Alone

Chapter: 7 // way down we go •

Dear diary,

Carl.

This is about a day after he told me about his nightmare in the woods and things kind of got...sorry, I don't know how else to put this, weird.

Almost kissing Carl wasn't weird, it was the fact that my lips were so close to his lips and I still went for the ear.

Maybe he kind of... I can't even write the word.

I avoided him like the plague, but that only motivated him to follow me over the wall.

"Why can't you?" He had asked me, and rendered me to a halt. My cheeks flushed, I kept my back turned to him so I couldn't read his expression.

"You can't." I said matter-of-factly, and the heaviness of my bag started to overwhelm me and I sat on a fallen tree limb, prompting him to sit next to me and I finally looked at him and his one ocean eye burned with something heavy that I felt in my heart.

"Do you think it's...gross?" His voice broke, and I am looking and speaking to a vulnerable side of Carl, not the sheriff's son, not the boy who shot his mother, not the boy with one eye, I just see Carl.

The realness of this moment settles in my gut, butterflies make their way into my stomach and I feel like I'm dreaming.

I realized he's talking about his eye, because we're both past the cooties stage where kissing is gross.

"I don't think anything," the gap between us wide, I was basically sitting on the very beginning of the tree. "I mean, I think of everything else but your eye." I said, hoping he'd catch on that everything was meant for him.

"I think of everything." He said quietly, and scooted closer, closing the gap between us, popping my personal space bubble.

And judging by his moving closer, his putting his hand on top of my mine, his intertwining our fingers, I think he definitely caught on.

"Carl-" and before I finish, a roamer pops out of the trees behind us and takes a swing at my shoulder, Carl quickly pulls his knife out of its holster and stabs the roamer in the back of its head, it teeters back and collapses on its back dead.

Stunned, I stare at him and feel for my shoulder, "did it...?" I hesitate and fear the worst, and Carl simply shakes his head. "I wasn't going to let it." He got up and reached for my hand and when I grabbed it, I felt that electricity, like when we met on the road, except this time I didn't pretend I didn't feel it, and he didn't abruptly pull away.

I blush and he pulls me up with one arm, brilliantly showcasing his strength. "Likewise." I fell in step with him as we approached the wall.

"What were you saying earlier?" He asked me, reminding me I was going to ask him to kiss me, but I felt weak and awkward and disoriented and it would've been foolish and he would've felt like he was obligated to do it.

Which he wasn't, I wasn't forcing him to kiss me like he wasn't forcing me to kiss him. I think I never thought about it, I just feel it.

"When did you start coming out here?" I had quickly made this question up as I went, and after I had asked I wished I hadn't.

"When my group and I first got here. I saw Enid do it- I followed her because I thought it was too dangerous out here to be alone. Her and Ron did it before us." He explained, and I was, okay, jealous of the chemistry between Enid and him because she'd done all of this- maybe the exact same things I did out here with him. So next I realized that this wasn't another "something", it was just me being coy and Carl not being a douche.