Tainted: Listening to the Silence

EIGHT

Salvador

I watched Oliver leave my house without even saying goodbye and I felt like my heart was breaking in two pieces. I wanted to talk to him, tell him goodbye, that it would all be alright or that he could trust me, that I’d give anything, literally, to not make him have a panic attack like that again. He looked so honestly scared as he had that panic attack, and then so worried when he turned to look at me before Mina ushered him out the door and closed it. I turned immediately to glare at Ash. What was the f*****g big deal?! Yes, I had a friend over, yes, I hadn’t asked for permission, and yes, he had slept in my bed, but he’d said it himself he cried and I hugged him! And the way he reacted to her anger, how could she just continue to be angry after he’d almost cried in front of two grown women he didn’t know from Adam?

“Why did you do that to him? Didn’t you hear him bear his heart to you? Didn’t you hear him beg you to not be angry at him or at me or at all? Didn’t you see him fall apart right in front of you because his father hit him so hard and scared him so bad that he just can’t see another adult angry around him and not think that it’s because of him and that he’ll end up being beaten again? I mean, what is wrong with you for Christ’s sake?”

“You’re grounded,” Ash said in a menacing tone of voice. “And you better watch how you speak to me.”

I wasn’t buying any of that s**t. She thought she could intimidate me like she did with pretty much everyone else but I knew it was just a front. I knew she was all mushy inside, and that Oliver had shaken up something inside of her, and that she was hiding behind that fortress of her.

“Yeah, alright I’m grounded all you want, for a whole year or whatever, take my phone, my friends, my books, my guitar and bass, my music, everything. Take whatever you want but I still don’t get why you’re so mad just because we slept in the same bed and you heard him, we did nothing. He’s no different from Em or Dust mom, and they’ve slept in the same bed with me so many times I’ve lost count. Why was it alright with them and not with Oliver?”

“Because you didn’t ask for permission before you let him into the house, into your room and let him the night. I’m not buying for a single second that ‘he’s like any of my friends’ crap Salvador. I’ve seen the way you look at him.”

What? She knew? No way, I thought as I felt myself blush and my heart race, panic alarms started sounding in my mind. She couldn’t know! I haven’t been that obvious, had I?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Right, whatever you say, but whenever he’s over you’re staying in the living room. He’s not going up to your room anymore,” she said using that commanding tone of voice that didn’t work on me.

“What? You’ve got to be kidding me right now, are you going to ask to be present for each of our conversations too?”

That was too much, too many limits, too unfair, I hadn’t ever given them a reason to treat me like this to take away my freedom. What if I wanted privacy? What if I wanted to tell him something I didn’t want them to know? It’s not like I could whisper!

“Don’t tempt me Salvador,” she said with a menacing tone. “You’re grounded, and if I let him come over, you’re both going to do your talking in the living room.”

“You know what? Do whatever you want, since clearly neither my opinion nor him baring his heart to you, nearly in tears, and swearing we did nothing doesn’t count for anything in this argument. I mean, do you not get how important that is? How important it is that he spoke, Ashlyn, he spoke, used his voice in front of you and told you about his past? This is the guy that has spent a whole month in this town and hasn’t spoken the first word in spoke, that avoids talking about his past like the plague.

“And you know what? You’re right, I do look at this guy differently, I treat him differently, because I know what a precious and rare thing has landed in my hands. Think for just a second that I have never let anyone stay the night, or even enter the house without your permission. Think that if it had been Dust or Em, I would’ve woken you up and told you, but not this time because that’s how much I care about the guy and how delicate his condition was when he came to me. But like I said, clearly you don’t have a flying care to give about none of these very important details.”

I turned and went right up to my room throwing my door and locking it, because telling her “f**k you” had never been so tempting. I had escaped before I did any more damage but I was pissed and again this was something that had never happened before. I could hear my mom yelling at me to come back here, that we weren’t finished but I was sure finished with this stupid fight. I undressed and went into the bathroom, planning to take a long, long, long hot shower to calm down a little. My muscles relaxed under the pressure of the water and I felt like I could finally breathe, and the tight knot in my chest became undone.

I took a slow deep breath and let it out just as slowly, willing myself to let go of the last of my emotions, my panic, my anger, my sadness. I hated being angry, I did, it just wasn’t part of my nature, it left me physically tired, as if I’d tried swimming against the current, never mind fighting. I dried myself, brushed my teeth, and changed into a well-used pair of sweats and a Breaking Benjamin tee that had probably seen better days. I heard two knocks on my door and I sighed, thinking that it was probably my mom still looking for an argument.

I seriously debated not opening, because I’d just managed to cleanse all that anger from my body and if I let her in, she’d make me angry all over again. I went to open it nonetheless and when I did, my mom was there, like I’d predicted, just not the one I expected. Mina was stood there with one of her warm smiles and her arms wide open because she knew I needed a hug in the worst way possible. I stepped into the warmth of her embrace and, against my will, my breath hitched with unshed tears because seeing Oliver like that had broken my heart. I steeled myself against the tide of tears that wanted to overwhelm me when that image popped into my head. Focus on Mina Sal, maybe she had good news. After all, Ash could have a bad attitude but Mina could be more stubborn and had very effective convincing methods that I didn’t want to know about.

“Can I come in?” She asked when I stepped away.

I nodded and stepped aside to let her into my room, sitting on my bed as I waited for her to sit beside me. She looked around when she came in, probably noticing that the piles of books in my floor had grown in height and number.

“We are probably going to have to get more shelves for you. If not, you’ll probably cover your entire floor with books,” she said laughing.

I just shrugged, knowing that she was beating around the bush, which meant that her news were not all good, and waited for her talk. She sighed and sat on my chair, which was weird because she normally sat on my bed with me.

“Look, Sal. You know how your mother gets sometimes. She didn’t mean most of what she said. Or well, at least she doesn’t now. What Oliver said cut her deep, because she thought he was accusing her of being violent with you. I talked to her when I came back and heard you slam your door.I explained to her that it had nothing to do with the person actually being capable of becoming violent. I explained that person getting very angry and said that if I had been the one to get angry, he would’ve thought I’d hit him. This seemed to finally get through her thick skull and she calmed down a bit. And I managed to talk some sense into her about your being grounded.”

I looked a little hopeful at that and I think Mina noticed because she gave me a small smile.

“You’re grounded for two weeks for bringing someone over without asking for permission.”

The hopeful look slipped from my face, and I sulked, there was no other way of putting it, because I’d made a very little mistake, that had been explained, but I was still grounded.

“I’m still grounded.”

“You should be glad, she had thought about a month at first but I managed to make it two weeks.”

My eyes widened at that.

“A whole month locked in my house? I’d go crazy!”

“Exactly, so be glad it’s just two weeks. And well you know what Ash means when she says you’re grounded: no television, no band practice, and no friends over.

“Oh, Em’s going to love that, I know it, in fact, I can just picture her and the face she’ll make when I tell her. Oh yes, I can tell already that she’s going to throw a party.”

The sarcasm wasn’t lost on my mom and she gave me a disapproving look.

“She had originally thought about taking your bass and guitar, and your phone too. But I told her that would be a little too much.”

My eyes widened again.

“She had been planning to take my guitar and my bass away for two weeks? I can’t live without my music!”

“Exactly, so again be glad it’s just that. There is another small little thing though.”

At that point I didn’t know what else to expect, so I looked at her with guarded eyes and heart.

“What is it? You want me to do all the chores in the house for the whole two weeks?”

“Oh, I had forgotten about that. You have to do all the chores for a month.”

“What? No way.” I crossed my arms in front of my chest in resignation and indignation and frustration and whatever other negative word that ends in -ation.

“Yes way. Anyways that’s not what I was going to tell you. She also said that whenever you had Oliver over you had to keep your door open,” Mina said, looking a little embarrassed.

“We’re not going to do anything, did you not hear the guy as he begged Ash not to be angry? He said he’d cried himself to sleep and I’d hugged him through it, and that’s the Gospel truth. I swear to you upon my bass and my guitar that we’re just friends.”

I was getting riled up again, and I really didn’t want to, because I didn’t want to undo what the shower had done and I didn’t like fighting with Mina. I was grounded without friends and band and television for a week, and I had to do all the chores in the house, alone, and they were one hell of a lot, for a whole month, and on top of everything I had to keep my door open whenever I had Ollie over.

“Sal, we’re not stupid son, we’ve noticed how you look at him,” my mom said with a patient voice.

“Oh my God, yes, I explained this already, I said that I do look at him differently and treat him differently. And that’s because this guy trusts no one and talks to no one and let’s no one close but he let me get close to him and opened to me. And I’m really convinced that the pair of you do not understand what an honor it is to have him talk to you!”

This was so embarrassing, if both of my moms had noticed that, who was to say that Oliver hadn’t noticed too?

“Don’t change the subject here Sal, because that’s not it and you know it. You look at him like you did that other kid you liked in freshmen year. And you know how that ended. We’re just worried about you, ok?” My mom said, still using that patient voice, like she was trying to explain something hard to one of the kids in her class.

“Oliver would never do something like that to me.”

If I had been able to talk, I would’ve said that with a bitter tone of voice, and as it was I gritted my teeth in frustration. I hated remembering what Brent had done to me in freshmen year and they always reminded me. As if I would forget something like that any time soon.

“You don’t know that, Sal. At first, that kid had been nice to you too.”

“Oliver punched Brent in the nose to defend me, mom. Brent never did anything to stop the people that bullied me.”

“He did?” My mom said sounding surprised.

Well, I guess I had never really told her about what had happened that day we went to the hospital with Oliver and his mom. I told them something had happened with Brent but that day I was so embarrassed and pissed that Ally had to drive us to the hospital and that Brent had gotten away with everything again that I hadn’t wanted to talk about it.

“Yeah, he did and it was awesome, because Brent punched me first, and you saw what he did to me, and he looked like he was going to do it again. I was so scared but then Oliver stepped in, punched him right in the nose and broke it, I heard from Oliver.”

I felt a little smug about that, I mean, it served the asshole right to get a bit of his own medicine. And now he had broken his fingers or at least had done some damage to his wrist after punching that wall because he carried his arm in a sling.

“Brent threatened him too mom, tried to punch him and get him out of the way but Oliver didn’t leave me and betray me like Brent did.”

“Brent tried to punch him?!” Mom said sounding worried now.

“Yeah, but Brent didn’t do anything to him, I heard that Oliver ducked before Brent could connect the fist with his face and Brent ended up hitting the wall.”

“Wow. That Oliver kid is very brave,” mom, sounding like she couldn’t believe it and I guess nobody could really. “He doesn’t look like he could afford to make Brent his enemy.”

Oliver wasn’t beefy like Brent, yet he broke his nose with a single punch, and didn’t even break his hand in the process. Guess everyone thought Oliver was kind of a wimp because of his lack of what people would call substantial muscle development. He was lean instead of beefy, and his muscles thin instead of bulking and swollen like Brent, and sadly lean was in the wimp category. He told me he used to go running in the morning when he lived in the city, and well I guessed all those years of work out paid off, because he had enough force and muscle to defend himself.

“Anyway,” my mom said, getting up from my desk chair. “You’re grounded for two weeks and have to do the house chores for a month, and you know the rules with Oliver.” She started walking towards the door of my room before she turned again and gave me the mischievous smile I had inherited from her. After all I was born from Ash’s brother’s sperm and Mina’s egg, I had to inherit a few of her best traits and according to her Ash’s worst ones. “I think he likes you back, by the way.” After that she just closed the door.

What? Oliver liked me back? No way. I mean, I’d noticed some signs, and he’d had a very obvious tent in his sweats today but I just thought that I was over thinking things. Could it be that he liked me too? Oh God, I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight, I could already tell, I had to know if he did like me back, I had to ask him. But… how? I couldn’t just go over there, even if I wasn’t grounded, and ask him straight out -no pun intended- if he liked me or not. And I could bet you my bass that he wasn’t going to ask me directly either, he was so shy that asking me directly might just give him a heart attack. And anyway, I wasn’t sure if he liked me too, Mina couldn’t be trusted on this matters, though I wondered where she’d gotten that idea.

No, I would wait until I was sure to tell him something, after all, I didn’t want to be the i***t to ruin our friendship. We could go out after my lockdown was over, I thought and then blushed and tried to explain things to my mind, not in dates but just go out, get to know each other. I was being an i***t, getting all self-conscious and nervous when there was no one here to judge me but my own damn mind. Focus Sal, you were thinking about how to know more about him in order to find out if he likes you back or not. So time, we had to spend more time together so I could get a feel of him and know what I was dealing with here.

Maybe I could bring him to band practice, that would sure make it feel like less of a torture, but no, Em had a crush on me and that would be cruel to her. Maybe if I brought Oliver over, she would notice the way I supposedly look at him, and get the hint that chicks didn’t do it for me. Well, that was one good reason to bring him over, it could work, but I would be using Oliver and taking the cowards way out. No, I had to tell her myself, with my own words, that I was gay and that I liked Oliver before I brought him to practice. But then I wondered how she would react to my news, would she let him stay? Would she be jealous of him? That situation had the potential to get very, very, very bad. Maybe if I…

Right then I heard my phone buzz somewhere in my bed and got pulled out of my thoughts. It took me a while to find it because it had fallen to the small space between my wall and my bed, don’t ask me how it got there. When I finally found it, unlocked it and found a text from Oliver and I couldn’t help but smile a little.

“Hey, how bad is it over there?”

Aww, that was so nice of him, he was worried about the argument with my mom, he was checking to see Ash hadn’t killed me yet. He was so nice to me, how could mom think that he’d ever do something like what Brent did to me?

“Not as bad as it could be, I only under complete lockdown for two weeks, without band practice or friends. Oh, and I have to do all the chores for a whole month, which I consider is very unfair because I’m only grounded for two weeks why do I have to do the chores for longer than that?”

“I could help you after my own lockdown ends. Parents were very happy I got back. But still a bit angry that I ran away like that. I’m grounded for two weeks without friends too. Not that I have any apart from you. I also have to do the house chores during those two weeks.”

That made my heart feel like there was a hand grabbing it and squeezing tight, the way you do to sponges when you’re done washing and there’s left over soap in it.

“You do have more friends than me, remember that you have Em and Dusty now.”

“No. They’re your friends not mine.”

“Ollie, I’ve known them for years and years and they’ve made some friends outside of us three but they had never brought anyone to the music classroom, not even the person they were dating.”

There was a long pause during which I thought Oliver wouldn’t answer at all. I even locked the phone again and put it down getting up to do something else when I heard it buzz. I couldn’t help but smile again, my hand itching to unlock it and read the message, all because he’d answered.

“I don’t know what to say to that.”

“You don’t have to say anything, you just have to know that now they’re your friends too, just like me.”

There was another long pause and finally my phone vibrated in my hand.

“You left your CDs here. I noticed it when I came back and saw the little bag on my bed.”

Hmm, that was odd, he’d changed the subject, and I felt like insisting but then I thought I could cut the guy some slack.

“Oh, that’s true! I hadn’t even realized I didn’t have them with me, I would go over the get them, but you know, lock down and all, so just give them to me on Monday.”

“Are these your favorite bands?”

“Well, yes and no, I adore Breaking Benjamin to bits and pieces, but the other one, Bastille, is relatively new, I still like them a lot, especially the singer’s voice because it’s so rough and low.”

That was a bit of a dig, a bit of subtlety, to see if he took the bait and played the album while he had it with him and discovered Dan Smith’s awesome very grave voice.

“What do they play?”

“Well, Breaking Benjamin is rock, and I mean without anything else mixed in, but Bastille is Indie Rock, which I think you’ll like because they use the piano and keyboard a lot, as well as many other instruments.”

And we spent a while exchanging text messages, talking about music and books until I heard Ash calling me. I rolled my eyes and told him I’d text him later, that my enslavers were calling me back to work. I spent the rest of the day doing any type of chore you could imagine, even the things neither of my mom’s normally did. I even had to help Mina gets the weeds out of her precious little garden, and no amount of arguing that that was not a house chore helped my case. Stupid and unfair, I tell you, all because I had helped a friend in an emergency and hadn’t thought to tell them about it.

By the time I was done, I was so tired I wanted to just collapse into my bed and sleep for the rest of eternity. When I was showered and ready for sleep, I did just what I’s envisioned and collapsed on my bed, dead to the world in less than a minute. I got up the next morning, jumped into the shower and got ready for school, moving clumsily because I was still groggy and stupid with sleep and because my body ached like I’d run a marathon. As I was leaving for school, -on time by the way because I’d been threatened with an extra month of chores if I was even a single minute late while I was grounded- I noticed I had messages on my phone. I unlocked the touch screen and read them while I walked stepped out of the house. There were just two simple messages from Oliver, one from last night, “Good night,” and one from this morning, “Good morning.”

I couldn’t help the stupid smile that spread on my lips, even I tried to tell myself to stop being stupid. God I had it bad, no wonder Mina and Ash had noticed, but then I wondered how was it that Oliver hadn’t noticed yet. I was lost in my own thoughts until I heard the bell ring and noticed I was in the classroom and that class was starting. I really had to get the hang of this autopilot feature I had because it activated and deactivated on it own.

I noticed Oliver was sitting a few desks away from me, he probably hadn’t seen me yet, expecting me to arrive late like I always did. When the class ended, I tried to cross the sea of obnoxious students to tell him good morning, but he left before I could say anything. I sighed and went on to my next class and the next after that one until the bell for the recess rang. I went to wait for Oliver by his locker and when he approached and saw me standing there, he looked surprised. He probably thought I hadn’t come to school because he hadn’t seen me arrive late this morning.

I smiled at him and he gave me the squint smile back. He put his books in his locker and started walking towards the music classroom, no falter or doubt in his step. I followed him, marveling at the way his confidence had grown since the first time he spent lunch recess with us, and we walked in companionable silence. When we got to the music classroom, Em and Dust hadn’t arrived yet and my heart started to race even though I’d been alone with Oliver quite often since we’d become friends. Oliver tapped my arm to get my attention.

“I thought you hadn’t come to school.”

I felt so proud of him, there were no more long pauses when he signed, no thinking about what sign he was looking for, and his sentence structure was great.

“Yeah, I guessed so from the face you made when you saw me by your locker, but no, I was just on time for the first time in like five years.”

“Wow. The world’s going to end.”

Oliver looked taken a back and even a little scared, and I laughed because he was a great actor.

“No, I’m not doing it willingly, so it’s not going to end yet, it just that Ash said that if I was late, even if it was a single second, I’d have an extra month of chores.”

I thought he’d laugh, because I was trying to make a joke, but he didn’t, instead his face lost all the mirth it had held a second ago.

“I’m sorry. I’m the reason you’re grounded.”

I smiled reassuringly, trying to make him understand that I didn’t mind one single bit in fact…

“Don’t worry about it, if I could go back in time, I’d do the same thing all over again, without thinking it twice. I wouldn’t regret helping you out and letting you stay the night with me even if they had taken away my bass and my guitar.”

Oliver blushed a pale tone of red and turned to look somewhere else, which made my heart race because he was avoiding the conversation topic. Maybe it was because he liked me? Then he turned to look at me again and his face had changed, had lightened up and you didn’t have to squint that much to notice the smile in his face.

“I listened to the CDs yesterday by the way. Breaking Benjamin is really good, I liked some songs. But I loved Bastille. The lead singer is very good. I liked all the songs. You were right, they’re not shit.”

He gave me his heart-stopping smile this time and I would have to rename that smile because now it didn’t just make my heart stop it made it race as well. I smiled back and laughed, remembering the day we talked for the first time and what he’d said about my music.

“See? Told you, all you had to do was open your mind, your ears, and listen, and give them a chance to prove to you how good they were. Did you listen to the other one, the ones I selected for you specifically? Those girls have a great voice, and their music arrangements are awesome.”

Oliver nodded, that heart stopping smile still in place, and he was so happy, so excited about something as simple as liking the music I played. It made my heart sore as well, made me feel about fifty feet tall and appreciated.

“Yeah, I liked them too. Feel free to recommend me music whenever you want.”

“I was already planning on doing it, even if I didn’t have your permission.” I shrugged as if I didn’t care one way or the other, as if I didn’t have a single flying f**k to give about whether he wanted to deepen his musical education or not. I was fighting off a smile in the worst way possible but I knew that I was failing big time.

He made it look like he was indignant and outraged at me ignoring his wishes or lack of them, but I could tell that he like me, was trying to fight off a smile. I gave up and laughed and he tried to keep his serious face on but he ended up laughing along with me. And that’s how Em and Dust found us, laughing our asses off like a pair of idiots, according to Em.

The remaining two weeks were only survivable because of two things, the fact that I could still see Oliver and Em and Dust in school, and the long hours Oliver and I spent texting. We talked and talked and talked about everything and nothing all at once. He told me about his life in the city, about the different orphanages he’d lived in, and about learning sign language. I told him about the band and how we wanted to be professionals and sell albums someday and about Em’s harebrained idea to have an EP ready to send out to labels in two weeks. He told me to call him Ollie and then asked, very shyly if he could call me Sal, to which I answered that of course he could.

We talked and discussed every stupid little thing that went through our brains, but it still wasn’t anything all that important. It wasn’t my past or his past, and I was relieved, I thought neither of us was completely ready to talk or hear about that yet. Well, at least I wasn’t ready to explain why my mothers were so paranoid about him. It was quite nice because by the time the two weeks were up I knew almost everything about Oliver, except for his past, and he knew everything about me, except for my past too.

The day the lockdown ended I was actually excited to go to band practice and listen to Em b***h at me. I wanted to bring Oliver, but I hadn’t told her about my pitching for the other team yet, because, yes, I was still being a coward, sue me. Today, I have to tell her today, I thought as I walked into the school that morning, already planning things out.

I told Dust to meet Oliver on his way to the music classroom and to be sure they were a little late. Dust looked reluctant but he agreed anyways, he probably guessed what I had to talk to Em about and didn’t want me to do it. Dusty was all about doing any and everything possible to keep Em from hurting or coming into harm, and my telling her I was gay would break her heart. When the recess came, I walked to the music classroom like I normally did, but my chest felt tight and my stomach was churning. When I got there, Em was already waiting there, she was sitting on top of one of the desks, and I had a bad feeling because I’d hurried over to be early, so how was Em here earlier than me? I swallowed and willed myself to do what I’d come to do, it was time, it was unfair to keep leading Em on, even inadvertently, and touched her arm to get her attention.

“Hey Em.” Jesus, how lame can you get? Could you not think about another way to start the conversation?

“Hey Sal,” she said, and I could swear she sounded a little sad, in fact she looked a bit worse for wear, her clothes a bit out of order as well as her mass of red curls.

There was a brief pause in the conversation as I gathered my courage and then willed myself to move my hands, to tell her.

“Sal I need to ask you something,” she said right when I was about to tell her we needed to talk, “And I need you to be honest with me.”

I was a little taken aback, and a lot nervous, but I told her to ask away and that I’d be as sincere as I could.

“Do you like Oliver?” She said turning to look at me, her sad -yes, I was right, she was sad- green eyes meeting mine.

My eyes widened and I flinched involuntarily because at that moment I understood that I’d already been hurting her without being aware of it myself. That wasn’t the question I had been expecting, granted I didn’t know what I had been expecting, but it sure as hell wasn’t that. I thought about lying to her for a few seconds but then decided against it, she was my best friend, I couldn’t lie to her. Plus, lying would hurt her that much more now that she knew the truth, and I’d planned this whole conversation to keep myself from doing that. I sighed and nodded, meeting her eyes again.

“How did you know?”

She gave me a rueful smile that made my chest hurt, physically, and that made me feel like s**t for being a damn coward and taking so long to tell her about my liking boys better.

“Because you look at him the way I always wished you’d look at me.” I saw her eyes fill with tears but then in the next blink they were gone and I wondered if I’d really seen the unshed tears there or not. I wanted to throw my hands in the air in frustration and ask just how exactly I was looking at this guy and how come everyone and their mother noticed but the one guy that I wanted to notice didn’t. Focus Sal, you’ve got a heartbroken girl in front of you, it would be nice if you could focus on comforting her instead of thinking about yourself.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God. Listen Em, I’m sorry this is the way things turned out to be, it’s all my fault because I’ve been an i***t and I haven’t told you that…”

“You’re gay. I know. I’ve always known. I was just being my usual stubborn self, not wanting to see what was right in front of me,” she said, giving me another sad smile.

I sighed again, not really understanding how Em could hold crush of this size and power all these years even though she knew I was gay, sat next to her and hugged her tightly. The room was silent for a few minutes and Em cuddled into my side, and it was alright, because even though I didn’t know what went on in her head, I did know how to comfort people.

“We’re still good?” Em said in a small voice, turning to look at me.

The pain in my chest increased and from the bottom of my heart I wished I could’ve been born heterosexual so that I could love this girl the way she deserved it. But, if wishes were horses and all that, there was no way that could happen, so I had to make do with being her friend.

“Of course, we are great Em, I was actually worried it would be too awkward or too hard for you and that you’d stop being my friend.”

“Nah, I’m good. I’m a strong girl. My destined one will appear someday,” Em said with small smile, and if wishes didn’t mean much then maybe I needed to level up a bit, so I sent a small prayer to the skies that she’d find whoever it was soon.

I hugged her tighter and stayed there in the floor with Em, and that’s how Ollie and Dust found us when they came in. When I saw Oliver, I couldn’t help but smile at him, remembering again that today was finally the last day of my lockdown. We had already made plans of going to the city that weekend and I had to say that I was looking forward to spending the entire day with Ollie again. Maybe this time the day would be perfect, and, well, if it wasn’t, we could make plans to try again another weekend. Truth was that I hoped our dates were never perfect, that we would always have to plan a new one, for the rest of eternity. I wouldn’t mind having Ollie in my life from now until the end of time.