“But I didn’t.”
“I know.” He smiled his dimple-revealing smile. “And I couldn’t get you off my mind. I sat at my office staring at this mountain of paperwork and I knew I needed to get to work, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t focus on anything. I just kept thinking about you. It wasn’t so much your looks as it was me wanting to know more about you.”
“Know more about me? You told me you wanted to eat me out.”
He chuckled. “I said I wanted to taste you.”
“You finger banged me in that restaurant and then licked your fingers. That was your first taste.” My pussy began to tingle thinking about it. I inhaled a deep breath, closed my eyes and exhaled slowly, hoping my charade would encourage him to do something.
“I get up in the morning and take a shower, and when I’m standing in front of the mirror shaving, I look at myself and think ‘what in the hell can she see in me?’ This happens like every other day, and eventually I decide I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. You obviously see something. I’m glad you do.”
“Are you kidding me?” I snapped. “Your eyes need checked. That day in the parking lot? You came walking up and told the asshole to let me go, right? That instant, and I mean right then, my pussy gushed. It wasn’t what you said. It was who you were. You’re attractive, Michael. Very attractive. But what’s inside of you, and you knowing what’s inside of you? That’s what makes you irresistible.”
He looked embarrassed. He grinned. “Thank you.”
Be it our landmark date, the necklace, or that I was simply filled with love for him, I didn’t know, but I wanted to tell him how I felt. Love. Something as sacred and satisfying shouldn’t be so difficult to communicate. I knew how I felt and I wanted to tell him—hoping that he felt the same way—but more than anything, I feared rejection.
I was twelve when I told Salvadore Tarrucci I loved him. He was thirteen. He was wearing a paisley shirt, one of his—and my—favorites. We were in seventh grade together, and it was almost summer. I wanted a lover for summer break, or at least I thought.
Visions of holding hands, my first kiss and getting ice cream together filled my twelve-year-old mind.
He stood and stared. I was sure he didn’t hear me. Maybe he was in shock, I thought. As far as I was concerned, I was the prettiest girl in school, and telling him may have taken him by complete surprise.
I told him again.
He smiled and reached for the padlock on his locker. While he gathered the books for his next class, I decided he hadn’t heard me, because if he had, he would have said something. I waited anxiously for him to reassure me he felt the same way, but it never came. So, I told him again. His face turned red and he giggled.
A month later, we broke up. Although I never counted, I expect I told him I loved him two dozen times. He never returned the gesture.
Bobby Cardone didn’t have a girlfriend. So, right before summer break, I told him I loved him. I was desperate.
He wasn’t.
He laughed.
It was the type of laugh you laugh when someone tells you something so stupidly funny that you almost pee and can’t catch your breath for several minutes. An eye-watering laugh.
I cried and ran to the other side of the playground, hoping along the way that I would just die.
But. I didn’t.
Those were my earliest rejections, but they certainly weren’t my last. From that point until my early twenties, I didn’t bother expressing my love for my significant other. With Vincent, I waited to express myself until I was sure, and fully expected his feelings mirrored mine.
I was wrong.
Although I should have left him over his abusive behavior, it was ultimately his inability to commit that he loved me that cost him our relationship.
Losing Michael would kill me. I couldn’t risk it. I loved him and nothing would change it. As nice as it would be to know he felt the same way, what I stood to risk was far too great. In the end, I chose silence over substance.
He tapped me on the leg. “Hello? Are you still with me?”
“Oh, yeah. I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
Loving you.
“Nothing. Middle school.”
“Middle school?”
“Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe because summer’s finally here. I think I was thinking about summer break when I was a kid.”
He seemed to lose focus for a moment. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have summer break as an adult?”
“I know,” I said.
In all actuality, I was on summer break all the time, but I knew I couldn’t tell Michael. At some point the truth had to come out, but I dreaded when the day would come. With each passing day, saying it got tougher, and the repercussions got greater.