Queen Bee & Wasp King (COMPLETE✔️)

Chapter 8 || Do I Want

(song: "Unrequited Love" - Yuna)

"I'm going to do it." I said.

"So do it." He challenged.

"I'm going to, give me a minute."

"What's that I smell?" He sniffed at the air. "I think it's the smell of chicken, are you being a chicken?"

I laughed and felt tempted to shove him.

We stared up at a large tree. It was old and sturdy, but I could remember climbing it's branches with Wyatt as a child. I had wondered if it could still support my weight and Wyatt challenged me to find out.

"I'd help give you a boost, but you know . . . " He gestured to his body.

I nodded. "Right, the downside of being imaginary."

"I really hate that word, you know. I'm not imaginary, I'm non-corporeal." He spoke defensively and crossed his arms.

I had to admit, he was kind of cute when he was frustrated. I guessed it was okay for me to feel that way since I had created him after-all.

I reached for the first branch and tried to pull myself up onto it. The leaves rattled and shook, but the branch was strong and secure beneath my weight. I had to see how far I could go, I immediately reached for the second branch. I could hear the wood groan and knew that it'd break if I went any further.

"It's so weird, when we were seven, I felt like this was the strongest tree in the world, and that from the tops of it I could see everything. It's strange to grow up and realize everything is about perspective. This tree really isn't that big." I gazed upward at the sky.

Wyatt climbed up the tree secondly and joined me at my side. Whenever he'd be close to me, it really did feel like someone was beside me. I could feel the tingling sensation of the energy of him being there.

"You could say the same about me really, it's just your perspective that determines if I'm real or just made-up. Until the microscope existed people couldn't see germs, but someone knew they were there and that the possibility for the unseen existed."

I knit my fingers together and stared into my palms to avoid his eyes. "I'm scared to allow myself to think that you could in some way be real."

"Why?"

"Because I'd rather think that I'm broken, if you're real then that means the world is broken. If I'm broken, there's some kind of hope to manage or fix me, but if the world is broken then there's no going back."

Wyatt tilted his head in my direction in deep thought. "Have you thought that maybe because you're broken you're able to see what's real? Maybe everything exists forwards and backwards all at once. Maybe everyone on the planet is right and wrong at the same time. Maybe all possibilities are possible and just maybe you and I are anomalies that happened to meet when we needed help the most."

"You're ridiculous."

"Really? According to you, I'm hot in a weird kind of way." He smiled at me with a brow raised.

My face flushed with embarrassment. "What? How could you hear that conversation with Justine, I thought you promised to not be around when I'm with my family."

"I kept that promise, it's just I heard your sister attempting to talk to me in her room as well."

"Great. My insanity is apparently contagious."

"I think you're hot too," he said without hesitation or shame. "But I've always liked you, from afar."

I felt my breath hang in my chest for a moment. How was I supposed to feel with his confession? If he was just a figment of my imagination did that mean that I was making a self-confession? It didn't feel like something dug up from my psyche, it felt like Wyatt's feelings were real and his own.

"I don't know if that's creepy or endearing," I responded.

"Well, all I could do was watch and wait until you needed me. When we were little I realized very quickly that you wanted a life without me. At first I was mad, but then when I saw how you interacted with people you could touch and feel I understood why you didn't need me anymore. It really hurt, but I had to accept it."

I studied his face and the gentle, pained expression that it wore. It filled me with guilt. "I was seven, I wasn't thinking about things like hurting people or not, I just wanted friends."

"I didn't ask to be here or to be what I am. I can't change who I am, the only thing I could change was my outlook. I just held on to the hope that one day you'd need me again."

"I'm feeling really conflicted here, I don't know if I should feel bad or not."

"Can you just at least pretend that I have real feelings and that I am my own person?" His eyes fixed directly to mine.

I stared at him and anxiously shook my legs. No words came to me, I was at war with myself internally. Was it a good idea to give into my fantasies and pretend that they were more than just that?

"Okay . . . " I said quietly.

Wyatt looked satisfied. "So as a person with my own opinions, I want to express that Sean was always a jerk. I remember when you tried to change yourself to fit Sean's ideal type."

"I just wanted what my parents had, they were the perfect high-school sweethearts who went on to be successfully married with kids. They beat the odds against divorce and they still seem in-love to me. That's such a rarity." I finished with a loud sigh.

"We're a rarity," he said with a heavy glance.

"We're not in love."

"One of us is. It's unrequited, but still valid."

This was the second time that Wyatt had admitted to loving me, the first time he said it I didn't believe him. This time was different, I felt the rhythm of my heart change. It was like internal music inside me transforming and I wondered how I ever could have feared him.

"We should go home," I told him.

"We should." He agreed.

But we didn't go anywhere. We sat on that branch and watched the sky change colors. I confessed to him my anxiety over going to Brown and my life changing from everything I knew. He just listened. It was nice to have someone I could talk to without judgment, I could fully tell him anything and know that he'd not tell a single other soul.

I kept pretending that he was real, but with that came the guilt. I was fortunate, I had other people and places in my life, all Wyatt had was me. He had experienced ten years of being ignored by the one person he could communicate with and choosing to love me anyway. I felt terrible.

Originally, I wanted to get rid of Wyatt at all costs, but I had changed.

I remembered what Justine and I had talked about. It was easier if I allowed myself to believe I really had a superpower. I had the ability to communicate with the Wasp King, a boy no one could see or hear except me.

I dared myself to give into the idea. I placed my hand very near to his and allowed myself to feel the energy in the small gap of space between us. He stretched over his pinky to lay it very gently on top of mine. My skin tingled, it felt like the brush of a butterflies wings.

"We should come back here next week," I said to him.

Wyatt smiled broadly. "We should . . . "