Excerpts from a Girl in Love

The Things I Couldn't Say

     The fan overhead rattles against the ceiling, the quiet sound of its constant clicking with every spin, the only noise in the room apart from my breathing. Occasionally a bird would give a single chirp from somewhere outside my window. In my head it sounded sad; it sounded to me like a lonely female bird calling out for her love, wondering why he wasn't back with her; it sounded to me like a mother bird calling out to her young, begging her child to come back home to her and the nest because it was late. The clock beside my bed flashed 3:03 and I wondered if the bird was the lover or the mother, and if her questions or her pleading would be answered. I wondered anything to keep my mind from trailing to the thoughts of you and me.

     On the bed resting beside my head lay my phone, and on the other end of it you. In moments where the bird stopped chirping and my mind stopped rolling and I couldn't hear the ticks of the fan, I could faintly hear your breathes coming out through the speaker. I could imagine you splayed out in your checkered pajama pants and your white tank-top, underneath your blanket lying still with the exception of the occasional fidget or twitch in response to your dreams. It was in those moments that I craved to tell you what I felt- those moments where you aren't wrapped up in your attempts to seem masculine and mighty or silly and carefree; those moments where you are vulnerable and simply and purely you.

     I had to bite my tongue to hold back from telling the truth and everything else I wanted to say.

     I'm falling for you.

     I'm falling for you, except it's not like anything that had ever happened before. I'm not throwing myself forward, falling face first early on and all at once. It's not like I'm throwing myself off of a cliff or a bridge, but rather slowly toeing my way into the ocean, taking steady slow steps until I'm submerged and drowning in you.

     I'm falling for your eyes, and the way my stomach flutters when ours meet. I'm falling for the way I can stare into them endlessly and not want to peel myself away. They're filled with all the answers to all the questions I want to ask, and all the things I want to know if you feel too.

     I'm falling for your smile, and the way it always makes its way into a smirk. I'm falling for the way you stare down at me with a cocky, crooked grin, that all I can do in response to is glare. The way that I narrow my eyes at you and sneer always makes your smile grow wider, and that in turn makes me glare even harder trying to make it so you don't realize my stomach is doing flips, and my tongue is tied in knots.

     I'm falling for your voice, and the way it always seems to be taunting me. I'm falling for the way that you can change your tone in a split second from one that's endlessly teasing me, to one that makes you sound genuinely smitten. It makes my heart melt, and a smile inevitably tug at the corners of my lips.

     I'm falling for how you play guitar, and the way your fingers run over the strings ever so delicately. I'm falling for the sounds you coax the instrument to make. The fact that you take the time to learn my favorite songs is such a simple gesture that you don't think much of, but that I think highly of.

     I don't know when I came to realize all the things I couldn't say.

     Maybe it was when we first kissed. The way you lifted my chin and placed your lips so softly against mine; it was barely a brush but enough to shut me right up. The rest of the day I had a smile stitched onto my face, and there wasn't an inch of it that wasn't real.

     Maybe it was when you asked me to call you that night that I lay in bed alone crying. The way you told me I didn't have to talk and just played my favorite song on your guitar made the sniffles stop, and warmth fill my chest. I didn't feel so alone, and for a second it felt like everything that was falling apart around me came to a standstill, and I was alright.

     Maybe it was when you let me fall asleep wrapped up against your arm in the middle of class. The way I still felt every stroke of your fingers against my skin must've made me realize that I couldn't just like you. Every touch made it feel as if all my nerve endings were alive and on fire.

     Maybe it was when you impulsively told me you loved me after you kissed me in line at lunch. The way I felt my brain completely shut down, and I found myself stuttering trying to figure out what to say made it seem like I'd just run a marathon, or taken a heavy hit to the chest. I wanted to say it back, but I couldn't, and I'm glad I didn't because we later agreed you didn't mean it in the way that I might've.

     You weren't ready to know that you had managed to sneak your way into my heart, and I had started falling in love with you. Nor was I ready to admit it to myself. I didn't want to accept the fact that I'd allowed myself to let you in, and start knocking down my walls.

     I had to bite my tongue to hold back from telling you the things you weren't ready to hear, and I wasn't ready to say. The clock beside my bed flashed 3:48; the bird started chirping again and my head started running, pushing you out of my mind. Tonight wasn't the night, and it was time for me to sleep. And so I hung up and lay in the dark, wondering once again if the bird was the mother, or the one like me- waiting for her lover.