The Maine Attraction

34. Friends

Sawyer

When I came home, I didn't even know if you were going to speak to me. I had no idea that I would be kissing you, that I'd be hooking up with you, and that I'd be falling in love with you.

Yes, I said it and I mean it with my whole heart.

Sawyer Evans, I am so in love with you that it hurts.

 I reread the words that Avery had written to me for what felt like the hundredth time. 

I had no idea what day she was leaving, I hadn't talked to her since she'd left my house the night I found out my mom had cancer. I couldn't stop thinking about the way that we'd ended things, the way that I had ended things. I was really pissed off about my mom and I took every single ounce of my anger out on her. I knew it wasn't fair, but once the words had escaped my mouth there was nothing I could do to try and take them back.

I knew that I had hurt her, but I had no idea how to fix any of it. Truthfully, a part of me didn't feel like it mattered. She was leaving soon and I thought that the damage had already been done and that there wasn't anything I could do to change what happened.

When I came home from practice a couple days ago, I didn't expect to find a letter under the mat at my front door. I picked it up, thinking that it was junk that someone had left. I saw my name written on the outside and I immediately recognized Avery's handwriting. My heart dropped the second I saw it and I'd never rushed inside of my house faster than I did that day. 

I sat down on the couch and tore the envelope open. I wasn't sure what I was expecting from her. I figured that maybe she was going to tell me how angry she was at me or how upset she was with me about how things ended.

What I wasn't expecting was for her to tell me that she was in love with me. The second I read the words on the paper, all of the air in my lungs disappeared. I read and reread the words a couple of times to make sure that I was reading them correctly.

I read the entire letter, over and over again. She poured her heart out to me in this one letter, even after I'd practically torn her heart out and stomped on it like it didn't matter. 

I felt like a dick before, but I was confident now that I was the biggest asshole on the planet. I'd spent the entire summer so in my own head about how I felt about her, that I'd been pushing away my own feelings and being completely oblivious to hers. Even after I started feeling like maybe I did love her, I doubted it. I told myself that things were way too complicated for it to be love, it just didn't make sense to me.

But here she was, telling me that she was in love with me and that love was messy sometimes. She even thanked me. 

I didn't deserve a thank you. I didn't deserve anything from her. She deserved so much better than anything that I could ever give her. 

After I read the letter a couple times, I drove to see my mom. It felt stupid, asking my mom for advice on this because I felt like I already knew what she was going to say.

When I sat down and told her what had happened, she looked at me with such disappointment. 

"Sawyer, why did you push her away?"  My mom asked me with a sad look in her eyes.

I sighed. "Mom I didn't know what to do. I've never felt the way I feel about her with anyone else and I didn't know how to handle it. My mind has been so focused on making sure that you're okay that it was becoming too complicated. I still don't know what to tell Callum, so I just told her I needed to end it." I didn't exactly tell her how I ended things, because I didn't want her to know all of the things that I'd said to Avery.