Secret Love Song

The One With The Bubblegum

The sound of a door closing shut woke me up. 

I looked around. I wasn't at home. Valen was laying next to me, still asleep, and I noticed her hand was holding mine. She looked like an angel. Her skin was pale and delicate as porcelain, and she had this lingering smile. 
We kissed, I remembered. We kissed all night until we fell asleep. My cheeks burned up, and suddenly my muscles were pulling a smile I had no control over. 

Then it hit me: a door shutting. There was someone in the house. 
"What the hell?" a woman's voice, the type of voice you just know comes from a mother, vociferated. 
"Fuck," I mumbled. I hit Valen's arm and she woke up. Her eyes were still closed and she looked insanely adorable. 
"What the fuck, Steve?!" the mother continued, completely freaked out this time. 
"We gotta go," I said. 
"What?"
"I'm gonna murder you!" the shouting continued, and Valen glanced at the door, trying to understand what was going on.
"Shit," she voiced, as if she was suddenly comfortable with swear words. 
We stood up, opened the window, and a bunch of people came into the room with us. Valen was the first to leave. 
"Let's go, let's go," I made sure everyone left before me so that I could make sure to close the window. Naomi waited for me in the front yard. I jumped out and grabbed her arm. We ran. A few blocks later, we stopped. I tried finding Valen, but she was gone. 

She ignored me the whole weekend, and at school that Monday, she didn't speak to me at all. In between fifth and sixth periods, I ran into her in the hallway. 
"Hey," I tried to say but she quickly ran inside the bathroom. 
She was ghosting me. I couldn't believe her.

I knocked on her door somewhere around seven pm. Her father opened it.
I had never actually seen him before. I saw him in magazines, and on television and Valen would talk about him all the time, but this was my first time seeing him.
His hair was grey and short, his beard was too; it surrounded his jaw and chin, and he had a small mustache. He was on the white side, but he wasn't by any means as pale as Valen was. His skin was rather tan, instead. He was wearing this big-man suit, and I felt intimidated, but then I remembered what his daughter told me. He was just a ridiculous excuse for a man. He disgusted me. 
"Hi," I said. 
"Nacha, right?" he had no interest in being perceived as nice, which I got from the blank stare on his face when he asked me this. 
"Yeah," I said, bitting my cheek from the inside. He made me uncomfortable. 
"She's in her room," he let me in and left the apartment, for some reason. 

I went into her room. She was sitting on her bed, reading Call Me By Your Name. 
"Hey," I mumbled. 
"Hey," she looked up and her cheeks gained this pink-ish color one could consider a blush. Somewhere inside my mind, I was smiling. "What's up?" she stood up and came my way. 
"Uhm-" I choked, "you know what's up," she rubbed her arms, "we kissed the other night, and then you completely ignored me. I don't understand you. You kissed me."
"I know, I just-" she tried explaining but I wasn't finished.
"I'm not here to tell you that I'm mad at you if you don't want to kiss me again, because that'd be okay. As long as you tell me."
"There's nothing to tell."
"No!" I yelped, but then I slowed down, "there is something to tell, because- Maybe this isn't a big deal to you. Which, honestly, knowing you, I doubt. But it is to me, okay?" she was staring at me, speechless, yet all I saw was how amazing that flowered nightgown looked on her. "I like you, Valen. I have liked you since the day we met," my eyes filled with tears and my throat clogged, "and when you kissed me-" just remembering it made my heart skip a beat, "it meant something. It meant I wasn't insane, it meant whatever it is that I feel, this inexplicable connection, you felt it too," the tears threatened to leave my eyes, "and then you just went and ignored me.
"So I'm begging you, if you don't feel the same way, just tell me, and we'll go back to being friends, it's cool, I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is the possibility. It is driving me insane. I can't sleep, I can't think, I can't fucking do anything! It is all I think about. Just- just fucking say something," I whimpered, the tears finally flushing down my face, without my consent. 
"I-I-," she couldn't think of any words, "it's not- it's not that simple, Nacha! What you're asking me to do it's- it's too much," she exploded. "Have you thought that maybe I don't know what I feel? And you're demanding I give you an answer now, which I can't do. I don't know what to tell you."
"Yes, you can!" suddenly, I was screaming. "I'm not asking if you want to marry me, I'm asking if you feel something!" I didn't know how this ended up an argument, but I was crying and yelling, and she was mad at me. 
"I don't know!" she screamed. 
"Honestly, I don't think it's that hard," I walked towards her, and continued to do so until she was against the wall. I didn't really know what I was doing. "Just tell me you don't want this," I leaned in, "tell me to stop, and I will." I could feel her hot, damped, uneasy breath on me and my every nerve came alive almost instantly. I grazed her hand with mine, and her breath was cut short. I couldn't breathe either. "And I will never bother you with this again," I whispered, "and I promise you," I ran my finger through her arm and she closed her eyes, "we'll still be friends. But if you don't," I was so displaced at that point I couldn't even put words together, "then just- just-"
I placed my lips on her neck and I kissed it. One small, easy, innocent kiss; but when she didn't say anything I continued, making my way to more sloppy endearments, and the universe entirely disappeared. 
It was just the two of us. 
Sharing this passion, this connection, this intensity together. 
Making us one. 
And we weren't even in her room, we were floating. 
Up in the air, shortening the distance between us.

"Stop," she mumbled. 
I let go of her and raised my hands in the air to show her that I was done. I wouldn't do anything she didn't want me to. 
She moved to the other side of the room. 
"Nacha, I- I don't understand anything," she chuckled, but it was the sound of pain. "I have no idea what's going on inside my head," she looked at me with glassy eyes, "but what I can tell you is that- I can't stop thinking about the way you run your fingers through my hair, and that, somehow," she grinned, "you taste like bubblegum."

She stared at me for a few seconds. A glance that said it all. You're not insane.
Then she kissed me.
And we ran away together, to this place where nothing else exists.