One Thousand Paper Cranes

Chapter 22

What do you say to someone who's just told you they love you? Do you tell them you love them too even when it might not be true? Eliam stared down at me, his smile slowly slipping off his face when I didn't say anything. It wasn't fair, I felt something for him and I should have been able to look him right in the eyes and say those three little, insignificant words. But they weren't true and I could lie all the time, but I wouldn't lie about this. I felt something strong for him, but it hadn't grown to love.

"You-you don't have to say anything." He stuttered, throwing his eyes away from me. "Just listen. Okay?"

"Okay." I watched him pace in front of me, his hands running through his curls.

"I know feelings are hard and confusing. I know they're slow and they ache when they come. But when you kiss me. God, when you kiss me, Sam, I melt. And it's like I'm experiencing the hardness and confusion and the aches and the slowness of it all right then. You might not love me right now, but you do feel something. Don't you?" He burst out. He'd stopped his pacing and while he'd been talking I grabbed his hands and stood up. "Please answer me."

"Yes, of course I feel something for you." I answered, and even though I didn't feel the emotions right away I could hear them in my voice. They were raw and heartbreaking and they oozed out of me.

"But you don't love me?" He sounded like a child, his lip was even sticking out.

"I think I will, someday. I know I will. Right now I want to revel in the simple fact that I get to be with you. I'll come around. If the prize is you I don't think there'll be that much waiting." I laughed and he answered with a smile. "Besides, I like a slow love story, the end is always so much sweeter."

"God, you're tearing me apart, Samuel Jones." He said. "I don't know if I'll be able to wait much longer."

I leaned up, kissing him softly. His arms wrapped around my waist and he backed me up into the house.

***

His house was quiet, no one up but the two of us. The lights were off and Eliam had trouble moving me around, his arms still stuck to me. We bumped into the kitchen table sending something crashing to the floor with a loud bang. Our laughter filled up the silence.

"Shh, we have to be quiet." He said between laughs. We stumbled, almost as if we were drunk, to Eliam's room. His lips floated just above my neck, his breaths tickling my skin. I shivered. His room seemed so far away, just a few feet away in reality.

Eliam reached behind me and twisted the door open. Light spilled out into the hallway.

"I-" My phone buzzed, lighting up from across the room, the soft ringtone filling the silence. "Shit, who could that be." I pulled out of Eliam's grasp and picked my phone up from his bed. I clicked the answer button without checking who it was. like an idiot, and instantly regretted it.

"Hello?" I said.

"Samuel, where are you?" Oh, motherfucker. I mean mother.

"Mom." I didn't try to hide the disgust in my voice, though it would have been easy. "I'm at Ro- No, you see I'm trying not to lie to you anymore. So here goes. I'm at my boyfriend's house."

"What? I'm sorry did you say boyfriend's?" She asked, her voice revealing her deep confusion. "I- uhm- I don't know what to say. I was worried about you Samuel-"

"Sam." I corrected her.

"And I thought something had happened." She sounded genuinely scared and I thought maybe her emotions were real, and then this. "And now you're telling me that you've been with your boyfriend. I just don't know what to believe anymore, Samuel. Ever since your father died you've been hung up on boys and I can't help but think it's for attention."

"You know what?" I yelled into the phone. "I'm tired of this. I'm tired of you blaming me for everything when it's your own fucking fault half the time. I'm tired of you and everything there is to you. I've lived with you for seventeen years and you know nothing about me. I'm sick of it. You don't even try to understand and you never have." I could feel the thick, hot tears sliding down my cheeks and plopping down onto my shirt.

"I don't appreciate that tone." She kept at it, but I could tell I'd affected her. Her voice broke towards the end and she sniffled quietly. "I'm taking you out of that school. You're going to get the help you need. I'll let you have these last few days, but no more after that."

"Fine." I didn't have the strength to fight. I would regret not yelling at her more later, for now I just wanted the harsh words to end. "Goodbye." I hung up, my phone slipped out of my hands and fell onto Eliam's bed.

"I hate her so much." I growled, glaring at some point on Eliam's chest. My vision was going blurry at the forming of tears. "Does that make me awful?" I looked up at him and I couldn't help the hysteric laughter bubbling up in my chest.

"No. That doesn't make you anything." His eyes were hard and he gazed back at me. He crossed his arms over his chest and stepped closer to me, squashing the distance between us only by a little.

"What do you mean?" My laughter died down and now I was just crying. Big alligator tears.

"You don't have to love her, Sam. No one just gets to have your love. You don't have to give it to her if she doesn't deserve it, and quite frankly I don't think she does. Your family is just another group of people. They have to earn your love just as much as everyone else. Has she earned it?" He asked.

I thought about it. Had she earned it? She'd raised me and given me the things I'd needed, almost all of them. But she didn't accept me, not for who I really was. In her eyes I was her son and that was it. She hated me and I knew it. Every time we spoke that was all I could feel from her. We always fought and that wasn't okay. So, the answer was no, she hadn't earned my love.

"I'm leaving Doverhall." I spat, the words stinging my throat.

"What?" He dropped his arms and stared at me in disbelief. I couldn't look at him like that so I turned my head down, studying the intricate grooves in the floor.

"I'll be gone by the time school starts again." I elaborated. I could feel the all too familiar sting of tears and I bit down on my lip to focus on another sort of pain.

"No, no, you can't." He begged and I wasn't sure anymore if I was going to be the one to cry. Eliam seemed already to be falling off the cliff into his dark little pool of sadness.

"It's too late to stop it now." And as I said the words I tried to pinpoint the exact moment when I started to give in to my sadness. I came up blank. "At least I'll be with you until Sunday. That's something." I crawled into his bed and he followed, turning off the light.

"Sam?" He whispered in the dark.

"Yeah?" I said back.

"I think I'm beginning to see why you hate your mother so much." He said.

"Good."

A/N: Holy guacamole! This book has over 3,600 reads and 300 votes! How do I even asadfghjklasxsdc