By the next evening, I was feeling better. I'd woken up alone today - the same way I'd woken up even after sleeping with you. At least in my room at home the bed was smaller, so it didn't feel as empty when there was just me.
The day had dawned as golden and crisp as an autumn leaf, and I'd pushed back my curtains to peer down at the street. Three days until the semester began. Senior year.
My mom knocked on my door - she must have seen the light spilling out from beneath it, since I'd opened the curtains, but her knock was light and almost cautionary, as if she was still afraid to disturb me.
Having no siblings, no father (at least, not one who bothered to contact me beyond birthday Amazon vouchers delivered to my email inbox and the usual Christmas text) to speak of, I'd grown up with just my mother. We'd always been close - I'd never lied to her, not properly, never really disobeyed her.
Ironic that the one time I try to do something secret, something meaningful (and maybe a little rebellious, for me) is the one time it all ends in tears.
I opened the bedroom door, knowing full well the conversation was about to happen - that I would not be able to, would not want to, even, do anything but tell her the whole truth.
"Morning, honey," she said quietly, tilting her head, trying to catch my eye. She was already asking me to tell her, telling me it would be okay, whatever it was - she just hadn't said that yet. It had been like this for as long as I'd known. Mom and I never needed words.
But sometimes it was nice to give them anyway.
I told her everything that morning.
--
By the evening, like I said, I didn't feel so down about it. Still a little low, sure, but my mother had made everything seem less overwhelming, less life-shattering. My mom had a way of doing that.
"I know it feels big right now," she said as we were cleaning up after dinner, and I kept playing the words over in my head. She smiled reassuringly at me from the sink. "But it's just high school, baby. You won't be so hung up on everything for ever. You'll be out in a year, and you won't have to think about him again, okay?"
That last bit wasn't quite so easy to believe. I tell my mother everything, I do, but I hadn't told her about you - about the history of you. How I'd been thinking about you since fourth grade, and how I'd never stopped. And how, this past summer that you'd finally noticed me, I was the happiest I'd ever been.
It's just high school, sure. You won't be so hung up on everything for ever, I could believe that. But you won't have to think about him again? Not thinking about you was not something I knew how to do.
At the precise moment I was looking at her, thinking, hmm, not so sure about that part, about to reply, my phone began buzzing in the back pocket of my jeans.
I took it out, and my breath caught in my throat.
Your name lit up the screen.
YOU ARE READING
august
Fanfiction"august sipped away like a bottle of wine/cause you were never mine..." *** this is just a little writing exercise i'm doing for a bit of a break from longer projects! for this reason it's a bit messy, just for fun :) this is a short story based on...
