Buffalo, NY 1994
“Are you fucking crazy?” I shout at her as I hold her tightly. I have my arms firmly wrapped around Red and she’s sobbing uncontrollably against my chest. I almost lost her just now because of her own mind becoming wrought with thoughts of things that have never happened.
Once she calms down—once I’m able to explain to her that nothing has ever happened with Ashley—I’ll take her back to the cheap hotel we’re staying in and rock her to sleep in my arms. Then tomorrow, I’ll figure out how to get her another meerkat. She’ll be so fucking upset when she realizes she’s thrown it away for nothing, and I don’t want that for Red. I don’t ever want her to be upset over me; not if I can fucking help it.
“Leave me alone,” she wails into my chest, trying to push me away, but I won’t let go. I’ll never let go of her, and she knows it. No matter how much she hates me right now, no matter how much she thinks I did her wrong, I’ll never fucking let her go.
“I need you to calm down,” I plead with her as I tighten my grip around her small, frail body. “I need you to listen to me.”
Red struggles against me, and the more she does, the more I wonder how someone so small can be so damn strong.
“Nothing happened. Ever. With anyone. I would never do that to you, Gracie.”
She gasps slightly and turns her tear-stained face up toward me. I know it’s because I called her Gracie, which I rarely ever do unless it’s a serious circumstance, but it can’t possibly get any more serious than letting the girl I’m falling in love with know that no one else besides her has even a shot at my heart.
“Then why’d I see you guys whispering so close all the time?” she asks me uncertainly. “It bothered me every time, but I never said anything ‘cause you’re not mine.”
I move my arms from around her waist and take her face in my hands. My heart is racing right now, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt this rush before. Maybe this is what being in love is like, not just falling.
“I am yours, Red,” I tell her, searching her sad eyes. “I’ve never been anyone else’s, and I don’t want to be. That kiss …” My voice trails off as I shake my head. “That was the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me, and I’m sorry it doesn’t seem enough to tell you how I feel about you, but I’ve never kissed a girl before. I’ll do better next time, okay?”
Red bites her lower lip and looks down for a moment, but I gently turn her face back toward mine. I want to kiss her again—hell, I need to kiss her again, but I won’t force it on her. If she doesn’t love me the way I love her, I’ll accept it and do my best to make sure that she’s happy as her friend—no matter how much it’ll kill me on the inside.
I’m used to it, though.
Nothing I’ve ever loved on this entire fucking planet has ever loved me back. There have been beautiful, rainy days that I’ve felt so happy on, and then the sun would shine out of nowhere, just to spite me. It would just hurt more with Red.
She kills the pain I feel every day of my useless life, and I need her in it—however she chooses to be.
“So, you believe me, right?” I ask her desperately. “I only ever went near that skank to tell her to leave you alone. I hated being around her, but I hated seeing you sad even more, so I did what I had to do to make sure you’d be happy. That’s all I ever worry about, Gracie—you being happy.”
She sighs as she wipes the tears away from her face, and rests her head against my chest. The shock of her almost running into traffic is wearing off, and cold, hard anger is starting to replace it. I can’t let it surface because if I get angry, I’ll make her cry, and I just promised her the exact opposite of that.
“I threw away my stuffy,” she says sadly. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh please,” I reply with a huff and a shrug. “So what? Tomorrow we can go back and I’ll get you a better one.”
She nods and rests a hand on my chest next to her lips. I want so much with Red. I want everything we didn’t have growing up. I want everything Doreen did to her to be nothing more than a distant fucking nightmare, and I want Jake to pay for ever laying his grotty hands on her and stealing her innocence. That’s the one thing that’s been taken from her that I can’t give her back, no matter how hard I try—but I can do my best to help her get past it if she lets me.
“It’s settled then, right? Tomorrow, you’ll get a brand new stuffy you can pick out, and you’ll stop thinking shit that isn’t real and never was,” I say to her hopefully.
Red sniffles and pulls away from me. She gets to her feet, helping me up with her, and looks into my eyes silently. I’m holding my breath, and I’m afraid I’m going to turn blue and fall the fuck over before she finally answers me.
“Okay,” she says softly. “I’m sorry I got so mad.”
“I forgive you,” I reply immediately. “And I’m sorry I didn’t squash that shit earlier. If I had, you wouldn’t have spent all this time thinking that.”
She smiles sadly and turns her face away for a moment, before glancing up at me again, and moving up to her tiptoes. Red puts her hands against my chest to balance herself, and as I wrap my arms around her, I feel like shit finally makes sense in this goddamn world. But when I kiss her, when I feel those soft lips pressed against mine … I finally know that it does.