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Untitled Part Fifteen - Mason

Anita's face flushes as she begins to nervously laugh. She stammers, not fully finishing one thought before voicing the next and finally finishing on, "I-I- uh- ha, I was actually going to say the same thing."

Of course she was.

My body goes tense, a feeling of dread settling in my stomach. Annie continues to ramble on and on, something about being interrupted before, but I've stopped listening. I can't identify why I'm feeling this way, but it's closest to sadness. Am I sad that this is about to be over? Am I sad I'll probably never see Anita again after this? I don't know anymore. The feeling of wanting still sits with me, but nothing I want to act on, nothing I really want. It's just the idea of something I should want. Someone else's idea of happiness.

"Mason?"

    I blink and suddenly I'm back to reality. Anita watches me with worry, her head tilted slightly to the side. I would say something, but I can't find it in me to actually speak.

    "Do you want to start?"

    Yes.

    "No," I muster up every ounce of courage within me to address her, "you can start."

    Anita sighs and tightens her hold on my hands, looking everywhere but me searching for the right words. Her eyes begin to water but she blinks the tears away before I have a chance to comment on it. "I wanted to talk to you tonight because I owe you an explanation. I told you I was scared of everything, and that's true, but there's more to it than that and I think we both know it." We sit in silence for a moment taking it all in- the calm before the storm out, both knowing that after this our relationship will be changed forever, for better or worse.

    Anita takes a deep breath and we're back: the beginning of the end.

    "We've known each other since we were small, we've fought battle against battle side-by-side, some won, others lost but in the end it was always me and you: Mason and Anita against the world. That never bothered me. You were always home. Heh, and then my feelings became more and the idea of us being more frightened me. Wondering was dangerous. You never expressed any signs of feeling the same way I did- do- we were always just friends to you, and it would have been so easy to tell you the way I felt but I was so convinced that that meant losing you. I thought my only solution was to remove you from my life completely because I was scared of my feelings and I thought being away from you would change that. I didn't want to like you. I didn't want to ruin what we had, but in the end I failed anyway. I ruined what we had, I pushed you away, I hurt you. I've never, I will never, regret anything more in my life than that.

    "So you understand that when the opportunity presented itself for this summer, I had to take that chance. I had to try. And bless your heart you were willing to give me a second chance, although as excited as I was I was still scared of messing things up with you because even after everything you still meant the world to me. I didn't deserve a second chance, but you were still willing to give it to me and for that I am eternally grateful.

    "And, what this is all coming down to is that... Mason, I love you and I can't bear to lose you again."

    And then suddenly, the distance between us is closed and Anita's lips are on mine. She's kissing me. Unsure what I'm meant to do now I sit entirely skill, not a fraction of interest spiking within me. No butterflies in my stomach, no pounding heart, and no urge to kiss her back. It's nothing like what they describe in books and movies, no special feeling when it finally occurs to me that I've been silly this whole time and that romantic element I've been missing from my life has been before me this entire time. Instead all it does is confirm indefinitely what I've been suspecting for weeks.