Riding With Brighton(48)

Molly huffs. “Don’t you even think about trying to compare our two-year-long relationship with your one-day fling.”

“Fling?” I ask, genuinely hurt. I turn to Brighton. “Fling?”

He smiles and looks at Molly. “It’s not a fling.”

She rolls her eyes.

“All I’m saying,” I carry on, pretty sure I’m just tossing myself into her cauldron to be stirred around with all the other assholes of the world, “is that Brighton showed me the flip side of my life, kind of like Shaw just did for you. It’s just interesting to see it happen to someone else because, you know, it’s crazy how quickly your perspective can change when you see the world through someone else’s eyes.”

“Still,” Molly says, “you can’t compare what I have with Shaw to what you have with Brighton.”

“Why not?” Brighton asks.

She glares at him, then turns her intimidating face back to me. “What do you even know about him? Why do you even like him?”

“Oh my God,” Nico moans. “Seriously, someone kill me now. My life is one big romantic drama, and I don’t even have a fricking girlfriend. I need new friends.”

I ignore him and answer Molly’s question. “I actually thought about that a lot last night before I called him.” I lean into the table and turn my head so I can see Brighton. “You want to hear something creepy?”

“Um… sure?”

“You were like my role model. I seriously thought you were everything I wanted to be.”

“Gay superheroes are hard to come by around here,” Molly pipes in. Brighton and I both glare at her. “What?”

“That’s not why,” I tell Brighton. “I mean, it was part of it. But really it was the way you talk to everyone like you don’t even see what they look like or what they’re wearing or who they’re friends with. And it’s because you show up at school in pajama pants and shirts that say I Can’t Even Think Straight and still manage to turn on more girls than anyone else. And then the next day you’re all dapper in your dark jeans and white button-down like you belong on the cover of GQ. The point is—you do whatever the hell you want to do, and I love that about you. And I seriously loved just being near you, and I had convinced myself that that was the reason why—I literally wanted to be you.”

“That is creepy,” Nico tells me, and honestly I forgot there were other people at the table.

“It’s kind of sweet,” Brighton says with a smirk.

I shrug at him. “It turns out I was wrong. I don’t want to be you. I just want you. And that’s what I was thinking about before I called you. Why?”

“Because he’s hot,” Molly says.

“Nope,” I tell her.

“Because you like pajama pants?” Nico wagers.

“Okay, this isn’t open for a panel discussion. Can I just tell him why?”

Molly shrugs and Nico says, “If you must.”

I look back at Brighton who’s chewing on the inside of his mouth to keep from laughing. “That day we had a conversation in class about oracles, dreams, Bics… weird, random, unimportant nothingness.”

“That’s a crap reason,” Molly says, but I ignore her.

“And that’s how our conversations always go—weird random shit just comes out of my mouth without me thinking about it, and it dawned on me last night before I called you that those are the conversations you should be having. The ones where you don’t have to think, the ones that have no real purpose, the kind where you are just comfortable being yourself. And then I realized, you’re the only person who I talk to like that. And that talking to you, not your looks or your attitude or your level of awesomeness, is the reason American history was the highlight of my life.”

“That’s awesome,” Shaw says.

“That is pretty awesome,” Brighton agrees.

“But wait… there’s more,” I inform the table, and Nico and Molly both moan in protest.

I turn back to Brighton. “The weird thing was, Molly’s right; I didn’t know anything about you. We’ve spent hours talking, and yet… I knew nothing. You never told me anything about your life. It bothered me at first because how can you really like someone if you don’t know anything about them? But then I realized that I did. I mean, I didn’t know what your favorite color is…. still don’t actually…?”

“Blue,” Brighton tells me. “What about you?”

“Green.”

He nods.

“So I had no facts about your life but really, I knew you. I got how your mind works. I totally understood your sense of humor. I had a pretty good grasp on how you see the world. Most of the time I could predict what was gonna come out of your mouth—at least when you were making small talk with other people, or flirting with girls. But when you talked to me, the words that came out of your mouth were almost always surprising. And I lived for it. I lived for what you were gonna say next. And suddenly it all made sense. For someone who’s never had a real relationship, I suddenly had a very clear view of what I was looking for.”

“Which is?” Molly asks and I smile because… well, she cares.

“Someone who I totally understand yet manages to surprise me every single day. Someone who opens my eyes and makes me think. Someone who can make me feel excited and inspired every day of my life simply by saying words…. And then today happened.”