Teardrops

Chapter 38: Ice Princess

Chapter 38;
(Shelly)

It was only after s'mores and exchanged numbers and promises to keep in touch and never forget, that I ended up alone with Donny in the truck. We were waiting for Lexi to stop talking to Mrs. Vampire face, and I didn't know what they were talking about. I was worried that if Lexi found out how rude I had been, she would be disappointed in me, because, after all, Lexi was a nurse too.

My stomach burned with shame.

"Hey, butterfly." Donny was talking to me.

"Hey." I couldn't just ignore him, but I didn't know what to say, either. It was too confusing. To be in such a dark place when people try to care about you. It's confusing.

But then I feel terrible for resenting it. Because like, what, am I just spiting them? How dare people love me. It's absurd.

But, it's real.

"You okay?" his voice was soft and velvety, like a rabbit's ear, or a teddy bear.

"Yeah." No.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"No." It wasn't. Although, it almost was. I was waiting for him to mention his speech, ask what I thought of it. He was waiting for me to mention it.

"Oh." We both watched the silhouette of Lexi throw her head back, laughing, in the light of the campfire before he spoke again, "Well, that's good."

"Yeah." my mind was racing, telling him in hundreds of different ways that I was scared he didn't like me because he said he wasn't flirting and if that wasn't flirting then what was? And that part in the speech, about us being a good team, was that a kind of proposal? Were you asking me out? Or are we just friends?

"Yeah." he answered. I couldn't see his face, in the darkness, and all I could see were two small campfires reflected off of his eyes, so that I could even guess where his face was. I wondered if his 'yeah' had had as much hidden meaning in it as mine had.

"No." I said.

"What?"

"Just mixing things up."

"You're good at that." Donny's voice sounded bitter, a lilt that in no way attracted me to him. Bitter anger was everything I hated about myself, and finding it in someone else in no way lessened my dislike of it. But Donny wasn't angry, just...

I couldn't tell, in the dark, where I couldn't read him like an open book in the set of his features and the shade of his eyes. The darker they were, the more passionate he was. When he was teasing, they were a light green like the stain on your jeans when you roll around in the grass. Not a dark green, just a soft, barely there green that sparkled and reminded me of glamorous Easter eggs. When he was angry or really close to kissing me when he thought I couldn't tell, they were a dark green like a deep ocean, or the leaves of a shadowy forest right before sunset when their vibrancy is concentrated and beamed at you by the small photons still being thrown into the air. I sighed in frustration, unable to gauge if he was strong enough for the truth. If he would be okay if I was honest and burdened him with the giant mistake that was me.

"Sorry."

"You never answered me that one night, a long time ago." He was brooding, now. Lost in something nearly unreachable from the present time.

"What?"

"You said something about being sorry for being you. I asked you about it in the middle of the night. You didn't want to tell me."

"Donny-" I didn't know what I was going to say, so I was almost grateful when he interrupted me. Almost.

"I meant it, you know. What I said today. It shouldn't have taken the prodding of some nurse with a stick up her ah- ... up her butt to get me to finally say it, but just because I had the prodding doesn't mean that it meant any less to me when I said it."