White Rabbit(62)
“Are you serious?” Sebastian straightens up a little so he can look me in the eye, a pathetic, wrung-out smile on his beautiful face. He wrestles his mouth open, but no sound emerges, and he has to try again. “I was going to keep those forever,” he whispers. “I look at them all the time, so I can remember how … how freaking awesome that day was—how actually happy I felt for the first time in forever.” Then, apparently determined to say all kinds of things that make no sense, he continues, “Rufus … fuck. Don’t you understand? I’m in love with you.”
Suddenly, I’m back on the ground behind the gas station, winded and dizzy and totally disoriented. “I don’t … I don’t think … You can’t—”
“I knew it that afternoon,” he barrels ahead, afraid of losing his nerve—or maybe just afraid of letting me finish. “Actually, maybe I even knew it before we started dating—when you told me about the time you donated your birthday money to the Humane Society in the third grade. I thought it was so cute, and so … amazing. You’re funny, and you’re interesting, and you’re hot.” He blinks, shyly. He actually looks shy. “The reason I looked for you tonight, the reason I wouldn’t let you ditch me, is because you’re literally the only thing that made me happy, and I treated you like shit.”
“Sebastian…” I can barely breathe.
“I’m so sorry,” he goes on, his voice wavering again. “What I did was totally messed up. It’s just … I kept telling myself that we were only fooling around, and that it wasn’t serious, but when you said you loved me … when you said it first—”
“Oh,” I say faintly.
“I had to either say it back, or run the other way.” He wipes his eyes again. “And because I’m the world’s biggest chickenshit, I ran. I couldn’t even tell you to your face that I wanted to break up, because I was afraid of what I’d really say if I tried it in person.”
My head starts spinning again, the recent past turning upside down so fast I can’t keep pace with it, all my bitter certainties suddenly called into question. I’ve fantasized about this moment so many times—Sebastian tearfully admitting he’d actually loved me all along—but I can’t remember any of my lines. “But … but, I mean. You went back to Lia. You told her you loved her.”
“That was the second shittiest thing I’ve done to anybody. I wanted to believe it, so I told myself it was true, but the second we were official again I knew it was a mistake. Lia … we used to work, but now we can’t even be in the same room without fighting.” Pleadingly, he searches my eyes. “I did so much stupid shit, and I know I hurt you, Rufe, but please let me make it up to you. I’m not asking you to … take me back or whatever. I know how pissed you are. But can we please maybe just start over? Can we please go back to being friends? That’s all I’m asking.”
I swallow hard, my skin alive with some feeling I can’t define, and try to sort out my words … but I have no speeches left; my pride still demands its pound of flesh, but the rest of me has lost the will to collect. From the moment I held him, or maybe from the moment he kissed me—or maybe even from the moment I left Lucy’s house with him in the first place—I’d already started giving him a second chance.
“What if I do want to take you back, though?” I whisper, even more nervous than I was that time I asked him if he had a condom. More nervous than the first time we saw each other after our kiss in Mr. Cohen’s classroom.
I’m not good at this stuff. I don’t want any more bruises on my heart—but I no longer have the strength to pretend that I’m okay moving on without him.
He just stares at me like he’s afraid to trust what I’m saying, and so I pull him haltingly closer. And press my lips to his.
20
It’s my first breath of air in six weeks. We kiss desperately, struggling through the gap over the center console and tumbling into the backseat, my wound screaming in protest as it scrapes across the rough upholstery. Sebastian’s shirt pops a stitch as we fight it over his head, and then I lose myself in the thrill of being with him again. The night is a hunter, stalking us with realities we still have to face—Sebastian’s parents, his friends, my friends—but we forget them all, clinging to each other and finding the rhythms I’d once thought were gone for good. Reality can wait.
Later, with his mouth nestled against the curve of my neck, after we’ve cleaned ourselves up with the last of the McDonald’s napkins, he murmurs softly, “I love you, Rufus.”
“You told me that already,” I point out, but I’m grinning like an idiot, because hearing it again is amazing.
“Get used to it.” His fingers creep along my sternum. “I’m going to say it over and over, because I can’t believe how good it feels. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” It does feel good.
“And, you know.” He props himself up on one elbow, peering down nervously. “I guess … there isn’t really any point in my trying to keep it a secret anymore. You know? I mean, my dad knows, so it’s like the shit’s already hit the fan. How much worse can it get?”
It takes just a moment for his words to sink in. “You mean, like … are you thinking about maybe telling people? About us?”