Found it! [ girlxgirl ]

||TWENTY-THREE||

-"I thought..." I start, trying to find the right words to avoid the ultimate silence. "...fuck!"

-"What, Emma? Say it. Try to, at least." She raises both her hands and lets them fall on her sides. I see the tears forming in her eyes.

-"I wasn't sure about what was happening..." I restart but she interrupts me, scoffing.

-"Right, I forgot about your closeted situation. I don't even wanna go there yet."

-"It's not that. I wasn't sure if we were going for a relationship or not. We didn't have time to discuss it. I was leaving and I was hoping the whole summer time could be erased. We would jump to late August, to now, and we would pick up where we left of. But we can't erase the summer, so the next best thing, in my head, was to... kind of ...erase each other from our summer?...Fuck, that's not it... it doesn't make sense, but..." I hide my head in both my hands.

-"It really doesn't..." I hear her say.

-"I didn't want us to commit to something when we were going to be apart for two months. I didn't want to start something that would probably end during that time. I also thought that if we did, you could find someone more interesting than me and either cheat on me, or do nothing and resent me later, if things didn't work out." I sigh as deep as I can. "All I wanted was for us to be in stand-by. I didn't want the summer to have any impact on our relationship. I wanted to skip it. I thought we could achieve that by not committing. That's what I meant when I asked you to forget about the kiss."

There. I said it.

I don't even know if the whole speech was coherent, if it made sense, but it's all I have. It's all I can give her right now.

-"If we hadn't kissed that night, what do you think would've happened?" I ask, trying to make a point. "That was the scenario I was prepared for, because, as you know, I like to plan everything in my head. In my head...we would've kept talking during the summer, as friends, building a great friendship. After that, hopefully, we could start building something more. But we did kiss, and I'm not saying that I regret it, but I do think it was bad timing. It messed up with my head, a lot, and I said and did the wrong thing."

-"I kinda get that. The timing and the planned scenario in your head." She says, surprising me. "But you could've said all that before. On the first skype call I wanted to talk about it but you didn't let me. After that, I stopped trying and I had less and less strength to talk to you knowing I was right about you, because you never even tried to prove me wrong, to make me see that you didn't just want to have fun in the summer without strings attached."

-"God, Avery, I never imagined that you could think that that was my motivation. I'm not an extrovert that goes to every party, meets tons of people, and makes out with half of them! That's not me, and you know that. I get anxious with any social interaction. Fuck! And I avoided the subject because I thought we could...I don't know...keep talking and we would fix everything when I got back. I was a coward, avoiding the issue as if not facing it would make it disappear." I say, this time speaking faster and a little bit louder. Louder enough to earn a few looks from some of the people in the diner.

-"It killed me that you didn't even tried. All that time, I was hoping you would disconfirm my theories." She says, a single tear falling from her left eye.

-"I can't tell you how sorry I am or how much I hate myself for not doing it." I want to reach her, to hold her hand. Reduce the distance that seems to keep growing with each passing minute. "I should've tried when I had the chance, Avery. You were worth it. You are worth it."

-"I wish you had, Emma." She says, while taking out cash from her purse.

I crumbled inside as I watch her stand up to leave.