I Love You to Death(13)

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When I fell in love with Sam, I wasn’t going to waste time waiting to tell him how I felt. I knew it as soon as I met him. And I knew I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to tell him either, not again, not like last time. The funny thing was, in the end it was Sam who said it first. And he said it so naturally, so unexpectedly that for a second I wasn’t sure whether it really happened. For a second it looked as though even he didn’t fully realise what he’d just said out loud.
We’d only been together for about two weeks. I was still staying in his room in the tiny cramped apartment he shared with Simon and Brandon, but had finally landed myself a job. I’d started paying rent and buying food, but I still got the feeling that neither of those two liked me bunking down here too much. That maybe I was cramping their style and they were starting to resent the fact I was living with them all. But every time I’d brought it up with Sam, all he said was, "I don’t really care what they think Ash. I want you to be here."
"Yeah but it’s uncomfortable them not wanting me here Sam," I said. "I feel like I’m intruding all the time."
"I’ll talk to them babe, I promise I’ll talk to them both."
I was lying in bed watching him get ready for school. He had an early class that day but I didn’t start work till lunch time. "You will?" I asked him.
I remember he walked back towards the bed, which was really just a double mattress on the floor, where he knelt down and kissed me before saying, "I will Ash, I promise I will. I gotta go, I love you babe."
We both froze after those words were out. I was looking at him waiting, trying to see if they were said as a mistake, whether he wanted to take them back. He was looking at me as though he was expecting me to freak out because he’d just said those words out loud.
But then he smiled at me, lent down and kissed me again before he said, "Too soon?"
"No, not too soon," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "Not if it’s true."
As his hand brushed my hair back, Sam said to me, "Yeah it’s true Ash. I love you."
Sam didn’t get to class that morning after all. When I said the same words back to him, we kind of had other things on our mind.



Threes; they can be evil, charms, wishes or simply the basis for harmony in music
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Playlist:
1. Bittersweet symphony – The Verve
2. Count on me – Bruno Mars
3. Make it without you – Andrew Belle
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I’ve always hated situations where I’m not going to know anyone. It’s why I couldn’t go to Nate’s wake and it’s why I never really made any friends. I don’t know why I can’t do it, but I just find it difficult. Difficult to talk to people, even before all of this other crap started.
Because of this, I’ve been called aloof, a bitch and much worse. To be honest, I no longer care. What I really am is incredibly shy, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Now it just makes my life simpler, because people find it easier to ignore me when they have this opinion of me. It’s better for everyone that I’m seen like this because then there’s less chance they’ll get to know me and less chance they’ll end up dead.
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I don’t know what to do about Luke’s party. We aren’t friends, not by a long stretch, but I know he’s going to keep asking me to come along. He’s already mentioned it three more times since he sent that email inviting me. It’s not that I don’t like him; that has nothing to do with it. There’s definitely something about him that intrigues me. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what it is, he’s different to what I expected.
The problem is, these days I know it’s a dangerous thing for someone to get to know me, to want to know me. Even though we aren’t actually friends yet, it will happen eventually and then everything will change.
After the cut hand, the dead fish and the phone incident, Luke and I have been circling, like sharks. By day I avoid him, but by night he emails me. A lot. Most of the time, I find myself emailing him back. It’s a lot easier when neither of us is face to face and to be honest it’s nice to have someone to talk to again. He must know something’s wrong with me, yet he still keeps talking to me. And that’s what has me confused, why does he? None of the stuff we talk about is very serious, I mean it’s hard to work out exactly what we could possibly have in common anyway, but he talks to me, for some unknown reason he talks to me.
But then, when we see each other at work, I still find it all pretty awkward. After everything that’s happened I feel too exposed, because he’s seen a part of the real me that I usually manage to keep hidden. I know it’s more than that; it’s that when he saw it, he didn’t run away. If anything, it’s only encouraged him, because now he seems to see a lot more, or wants to anyway. This makes me feel very nervous.
His party is this weekend and I still don’t know whether I’m going. I haven’t been to a party in months, not since Sam was alive and it makes me feel a little sick at the thought of walking into one now, especially where I won’t know anyone. In any case I don’t actually know where Luke lives, so that may solve my problem. Of course I could just ask him, but that would be too easy.
On Saturday however, when I come to work, my problem is invariably solved. Today there is a post-it note stuck on my coffee machine. All it says is;
3/303 Huntington Ave
8pm
I guess this is where he lives. I take the note off and put it in my pocket. I make Luke his coffee and take it out to him.