Fifteen Ways To Express I Love You

The moment the voice filled my eardrum from the receiver of the phone, I knew I wasn’t going to be all right.

“Oh my God,” I muttered under my breath, my grip slipping. The phone fell onto my lap, but I could still hear the voice speaking to me.

“…I’m sorry for your loss,” the female droned on from my lap.

I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and fidgeted with my fingers. This wasn’t supposed to be happening, not to me, nor to him. Not now. Not ever in my near future lifetime. Why was this even happening? It was supposed to happen when I was in my thirties or forties, and he was supposed to die from old age.

I heard footsteps coming closer to me before I felt the warmth of a soft hand on my bare shoulder where the strap of my tank top rested.  I lifted my head, seeing the startling platinum blonde of his hair, sticking up in various places, and blue eyes, looking like the glaciers in poles of the world as he looked down at me. I bit my lip. He blended into the white walls of the living room.

“What happened?” Tatum asked, furrowing his eyebrows. I swallowed as I remembered the minute I picked up the phone.  The pit in my stomach sunk.  

“Is this the Alves residents?”

“Yes, it is. Why?”

“Michael Alves has passed away. He was shot in the chest while pulling a traffic stop…” My brain had already stopped processing the words right after I heard the word ‘passed’. I stared directly in front of me at the wooden coffee table.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?” I asked into the receiver, my voice shaking.

“Michael Alves has been killed. I know this may be hard…”

I took a deep breath as I shook the memory from my brain and rested the palm of my hand directly on top of Tatum’s, brushing the top of it. “I—“

“Hello?” the voice continued from the receiver.

Tatum walked around the back of the couch, sitting down on the cushion beside me. It flattened at the weight of him, and I started leaning into him. He plucked the phone up from my lap, hanging up. Tatum leaned in closer to me. I could see his eyes flickering back and forth between my own. My eyes stung of tears behind my own eyes as I looked into his.

“I-I…” I paused, looking down at my lap as I messed with the hem of my dark red skirt. I tore a flyaway off of it.

Tatum grabbed the base of my chin, lifting it up and forced my eyes to meet his own. “Hey,” he said, his voice easing away to softness. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

I closed my eyes back up again, leaning into the hard, but softness of his chest, wrapping my arms around him as I squeezed him closer to my chest. I knew if I tried to talk again, my voice would come out in a croak, as if I was an old lady on the verge of dying. Or so I thought.

I pressed my face closer into his white cotton shirt, trying to stop the tears from falling. But of course they did. A sob wracked in the depths of my throat as I tried to hold them in.

That was all we did. Be wrapped up in each other’s arms. Soon, I pulled back, wiping away my dripping face.  On my way up, I glanced at the clock sitting on the wall. Half an hour had passed. When I glanced back over at Tatum, the wetness of the tears that fell onto Tatum’s shirt drenched it. “Oh, God,” I muttered, my gaze making its way up to meet his eyes. “I’m so sorry for your shirt.”

A chuckle escaped from Tatum’s mouth, his lips tugging upwards in a slight smile. “Don’t you dare apologize,” he told me, leaning back against the couch and folded his arms around the back of his head. His biceps bulged slightly. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of them as I bit on my bottom lip. “You don’t get to.”

I couldn’t help it—I grinned. A small one, but it was still a grin. Once the memories flooded back into my brain, I looked back down towards my lap, furrowing my eyebrows together. “But I probably ruined it for—“

“You didn’t ruin anything.” He pushed himself forward, grabbing my hand and squeezed it softly. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

I met his gaze with my own. “Talking about it would probably be best,” I said reluctantly. I took in a deep breath. My chest vibrated with small contractions.   

He leaned in forward even more. Just by looking at him for a second, my heart started picking up its pace as I saw how intrigued he was as he waited for what I had to say.

Finally, I blurted out, “My dad died.”

His eyes grew softer around the edges. “Oh, Spencer…” he trailed off.

I looked away. He must’ve gotten the vibe that I was trying to give off of ‘I don’t want to talk about it further’, because he stood back up, swinging his hands down in front of my face. “What you need is something to get your mind off of it. Wanna come with me?”

I looked back up, meeting his eyes and furrowed my brows. “Where are we going?”

His eyes sparkled with mischief. “Oh, you’ll find out.”

It was right then when I took his grasp and pulled myself up on my feet.

--

Tatum had always been my best friend basically ever since the fourth grade. To be honest, I couldn’t really recall all that many memories before then. They didn’t seem significant enough to even remember. Of course I could recall the tiniest things before I met him. One of the things that really stuck out to me when I looked back on my childhood life was the moment I became friends with the guy.

“Are you gay?” one of my classmates asked back then, a little girl who was already considered as ‘popular’, as she roamed her eyes over my body. I scrunched my face, glancing down at my chest. The bright pink of the shirt and pants I had on put a small smile on my face. Looking back, I felt I gave off the appearance of a little pink yarn ball.

I looked up from the tetherball I pushed back and forth all recess long, and brushed at the brown of my tendrils back behind my ear, squinting my eyes slightly at the sun in front of me. “No?” I answered, hearing my voice travel up an octave. Why would she think I would like other girls? Or was she asking what my mommy said ‘gay’ was: being happy?

“I think you are.” She took a step closer to me. “You’re too ugly to have any boys like like you. Your hair is the color of poop, and your eyes are, also.”

I could feel my mouth drop open wide. “W-wh—“

“Go away, Maggie,” a small boy’s voice drifted to my ears, the sound coming from right beside my ear. I jumped before I glanced over there. My eyes widened. The color of the boy’s hair was what stood out to me the most, and would ever since the day I stopped breathing. Whiteness as white as the snow on the ground on a winter’s day.

He turned to me and gave me a bright smile. “Wanna play with me?”

I nodded. The sound of a grunt and shuffling feet faded away from my hearing. He turned to the tetherball, passing it to me first. “You can go,” he told me, the bright smile sticking to the corners of his mouth.

The hard wall of the tetherball smacked against my hand, sending it spinning around the pole.

In that exact moment, I knew I was going to be friends with this boy for the rest of my life.