Sweet Cheeks(67)

“I didn’t.”

“I know and that was part of it. I don’t expect you to understand any of my reasoning or forgive me for what I did. Shit, looking back, I get what I did was fucked up. But you and Ryder and your parents were all the good I’d ever known. And God I was missing you. I was living in some shithole apartment, stuffing extra food from the craft service table into my pockets because I couldn’t afford groceries, and knew no one . . . but I knew if I talked to you, heard your voice, listened to you cry over the line, I’d drop everything and come back. I missed you like crazy. I felt so horrible for not having the guts to tell you when I left for that weekend that I might not be coming back.”

“I would have gone with you.” God, how many nights did I have thoughts of packing up my shit and driving to Los Angeles to find him? My own naïveté not knowing how big a city it was and how hard it would be to find him.

“I know you would have. But to do what? Skip out on going to college? Stand by and watch me chase my dreams while giving up yours? I couldn’t do that to you. You deserved the goddamn moon and stars, Say. Still do. I couldn’t make you sit in that rundown apartment all day and worry about your safety, while I worked eighteen hour days. I would have hated myself for it and you would have resented me for it.”

“So you just washed your hands of me and made it easy.” My voice is quiet, reminiscent of how I felt for almost a year after he left. Then again, now that I think about it, maybe I never became that carefree girl I used to be.

“It was never easy. Not a goddamn single day.” He fists his hands. Shakes his head. “If you only knew how I’d come home, collapse into bed from exhaustion, and miss every fucking thing about you.”

His words cut open old wounds. Make me think of him all alone in a new town and feel sorry for him. But he needs to know what I went through too. “I walked around lost for over a year. We did everything together. You were my first love. My first everything. And you up and left and shut me out.” I look out to the water beyond. To the snorkels sticking up out of the water in the distance. Hear the laughter of someone seeing the turtles, and I’m sure I sounded just as excited about it when I resurfaced. “I waited for you. I told you in that last message that I wouldn’t, but I lied. I spent three years waiting. Three years adamant that every tabloid with pictures of you with some gorgeous actress on your arm was Photoshopped, or an innocent lunch date misconstrued. You tell me you missed me and yet, what I saw of your life? It looked like anything but missing me, Hayes.”

“Saylor.”

“No. It’s okay. I know I told you in that last message that I wouldn’t wait for you, but I did.”

“You also told me you’d always love me.”

I still do.

It’s my immediate thought. One I hate and love. One I shove from my mind so I don’t say it out loud, but regardless still leaves me reeling.

And I can sense the question on his tongue. The one asking me if my confession ten years ago still holds true. There’s so much emotion clogging my throat, so much history thick in the air between us, that it’s better if I just don’t speak.

So the silence holds us hostage as we stare at each other from behind the protective lenses of our sunglasses. A part of me wants to see what his eyes are saying. The other part of me is scared to find out.

So, we hide.

“I came to your house.” His confession shocks me. My lips fall lax and my heart constricts. “My mom finally left my dad. Said my leaving shocked her into reality so she kicked him out. I told myself I was coming home to help her get situated in her new place. And yeah, I did . . . but it was you I wanted to see.”

“Why didn’t you?” My still-hurt eighteen-year-old self knows that if he had, I would have been devastated all over again. Pain renewed. The fallout of seeing him, brutal.

“I did actually, but Ryder answered the door. Threw a punch before I could even say a word.” He chuckles at the thought and rubs his jaw with the memory while my eyes widen in surprise. A part of me cheering for Ryder sticking up for me.

“What?”

“Yep. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so pissed. He chewed my ass like I deserved. Told me you were finally starting to eat again. Just starting to be you again,” he murmurs and his tone reflects how hard it was for him to hear how his leaving had affected me. The darkness I had lived in. Surrounded myself with and got lost in. “He told me he didn’t think I loved you because how could I do that to you? But if I did in fact love you, I’d turn around and walk away and leave you be. He knew I’d become fascinated with the bright lights and big city and would just leave again when the weekend was over and then you’d be hurt all over again.”