you. I have never told you what you could or couldn’t do. How dare you make me feel bad for having a friend? I didn’t do anything with him. We didn’t even kiss. You were so torn up about it, Bo, that I bet the first thing you did when you left my house was go sleep with Stacey! How is that fair to me? How has that ever been fair to me?”
“Because I don’t fucking love her, Alex! I love you!
I jerked back, winded. “Then you have a real awful way of showing it.”
His eyes widened with more fury that should have scared me, but it didn’t, it was the exact opposite. If he wanted to have it out with me then he didn’t get to play this card on me, I wouldn’t deal with his double standard rules.
“I fuck her! That’s what I do, and I have more emotion in a goddamn handshake with you than anything I do with her. She knows it. I’ve never lied to her and I’ve never lied to you about it either. She’s. Just. A. Fucking. Girl! How many damn times do I have to remind you of that?”
“Do you think that makes it any easier for me? That it magically makes it better because you don’t love her or care for her? No, Lucas, it makes it worse. I don’t want to lose my respect for you, but when you say stuff like that, I do! You sound like a guy and that’s not who my best friend is,” I honestly disclosed.
It felt so good to finally be able to say that. I had been hiding it from myself for so long.
“I hate to break it to you, Half-Pint, but I am a guy. I know my reasoning may suck for you, but that’s all I got. I want you to stop seeing him. He’s an asshole and he’s using you. He’s leaving in a few weeks. What do you think he’s going to do when he goes back home? What, Alexandra, you think he’s going to stay faithful to you? You’re smarter than that.”
I sadly smiled. “Am I not worth it, Lucas? Am I not worth someone staying true to me?”
He breathed out. “Don’t twist my words. You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
I stepped back, needing to get away from him. “I don’t know what you mean anymore, and maybe I never did. For your information he’s my friend. I won’t use him like you do Stacey. I’m not like that and I never imagined you would be either.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair,” I threw his own words back at him. I wanted to leave and I think he sensed it because he gripped my wrist, tugging me closer to him.
“Let go of me.”
“Fuck no. You’re just going to run. Where you running to, Half-Pint?”
“You’re being unreasonable.”
“No shit. I’m aware that I'm an asshole, I’m aware that I’m giving you a double standard, I’m aware of it all, but I don’t give a shit. I can’t do this with you anymore. This back and forth shit between us is too much and I’m over it, so choose, Alex, choose a side and fucking stay there.”
“That makes no sense. He’s my friend!”
He pulled me closer till our faces were an inch apart. “What. Am. I?” he asked with conviction.
My mouth opened to say something, anything, but I couldn’t find or form the words. They weren’t spilling out of me as they were before.
He shook his head, aggravated. “Don’t make me ask you again,” he warned through gritted teeth.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I honestly replied.
“I want the truth. What am I to you?”
I should have told him. I should have laid everything out for him. It could have changed everything, but it infuriated me that he didn’t know what he meant to me and that he had to ask in the first place. How could he not see what Cole could? Was he that blind? He knew I loved him, we said it to each other all the time. I wanted to be with him, he had to know that, too. Right?
I blamed him for so many things that happened between us, and so many things that didn’t. If I would have told him, it may have changed so many other things that still hadn’t happened between us.
But I didn’t.
I was upset.
I was hurt.
I was confused.
I wanted him to hurt. Exactly how I had. The pain overruled reality. In fact it won in the end. I did the only thing that made sense to me, in a moment that was driven purely by the emotion of an almost-fifteen-year-old girl.
I looked him straight in the eye and said, “It’s complicated.”
In a matter of seconds, I witnessed so much emotion pass through his gaze and clarity for what was to come seemed to quickly follow. His guard came up: a reaction I had never seen before directed right at me, and a wall so thick that it crippled me in ways that immediately had me regretting my words. I wish I could have taken them back, but I couldn’t, and a huge part of me didn’t want to.
Try understanding that because I didn’t.
He immediately let go of my wrist, and I instinctively stepped back and away from him.