Count On Me(93)
My mom, during one of the times she spent ripping my dad apart used to complain that there’s no woman alive that needs or wants a Walker. Walker boys are defective. We would break the person we love down, until they were only a shadow of their former self. I believed that for a long time. It’s probably why I stayed silent with Dean for as long as I did. If he was no good, it meant I was no good, so all we had was each other.
She was wrong. I know that now and it’s because of Isabelle. I can be good for someone, even if I screw up along the way. I can be that good boy she said a girl like Isabelle deserves and I’ve finally got the chance to prove it.
I can’t take back everything that I said about her, the things I did over the last eight years, but I can spend the next eight minutes, hours, days and months making up for it. I finally see what I’ve been refusing to all along.
It’s okay to have differences, to not be like everyone else around you. It doesn’t make you weaker or less worthy than anyone else that might appear normal. It is what it is. You’re just different. At the end of the day, we all want the exact same things in life and I think Isabelle and I are living proof of that.
“What do you need, Kayden?”
“Remember what you said earlier about me getting involved?”
“You mean, when I told you to hang back and give her a chance? Yeah, I do.”
“Well I’ve got one more thing planned, but it’s not until later. I’d do it on my own, but I think that after what just happened, she might not trust it. If I ask you to help me, will you do it?”
“You swear this isn’t gonna turn into something like Homecoming?”
“I’ll sign my promise in blood if that’s what you want. This isn’t a joke.”
“That’s gross. You don’t need to do that. What do you need me to do?”
“Get her to the gym at 3:45. I want her there right at that time.”
“Why?”
“Everyone will pretty much be cleared out by then and what I’m planning, I sort of need privacy for. Well, present company excluded, if you don’t mind missing your bus.”
“All you need is her in the gym at 3:45?”
“That’s it. I got the rest from there.”
“Alright, I’ll do it, but on one condition.”
Despite everything I put this kid through and everything I believed about him, I’ve gotta hand it to him. He could easily be afraid of me right now, but he’s not. He’s just doing what I should’ve been doing all along.
Looking out for her.
“Name it.”
“This time, whatever you’re gonna do, make sure it’s for keeps. You might be able to threaten those guys into leaving us alone, but you won’t bully me. If you hurt her, I’ll hurt you.”
“Deal.”
Epilogue
Belle
The rest of the afternoon passes by in a blur and thankfully it’s an uneventful blur. The musical interruptions stop after the broadcast outside at lunch. The strange thing is, even though I know it was Dillon trying to get to Kayden, I found myself missing it.
Moving from class to class, everything quiet even though I’m surrounded by noise, I start believing that I imagined the whole thing. With the way I stood up for myself, a move that in the last three years I’ve never done, I’ve got no other explanation for everything that’s happened today.
I don’t see Kayden again and I struggle with how that makes me feel. I know I was scared to come face to face with him, but with everything that happened when we did finally come together, the fear’s been replaced by something else.
Love.
No matter how out of my way I go in order to avoid it, run from it or even deny its existence at all, it doesn’t change the truth.
I am in love with Kayden Walker.
It’s that love that makes me search for him down every hall, around every corner, even though something tells me he doesn’t want to be found. It’s that love that makes me hound Eric for information. There’s an overwhelming urge to know what the two of them talked about that for whatever reason, I’m not allowed to know.
There’s only one part of admitting how I feel that bothers me. If everything that happened was designed by Dillon and not Kayden, the way I originally thought, then why isn’t he searching me out? If everything he said during our few weeks together was real, the way he made it sound, then why isn’t he here now?
Love might have the power to heal, but it also has the power to hurt, which is what it’s doing to me.
I don’t want Eric to be the one he’s talking to. I want it to be me, though deep down I realize I don’t deserve his words. I did the exact thing to him that everyone has been doing to me for years. I suppose it’s not all that surprising that he’s going out of his way to avoid me, despite talking to my friend earlier.