Found it! [ girlxgirl ]

||TWENTY-TWO||

I'm sitting at the diner for 3 minutes now. I worked hard to arrive earlier than her for a simple reason: when she gets here, I'm already seated, waiting, so it's up to her to great me. I don't think I would know how to great her. I would be torn between kiss, a handshake, a wave of hands or nothing at all. It would be awkward whatever I'd chose to do.

She's less socially awkward. Or better, she's not socially awkward so she'll handle it better than me.

I see her walking through the door, and I give her a half smile when she sees me. She comes to the booth where I'm sitting, says an almost inaudible "hi" and after a brief and awkward hesitation she sits in front of me.

I guess no one would be able to avoid the awkwardness in a situation like ours.

-"Thanks for coming." I say, truthfully.

-"No. Thank you! After ignoring almost all of your latest attempts to talk to me, I would understand if you didn't want to anymore." She started looking at me, but lowered her eyes at the end, almost ashamed.

-"I can't see that happening." I say and she looks at me skeptically. "I admit that I was defeated when I left your place, and ready to stop annoying you. But that doesn't mean that if you ever wanted to talk I would say no."

The waitress comes to our booth and we order quickly our burgers and fries. I don't want to interrupt the flow of this conversation. If it were up to me, we would talk first and eat later.

After the waitress leaves our booth with our requests, there's a brief silence between us that I immediately stop.

-"I'm gonna be honest here..." I start.

-"Please do." She says, half smiling.

-"I want to talk, but I don't even know where to start."

-"Me neither, Emma."

-"Can we start from the beginning?" I ask, wanting to know if it's okay to bring back everything.

-"That night?" She asks, and I nod. "You mean the night we kissed and then, before leaving for two months, you told me...and I quote...'please enjoy your summer as if the kiss never happened'?"

-"Yes, that night." I say, after gulping really hard.

It's not surprising that she's bitter about it. It's not surprising that that's the first thing she brought back. And it's definitely not surprising that hearing her saying it caused an immense pain in my chest.

It's clear that she pushed all her feeling down since that night. Now she's finally facing the person responsible for them.

-"Yeah, I don't know what to say about that night, except that it sucked." She adds, looking outside the windows.

It sucked except the kiss, right?

-"I'm sorry, Avery. I know you've heard it before..." I say, before she could speak. "...but I really am. Unfortunately, it took me too long to see my mistake because in my head, it made sense. I can try to explain why, but honestly, at this point I'm not even sure."

-"Great! Well, I tried to talk about it right after it happened but you are a master at avoidance when it comes to things you don't want to talk about." She says, more aggressively.

At this point, she's leaning backwards with her arms crossed and not looking at me.

-"Precisely because, at that moment, I was sure about my decision. I didn't think it was that bad." I say defensively, and I must've hit a nerve because she finally looked at me with a killer look that made me shiver.

-"Yeah, I noticed that it wasn't that bad for you." She scoffs and looks away again.

I sight in exasperation, earning a side look from her.

The waitress arrives with our food and Avery picks up a fry, never bringing it to her mouth.

Looking at her pondering about what to say, I know that a thousand thoughts are running through her head.

-"Avery..." I call her out calmly, and wait for her to look at me. "Please, tell me how you felt that night. For a long time, I thought that I had only used the wrong words to express myself. Only recently someone made me see how bad my decision was, no matter what words I used."

-"Wise person." She says, eating the fry she had picked before.

-"She is." I add, waiting for her to tell me everything she felt.

-"She...as in one of the girls you met during the summer?" She asks, accusingly.

-"What? No...She, as in my best friend since...ever." I reply, not believing her accusation. 'One of the girls'? What the hell.

-"Okay, Emma." God, lately I hate my name coming from her mouth. It always carries so much resentment. "I'll tell what I felt that night. I felt like I didn't know who the hell you were."

-"What does that mean?" I ask her, hurt by her words and the way she's saying them.

-"When I met you, I saw a girl that was both shy and confident at the same time which got me intrigued and I wanted to know more of you. And I thought I did during those months. I learned that you were someone considerate about others in truly selfless way. Someone who wouldn't purposely hurt other people. Someone who doesn't trust others that often, but when you do it's from your heart, it's truthful and it's honest." She pauses, closing her eyes. "That's something worth fighting for. I wanted to get that trust, because I was ready to trust you just the same."

I'm fighting a tear with all my strength, but I don't think how long I can hold it in.

She looks back at me, and keeps talking.

-"That night, after you told me those words, I was so confused, Emma. It was like... you had just given me a piece of your own puzzle that didn't fit anywhere. Why would you want to forget about the kiss, if not to be free to do whatever you pleased during the summer..." I open my mouth to speak but she raised her hand to stop me. "...But to me, that didn't match the image I had of you. Never have I ever thought of you as someone who kisses and forgets about it the next day. Someone that doesn't take into consideration other people's feelings. Someone who only thinks about themselves. To me, you weren't that. But you were telling me otherwise, by wanting to forget that we kissed, that we met..."

She stops talking, and now she's expecting me to say something, but I can't muster a word.

Sorrow is closing up my throat. The tears I was holding, finally escape my eyes and I have to clean them with my trembling hands.

All this time I'm still looking at her.

I can't believe that she thought I just wanted to fuck around with other people during the summer without feeling guilty. I can't believe that the image she had of me was so close to what I hoped it would be, and now it's destroyed.

She shakes her head in disbelief of my silence.

-"Ave..." I whisper, not realizing I used the shortened form of her name until I saw her shifting in her seat. I cough, trying to disguise it. "Avery, please believe me...what you just said, never crossed my mind."

My voice is trembling. I'm upset with myself and I'm hurt. Her words hurt me as I never thought it would be possible.

Coming of as someone who likes to fool around with strangers was always something I despised. I never even had that many relationships, and when I wasn't in one I also wasn't 'having fun' with whoever was available. That's not me, and I can't believe that that's the image Avery has right now. The girl I...like, thinks I'm not trustworthy.

-"If that's true...why, then?" She asks and looks at me searching for the truth in my eyes as if not trusting my words.

-"I told you, I don't even know at this point." I shake my head, looking at my fingers fidgeting on my lap.

-"Right..." She says, picking up another fry. The food is cold already, and it's fine because I'm not hungry anymore.

Another silence is settling between us. I'm afraid that this time we will not be able to come back from it.