The Impact of Intimacy

Chapter Fourteen - Glass Houses

Hudson

I was in love with her.

It wasn't exactly some kind of grand revelation. I'd known it for my entire life. Bailey Sawyers and I were destined to be.

Still, as I watched her bite her fingernails, and stare at her reflection in her car's side mirror I couldn't help but swoon. She was so inadvertently beautiful - full of quiet elegance, and a kind of grace that no amount of makeup or high end perfume could buy. Everything about Bailey made me want to scream. Scream from the top of the Vertie water tower how fucking much I loved her, and how fucking unfair this entire situation was.

You could argue I'd known all these years I'd loved her, but never said anything. Thinking back, that kind of logic wasn't completely unfounded. I'd sat around, and twiddled my thumbs, and squandered it all away. I'd just never garnered up the courage to cross that line between friendship and more. Not until she stole my vape that night, and our fingers brushed, and she looked so sad.

When I'd initially suggested our great sexploration, I was shocked she'd taken me up on my offer. Her scientific mind, paired with her amazing body had driven her curiosity, and I was more than willing to be her study buddy.

Our first kiss had been everything I'd expected it to be...and more. Not to mention the first time I felt her, tasted her, made love to her. It was like every step along the way just kept getting better and better.

I kept falling deeper and deeper, until I was absolutely fucking lost. A ship out at sea, that had been hit by a title wave, and capsized ten times over. A girl like Bailey could make you forget your shitty upbringing, your shitty fucking town, your shitting fucking life.

She was like a beacon of light for all the lost boys in Vertie, so it wasn't a total surprise when Bryce Hall started coming around. Despite his less than noble intentions, I could tell he was just another moth to her flame. Her raw, understated, devastatingly beautiful flame.

She was the kind of girl you spent forever with. The kind that you held onto and never let go - when the time was right and you could deliver what she deserved. Which was more than her run down Volvo, and her second hand wardrobe. She deserved diamonds, and pearls, and a love that would be more brilliant than any of the rest of it.

A love that I was too young, and too broke to provide. Still, I found myself trying. The picnic at sunrise. The way I'd selfishly made love to her that one last time. My body telling her how much I loved her, and how broken I was to let her go.

These past few weeks had proven that I was a coward. Both in how I had failed to express my feelings for her, and stand up for what I believed in. For what I needed. Her.

I'd watched as she sobbed out her love for me, revealing how she wanted to make us work past this summer. For our entire lives if I let her, and I wanted to. God I wanted to.

I wanted to kiss her in that very moment and reciprocate all of her feelings, ease her fears, and be everything she needed. But for some reason I couldn't. I just stood there, mouth open, spouting a bunch of lies I could barely even stand.

Somehow, in wanting to give her time to grow, and for me to chase my dreams, I'd lost the only dream that ever really mattered.