One Of The Girls

Chapter 6: Beatrix

It happened, Josh rejected me. I didn't even get to say the words. I didn't even get to tell him how I feel, but it doesn't matter because it's all obvious now. My feelings are out there, out in the open, and I can never take them back. Once they left my chest, they joined the world. The feelings are too sloppy and messy to pick back up and put back inside me.

The rejection has been more than a decade coming, so you would think that I'd have prepared myself. I mean, I saw it coming. I knew he would do it, but something gave me hope. Maybe it was Drew and Noah always acting like Josh and I would end up together, or maybe it was Josh himself, always acting like I was special. The way he looks to me after he finishes telling a joke to make sure I'm laughing, the way he comes to me first when he has a problem, the way he gets just a little jealous when I get too close with Drew...all of the small things added up to one very very large thing. I felt special.

​I am special. He said so. He promised.

​But I'm not the kind of special that gets to date him. I'm not the kind of special that gets to see what his face looks like after he kisses you goodbye, or the kind that gets to taste his lips. I'm not the kind of special that gets to feel what it's like when he calls you his girlfriend, or wake up and see his eyes open for the first time that day after spending the night in his arms.
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So, my kind of special doesn't really matter. I know it should, I know that I mean something to him, and that should matter to me. But this emotion is selfish. Love is selfish, and my love for him is demanding more than just movie nights without any cuddling, and my love for him is demanding more than just short hugs and and high fives.

​The reality of the rejection breaks me. It actually feels like something inside me has broken. Maybe it was whatever inside me that was keeping back tears because whatever was keeping them back is not working anymore. I can't stop crying. When he first left it was a soft crying, and then it turned into a gasping for air, bloody, graphic, gross sobbing that ran through my body like ocean currents. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't speak. My parents rushed in, and they knew. I could see it on their faces. They didn't even need to ask what had happened, my mom just got on the bed and held out her arms.

​She hugged me and rubbed my back as I cried, "Honey, it's all going to be okay."

​But it didn't seem like it.

​Saturday morning, my eyes were swollen.
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By Sunday night the crying had been tamed by sanity, or perhaps a low water supply. I laid in bed, and the tears streamed down my face, but my breathing was steady, and I no longer made noise. My tears had come to terms with the situation. There wasn't hope anymore. I needed to get over it.

​His lights didn't flash. I waited up every night this weekend staring into the darkness, waiting for him to do something, to reach out, to flash his lights, to knock on my window, or to even just text me. But he did nothing, and I was afraid to reach out to him. I felt pathetic. I can't believe I let him see me cry. He knows now. He knows how I feel about him and there is no going back to the way things were.

​Monday morning, I text Josh to tell him I will be riding the bus to school.

​​Josh: Okay!

​I want to say something else. There are so many things I want to say. I want to ask him why, why doesn't he love me? The math is all there. We get along so well, we are inseparable, he confides in me, he obviously trusts me more than anyone else, so why isn't that enough? But, unable to say anything normal, I just say nothing at all.

​I go to study hall first period and skip going to the auto shop, so I can avoid the boy I love so much but am not allowed to. Emily comes to sit next to me.