I glared at him, with tears in my eyes and beginning to run down my cheeks, and shouted, with a little more force than I had intended, “What do you want me to do; stand here in front of you and tell you that every time I see you I want to run into your arms and kiss you?”
That made him stop, but I couldn’t stop now; the dam had already been broken, and now the flood was coming. Tears were streaming down my face now, as I murmured, “But I can’t. I can’t tell you. I can’t hug you. I can’t kiss you.” I tried to hide my face behind a curtain of my hair as I sat down on the stool beside me, and whispered, “I can’t love you.”
I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, especially after telling him this. He was standing right in front of me, and the shock that he was, so obviously, feeling was radiating. The silence was thick with tension, and my own raw emotion, and it was too much for me; I had to get away. I tucked my hair behind my ears, after wiping the tears off of my face, and I stood up and started to walk away. I wasn’t walking very fast, just fast enough for me to get away without making it look like I was running. I hadn’t taken five steps when I heard him call my name, but I knew better than to turn around, because that would only make things worse. Before I even had time to take another step, I felt a hand on my arm; I didn’t even have time to realize what was happening when I was turned around, had landed into a hard chest, and was being kissed. I didn’t want to think about what was really happening, so I did the easiest thing in the moment; I kissed him back. It only took a minute for me to fully realize what was happening, at which point I broke off the kiss and pushed him away.
I turned away; I couldn’t stand the emotions running through me. Then, I felt his hands come to rest gently, almost like feathers, on my heaving shoulders; I felt his hot breath on my neck, then I heard his voice, so sweet and familiar, at my ear whispering, “I’ve always loved you.”
Those four words, spoken so softly and like a dream, whispered in my ear, were my total undoing. The tears that had stopped falling started again, and I began to notice everything around me. For some reason, I hadn’t realized how quiet the room was, or how cold it was either. I thought it was strange how his hands, though big and very strong, rested on my shoulders with a touch that was so gentle, I wasn’t even sure I was really feeling it. And we stood there like that for, I don’t even know how long; I needed to get a hold of myself, and he stood there, unmoving and silent, behind me with his hands around my shoulders. I got myself calmed down a bit, and then I turned around to look at him. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like he was contradicting himself; he was going out with her, not me.
And then I heard the shrill piercing sound of my alarm. It was just a dream. Just a dream.
