Four Doors Down(70)

I just glowered at him before he brushed past me and left the room without another word.

“Why don’t you just tell Becca that you love her?” A voice said from behind me. I turned to see Lisa standing there, leaning against the doorframe of my bedroom. She had just graduated from college and was home for a couple of months. She clearly heard the whole fight.

“I don’t love Becca,” I scoffed at her.

She cocked an eyebrow at me and smirked. “If you say so little brother.” Then she turned and walked away.

I had sat down and tried to think about something else. Tried to think about anything but Becca McKenzie. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t get her out of my head. The way she looked, the way she laughed, the way she rolled her eyes. She kept playing on a loop over and over in my head.

I had gotten up and made the twenty minute walk over to Jake’s house where he was shooting hoops. When he saw me, he passed the ball over, and I took aim and watched it fly through the hoop. I turned to him. “I think I love her.”

He rolled his eyes at me. “Well, yeah. Duh.”

After that, I tried to apologize to her, but she just ignored me and kept on ignoring me. The only good thing about that whole mess was that it seemed to put her off dating for a long time because I didn’t see her with anyone else.

She still totally ignored me, but she didn’t ignore Jake, and that was how I pushed my way back into her life, even if only fleetingly. When she was talking to Jake, I would be there and make a cocky joke. She couldn’t wait to get away from me, but at least it was some interaction with her. I could see how frustrated she grew when I was near her, how her walls came up, but I didn’t care. At that stage, I would do anything just to talk to her, but she would just stare blankly back at me or flat out ignore me.

I even turned up where I knew she’d be once or twice, but it never worked out how I hoped. One time I overheard Sam saying she was going to the beach with Becca, and I couldn’t resist the urge to turn up, the temptation of seeing her in a bikini too much for me. Sam had just smirked at me—I think she’s always known how I feel about Becca, but she’s too nice to call me on it—and Jake had laughed out loud when he realized Becca was at the beach and that was why I dragged him down there. Becca just sat there, ignoring me, letting the three of us have a conversation around her. Unfortunately, she was wearing a tank top and shorts rather than the bikini I had pictured her in but I was just enjoying being away from school with her and after an hour of Jake’s teasing and jokes she eventually relaxed just slightly and even said something directly to me at one point. But then Mason and John and a bunch of other’s from school turned up and she tensed up again. I didn’t even know how they knew where we were, but after the girls laid their towels out and I started throwing a ball around with the guys I turned back to them to find Becca and Sam rolling up their towels, getting ready to leave. Sam had waved goodbye in my direction and Becca said a few words to Jake and then they were gone. That’s kind of what always happened. Becca always got away from me as fast as she could.

I remember at the end of junior year telling myself that I had to get over it. I had to stop thinking about her the whole time. She really was not interested in me, she couldn’t stand me and I was only hurting myself by having this dumb, constant hope that she would change her mind about me. I wasn’t even letting myself think about her being my girlfriend. All I wanted was for her to talk to me again, to be civil to me, to have her back in my life in whatever small way I could get, instead of the looks of disgust and disdain I always got when I tried talking to her.

I thought I managed it. She was away the whole summer and I told myself I was over it. I dated over the summer, stayed busy working and playing ball, hanging with the boys the whole time. But then on the first day of senior year, I saw her get out of her car all the way from across the lot and that same old feeling was there, that same old hammering of my heart and that longing that’s only seemed to grow since she stopped talking to me. I saw her greet her friends as she walked to the main entrance, smiling and laughing at something someone said. I know the exact second that she saw me because her face turned into the mask she’s used on me since the day I f*cked up our friendship when we were twelve years old. She didn’t even glance at me. Of course, I wolf-whistled as she passed, anything to get her attention, but she didn’t even look in my direction. The guys saw it though, and although they didn’t say anything, I knew they knew how I felt about her. It was getting harder and harder for me to hide it. Jake’s the only one who knew how deeply I really felt about her, the only one I’d talk to about her.

As she passed us on the steps, Jake reached out from the end of our group to grab her for a welcome hug, and I tried not to grimace in annoyance. Jake’s my best friend in the whole world, but I hated how she was with him. She was herself with him; she always relaxed when she saw him and let down that wall she puts up with everyone but her close friends. I was jealous—really damn jealous. I mean, I know their relationship is purely platonic and they’re just good friends who have known each other for years, but I’d give anything for her to genuinely smile just at seeing me. She walked on and Jake saw me looking at them and rolled his eyes. He’d been telling me for years just to talk to her, to tell her how I felt. I didn’t want another lecture about it.

I remember seeing her at that party. I spent the majority of high school hoping she would show up at a party, that maybe she would be more relaxed outside of school and maybe let those walls down. Hell, I even made sure I invited my entire grade to my sixteenth birthday, literally everyone, hoping that if some of her friends came, she’d be more likely to turn up. All it got me was a trashed house and a month’s grounding for letting the party get out of hand.