this baby's for @inexistence for the lovely cover. thank you, love! xx

Chapter Thirty-Nine

It’s around three in the morning when I realize I’m not going to fall asleep. Lee is beside me on his vast bed, probably sleeping. He lays on his back and his breathing is slow. We’re not curled up together and if that isn’t bad enough representation of the elephant in the room, maybe the fact that the only thing entangled are our hands is. He’s far enough to fit a person between us. The signs are loud and hard to deny; it’s time to say goodbye.

        I sit up slowly, trying my best to not wake him. I look down at him. His face is masked by the dark and the only light I see is from out the window. I smile because this is the best thing I could’ve ever asked for. A boy that gave me a chance and a romance that’s engraved into my skin. I bring his hand up to my lips and kiss his knuckles lightly. I don’t have regrets.    

        When I try to ease out of his grip, he says, “Don’t.”

        I bite my lip. “I was just getting some water.”

        He turns over so he’s facing me. “Liar.”

        “I’m not lying.”

        “Then, let’s get you some water.” He hops out of bed, like he wasn’t just asleep seconds ago. I give him a strange look and he asks, “What?”

            “Didn’t realize this was the second grade. Lead the way, Mr. Richardson.”

            “Well, I wouldn’t have to do this if you didn’t try acting like the hero all the time,” he explains. “Not everyday your girlfriend tries leaving you in the middle of the night with no goodbye.” He pulls on a dark gray shirt and turns on a lamp next to him.

            I cross my arms. “I was not trying to leave, okay. I just…wanted to get some water.” He pulls on some sweatpants before coming over to my end of the bed. Lee suddenly leans in. “H-hey! What’re you doing?” I stutter.

            He looks at me with his eyebrows scrunched. “Turning on the light?” His eyes flicker to the lamp beside me and then back to me. “What’d you think I was going to do?”

            I stand, not so accidentally pushing him to the side. “Nothing!” My face is burning like the sun that’s sleeping. I walk out of his room. “I refuse to let you seduce me to stay even more! I know your little tricks. Enough’s enough.” I turn around. “Understand?”

            Lee looks up from behind me. Nods.

            I continue walking to the kitchen. “Good.” I stop again. He stops behind me. “And let’s try to be mature adults about this situation and not make it climatic and dramatic.” I turn around. It’s good to lay down some rules. We can be civil about this. “Okay?”

            He shakes his head up and down like an obedient puppy.

            I start walking and his footsteps follow but then I stop. I spin on my heel. “Why aren’t you saying anything?” I ask, tilting my head in confusion. Hell, I expected a fight or something. He’s barely disagreed with anything. Is this his way of showing me I win? For once, I don’t want to. What’s wrong with me? I want him to fight for us and yet I am so adamant on ending this. There’s no solution.

            Lee shrugs. And then takes his shirt off.

            “What the hell, Lee?” I shout, putting my hands up in surrender. “I told you that seducing me isn’t going to work so tuck away your abs and tell them to go into hibernation and—”

        He leans in and pulls the shirt over my head. I freeze. When I don’t respond, he puts the shirt on for me, pulling my hand through the arm holes and tugging it so it reaches below my rear. “You’re naked,” he says softly, moving away the pieces of my hair caught in the shirt. His fingers linger on my cheek. “Break my heart but please...don’t walk around naked and expect me to move on so fast.”

        My cheeks redden and I look down, struggling to find words. “I-I didn’t mean to—”

        “Seducing you?” he asks. He pulls back from me. “One glance from you and I’m back at square one. I’m trying really hard to follow your wishes. Really hard. But how can you say I’m seducing you when you’ve got me in the palm of your hand? You could have ten thousand layers of clothes on in the middle of Alaska and you could be barely recognizable, and still, I would be bind to you.”   

        “I—Lee—I’m,” I stammer. I look down at my hands and realize that he’s clenching his fists so tight that they’re almost white. He’s trying not to touch me. “I’m sorry.” My eyes go back to his. “You know this is what’s best for us. It’s less complicated this way.”

        He brings up his hands to my cheeks but they stop before they can touch me. He slaps them back down to his sides and sighs. “Maybe this is what’s best for you, but Ivory, what if I like complicated?” Lee asks, looking at me with his eyebrows knit and his lips in a frown. “What if I like this crazy and insane thing we have? There’s no other way I’d want it.”

            Me either.

            “Lee,” I say, reaching my fingers out to touch him but he has turned around and walks to the counter of his kitchen. I let my hand drop to my side. He gets a glass out and I pull on a blanket that had been lying on a couch nearby. The air condition is a little too cold but I don’t want to trouble him anymore. When he pours the water into the glass, it sounds like a bomb between Lee and I and the thick silence.

            I drink my water, trying to gulp down the lump in my throat but it doesn’t work. It aches and my eyes start to prickle. If I cry, I will claw my own eyes out. I need to make a choice. Leave him and let him be okay or stay with him and ruin him. But I need to make a clean cut choice. No messy goodbyes and mixed hearts. His feelings—my feelings—they aren’t a game.  

            “What’s your dream in life?” I ask suddenly, not even knowing myself why I asked that.

            Lee seems to be sizzling something on the stove. What is he cooking this early—or is it late— right now? He turns his face halfway so I can see his profile. “My dream?”

            “Yeah,” I say. I put the glass down and fold my hands, twiddling my thumbs back and forth. “What do you strive in life for? What do you wish would happen eventually?”

            He doesn’t respond at first. He shifts from foot to foot, turns off the stove, grabs plates. Lee places a plate with rose designs in front of me. There is a perfectly smooth omelette with a smiley face drawn in ketchup. Our hands touch when he hands me a fork and it feels insanely intense for some reason.

            Lee slides into the seat next to me, the only thing illuminating us is the dimmed lights in the kitchen. He doesn’t make anything to eat for himself. “My dream would be to be happy, I guess.”

            I cut a piece of the egg and bite it. It tastes very differently from the omelettes I usually make or Mom used to. It’s good different. “To be happy? That’s not really a dream. You can be happy whenever you feel like it.”

            He glances at me. His eyes are almost dark under the softly lit room. Lee rests his face in the palm of his left hand and watches me. “If only it were that simple,” he replies softly.

            “Simple?” I take another bite. I cut out a big piece and bring it up to Lee’s lips. He looks at it weirdly, at my hand, at my face but then he bites it. As if this is strange. “Being happy is simple. You just have to find something that makes you happy—that’s the hard part,” I elaborate.

        His eyes never leave my face. He nods. “That’s right,” he agrees. “You know what else is simple?”

                “What?”

        “Realizing that you’ve finally found something—someone to make you permanently happy—and then letting them get away from you. Letting your dream get away from you,” he says. I put the fork down and he picks it up, cutting a piece and putting it in my mouth now. “That’d be just plain stupid of someone,” he says, his eyes flickering from my eyes to the fork. When he looks at me again, it feels like he’s looking at every aspect of me—my ideas, my head, my heart, my body, me as whole—and he looks like he’s in love with all of it.

        How does someone leave anyone that looks at you like that?  

        “Well, it wouldn’t be stupid if it was for the happiness of both of them,” I say, looking at my plate and running my fork around the edges of the plate.

        Lee scoffs. “Happiness?”

        “Okay, maybe not happiness. But it wouldn’t be stupid if it was reasonable to let the person go,” I retort.

        “Reasonable?” he repeats. “A lot of things in this world are reasonable but that doesn’t mean people should do them. It’s reasonable to give up. It’s reasonable not to fall in love at all, to save you the heartbreak. It’s reasonable not to do anything crazy and adventurous but where would the fun be in that?”

        "Wow, am I really talking to Lee Richardson?" I place the fork down beside the plate and push it away. “But this isn’t a game, Lee. A kid—an unborn child—isn’t a joke. This is someone’s life.”

        He rests his head down on the cool granite counter. “I know…I’m not saying that it is,” he says, “but would it be too much to ask you to stay with me?”  

        My hand moves on its own to run it through his silk hair. I am surely going to miss being able to do this. Running my hands so simply across his head full of expensive shampooed hair and just talking to him in the middle of the night. “Yes,” I breathe. “It is too much.”

            Lee closes his eyes under my hand. “Then call me selfish,” he says.

            I let my hand slip back to my side. Leaning down, I rest my own cheek against the cool granite counter. I know I say and think this too much but no matter how many times I look at him, I’ll never get over how breath-taking he is. His slow breathing calms me as I start counting the small, barely there freckles on his face. He thinks I want to leave this?

            “Yes, you are selfish,” I whisper, my voice soft. His eyes flutter before they open and his crazy blue eyes land on mine. “So selfish,” I murmur.

            He scooches closer and grabs the end of the blanket, wrapping it around us. “Since I’m already so selfish,” he says, close enough until we’re nose to nose, “can we share another selfish moment?”

            My lips stretch to a gentle smile. “I suppose,” I answer. Under the table, his hand reaches for mine and we hold on tight. “Are we really going to sleep like this until the sun comes up?”

            “Yes,” he whispers.

            “You’re crazy,” I say. “We’re crazy.”

            “You love it,” he says. He kisses my forehead to finish the final touch on how to kill me.

            “I do.”

            “We both do.” Lee adjusts the blanket over us again before snuggling closer in this incredibly uncomfortable position—yet somehow perfect—and he says, “Now shut up and let me sleep, woman. I can never get sleep with you around.”

        I smirk. “Good.” My brows crinkle because I’m letting myself be swept away again, dodging the main problem. But this is the last time. I promise.

        “I love you,” Lee says suddenly. His eyes don’t waver from my face.

        I kiss his frown. “Good night—or morning—or whatever, shh, let’s sleep.”     

The next morning or after whenever we wake up, I start getting dressed again. I don’t know if my brother is in town or not but I’m hoping he doesn’t kill me from wherever he is when he realizes I spent the night out. I put back on the same teal dress from yesterday and am about to just leave when Lee’s voice stops me.

            “You’re a heartless one, aren’t you?” he says, his hands slipping around my waist from behind. His chest presses against my back. “No goodbye again?”

            I rest my hand on top of his. “How did you do that? I barely heard you sneaking up behind me.” He smells like soap and meadows from happily ever afters we’ll never be in.

            “Nice try on changing the subject,” he whispers in my ear. Lee turns me around and I’m back at square one in his arms. “Where are you going, love?”

            “Home.” I pick at a detached string from his t-shirt, near his forearms. “Where I need to start looking for a better job to keep me sustained for the summer. Where I need to worry about if I’ll make the cut for fall admissions and my mother. Where I need to worry about internships. Where I need to be so I don’t think about you or your baby or your future wife.”

            “Why would you go home and think about yourself?” Lee flashes a shit eating grin and I want to do unspeakable things because how is he smiling like that as if our worlds aren’t just ending?

            “Nice try on changing the subject,” I repeat. I pull away from his arms. “Well,” I say, extending my right hand, “it’s been a pleasure, Lee.”

            He glances at me and then at my hand. “A handshake?”

            I nod, shaking my hand to show him a demonstration since he clearly needs it. “Yes, Lee, a handshake. Surely, you’ve done many of these in business.”

            “A handshake?” he repeats, his eyebrows raised.

            My eyes roll on their own. “Yes, Lee, a damn handshake. You know what’ll happen if anything else occurs. Now how else would you like to—”

        He grabs my hips suddenly, pinning me against the front door. It’s fast and really a bad decision but I kiss him back and then we’re not talking anymore and what’s a handshake again? Lee smells so good and nice and his hair is wet and somehow that makes me giddy. His hands are cold and tickle my sides. My hands are everywhere—his hair, his neck, his arms.

        And then he backs up.

        The shit eating grin is back. “Goodbye, Ivory,” he says, tilting his head. Not the head tilt. Anything but the head tilt.

        “I—I, um, I’m Ivory,” I say and what the hell am I saying?

        He opens the door for me. “Hope you get safely back to Brownwood, my dear,” he coos. “And don’t worry, I’ve covered for your overnight parking fares. See you soon.”

        “T-That’s cool, I,” I stammer, walking out of his suite and into the elevator. I turn around to face him as he stands out of the elevator. My brain is gumbo soup while he continues smiling at me. I snap the hell out of it. “Lee, quit doing that! I told you no more games!” I stand tall, arms crossed, and one foot between the elevator and his suite.

        He leans in and pecks me on the cheek. “It’s rather hot out so careful not to get a heat stroke.” He checks his watch. “Would you like for me to order room service to deliver water to your car? It’ll be a long drive since it’s rush hour—”

        “Lee! This is goodbye!” I exclaim, throwing my hands up in the air. “Why are you acting all jolly? We are not seeing each other again.” I say that but it doesn’t feel like goodbye. He’s completely brainwashed me. It was the omelette, I swear.

        “Ivory,” he says, taking my hand. Drawing circles, he looks up and takes a breath. There’s a wrinkle between his eyebrows and a frown on his lips but it quickly disappears. He softly smiles and tilts his head at me. “I love you. That’s not going to change overnight. You might think that stopping us is the best idea, but I don’t. You can leave but I won’t give up on you—on us. No matter what you say.” He kisses my hand and then lets me go. His leg gently nudges my foot into the elevator and the door closes slowly. “See you later, love.”

        I’m speechless even long after I get to the ground floor. I’m blinking rapidly, trying to process his words, as I walk outside. The heat suddenly hits me since the world isn’t air conditioned nicely like Lee’s hotel. My hair starts sticking to my neck immediately.

        I barely notice that a valet is standing directly in front of the hotel with my car behind him. My hands pat down my pocket but I don’t find my keys. The valet raises his hand and my keys rattle from his fingers. He has the same stupid grin as Lee.

        “Thank you,” I say when I retrieve them and hop into my car. He must’ve gave them to some worker while I was asleep to go fetch my car. Poor guy because I had parked at least three blocks away.

        In the car, there’s not only a water bottle but a whole package! I’m talking at least fifty. How did someone load these into my car so fast? I try hard to not roll my eyes at it because it’s a very Lee thing to do. Because I’ll definitely die of dehydration within the next two to three hours in a world full of pit stops and gas stations with little attached convenient stores. I guess I’ll have to thank him anyway because I didn’t bring cash with me.

            I begin my drive back to Brownwood and back to the harsh reality of the future.

wow a short chapter, i know, i actually have some of those

idk i feel like i'm slipping into a writer's block so i don't want to push myself because then i'll be in this horrible slump where i feel horrible and everything i write is trash anD LOL I HATE IT so sorry for the quick little corny chapter. it gets intense soon :-)

she says with a smile

and idk who i like in this situation. ivory for being a butt and just wanting to end them or lee for trying to avoid everything and being in denial that everything's ok and "fighting" for them lol they're both idiots honestly but its ok bc i luv them anyways ♥♥♥

i can't believe vacation is passing so fast and that new years eve is TOMORROW & ive done nothing this year wow lol big surprise and i want to change so bad but i have no idea where or who to start with and i want this to by MY year bc i'm getting old now and i'm turning THAT age and i want to love who i am and everyone and DO things but no time but UGH I SAY THE SAME THING EVERY YEAR AND MAKE EXCUSES I HATE NEW YEARS ITS ANOTHER YEAR OF FALSE PROMISES AND HOPELESS ATTEMPTS OF CHANGE but fuck that!!!! POSITIVITY!!! omg do u see how torn and fucked i am?? i want to be positive but i fight w myself IM SORRY U HAD TO READ THIS

thank you for reading, sweethearts! i can't thank you guys enough though on how much you've supported me this year and REALLY kept me going--not just writing but in life too--just THANK YOU. please share ur feelings on everything as per usual ;-)

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