This boy next to my room

60

Connor

I didn't miss this room at all.

Same for the bathroom.

Or maybe I do, a little, thanks to the memories that lurk there.

After spending about 30 minutes putting my things in my dressing room, I collapse on my cozy bed, which is much bigger and more comfortable than the one on the cruise.

I've been pestering June with messages, I feel like I can never be on good terms with her for very long. There will always be something to mess up our reconciliation and it's annoying.

I'm exhausted from worrying.

But I still want to see her, to finalize what we had started in the room on the cruise before Cynthia interrupted us.

And speaking of the devil, here she is, suddenly entering my room through our toilet.

I straighten up, confused, seeing the look on her face. She is not angry but she looks stressed, her fingers play nervously with the sleeve of her black sweater and her gaze is focused on my chest.

I quickly understand why she is acting this way ; I haven't put on a shirt and she's intimidated by it. I smile proudly as she rolls her eyes as she approaches my bed.

She sits down next to me.

"If you came to berate me about Cynthia, know that I was..."

"No, it's okay. I don't care anymore. I just need you to be honest with me." She interrupts me. I analyze her facial expression and can no longer decipher what she's thinking.

"Uh sure."

I'm sincerely apprehensive about what she is going to ask me, but all I can hope is that it has nothing to do with what she knew about me and my past. I don't plan to talk about it anymore.

Her green beads stare at me and I can finally read the hesitation in them.

I feel like she's going to make a statement to me, and if she does, I'm going to throw myself out the window.

"What do you want from me ?"

I can't help but silently sigh in relief. It's not a statement but it's still a hard question to pin down, what do I want from her ? I don't even know how to totally answer it.

Seeing my confusion she adds:

"I mean, where do you want us to go ? Because I'm not able to put a word to what defines our current relationship anymore. One day we kiss, the next we hate each other.. I'm lost. What do you want from me Connor ? You want us to be what ?"

I had to prepare myself for that too.

She was going to ask me that at some point and the problem is that unlike her, I prefer to stay in an undefined relationship.

She's right when she says we're not friends, because friends don't kiss. We're not enemies either for the same reason.

"We don't have to put a word about what we are." I reply.

"Yes we have. I don't like being in the blur. You and I both know how dangerous our relationship is."

"Dangerous ?" I repeat.

"Dangerous because if we continue, one of us might fall in love and I can tell you in advance that it will end very badly if that happens."

Her words immediately cause a powerful block in me.

Love, always love..
but understand me June, I don't want that.

"We're just having fun. I won't fall for you, you can believe me. but if you think you are or you will, then we'll stop everything."

I said this with such firmness that I see her blink. Unfortunately I couldn't do otherwise, she knows my experience with love and I'm not ready to go through this hell a second time.

She doesn't answer and her eyes flee from me.

Did I aim right ?
Holy shit, no, everything but that.

Still nothing, she keeps running away from me with her eyes while I desperately look for a connection with them.

Her mutism wanted to say absolutely everything and that provokes in me a true emotional fireworks; So much so that I lose the sense of my cold blood. I feel close to the explosion, my heart takes little by little an irregular rhythm, accelerating more with each breath.

Please don't prove me right.

"Let's stop everything then." She sighs after several seconds of heavy silence.

I want to ask her why but I already know the answer.

She gave it to me by indirectly telling me that there is a possibility that she's in love with me.

Or that she falls in love with me.

But either way, it would amount to the same thing.

I'm torn between two emotional states. The first is the joy of knowing that she could potentially love me, and maybe even be mine. But this dream, which seems to straight out of a paradise, is unfortunately not possible with me.

Because the second emotional state shows such anguish that I even come to be repulsed, like the fucking asshole I am.

This secondary state unfortunately wins the battle against the first, so now I prepare to act like the biggest asshole on earth with her by coming out with something like, "It's too bad for you if you love me because it's not and it's never going to be reciprocated."

But something is blocking me.

Something that hides deep in my heart : honesty.

Honesty, the vermin that prevents me from packing it in. Because it communicates something to me, something I never wanted to feel towards her.

The attachment I feel for her.

In a way, I think I'm in love with her, too.

Damn.