Find My Way Back || g.d.

[ 28 ]

Malia's POV

We drove over to the lake and climbed the rocks. Not gonna lie, I was scared of slipping and falling. Thank god I didn't though.

"You made it up here alive." Grayson joked.

"Well, climbing up wasn't all that easy..."

"But me climbing behind you so that I'd catch you if you were to fall gave me a great view."

"Bye."

He pulled me in for a kiss.

"I didn't sign up to third wheel." Ethan said.

"Technically you did." I rolled my eyes, "why didn't you bring your mystery girl? This could've been a little double date or something."

"I would've, but she was busy."

"Who even is she?"

"Don't worry about it."

"Okay, I thought we were a tight group. But I guess not. 'OG three' who? I don't know her."

"I want to make everything official and figure everything out before I introduce her to people."

"Boring." I scoffed.

"Shit, I gotta go home and get ready for my date tonight."

"Ethan, we just got here."

"I'm a forgetful person."

"I can see that."

"You can't just leave us here." Grayson said.

"My stuff is in your car." I said.

"I'll drop it off tonight or something." he said and left.

"Why didn't we ever think about coming up here?" Grayson asked after Ethan rushed off.

"You know what? This could be our new spot." I said and sat down.

"Yeah?" he looked at me.

"Yeah. Then people can't find us. No one would get hurt. The only other person who would actually know about this place, as far as I know, is Ethan."

He sat down beside me, "you're not wrong."

It was a comfortable silence. He rested his head on my lap and I ran my hand through his hair.

"When I said I didn't wanna talk to you that month, the month we broke up, two seconds later, I regretted it so much. I wanted to call you and say that I didn't mean it and that I don't actually want to break up, but I knew you weren't gonna pick up the phone and talk it out. I was too mad at myself. I had the opportunity to drive over to your house real quick to talk about it, but I didn't. Then I realized we really broke up and I couldn't process it. That entire trip was awful. I thought about how I was never going to get you back again. How I was never going to be able to call you my girlfriend ever again. Nothing was the same after the breakup. That's when it all changed. The thing that sucks about dating your best friend is that not only do you lose your girlfriend, but you lose your best friend too."

I rubbed his cheek.

"Well, I guess we're talking about our thought processes now."

"We don't have to if you don't want to. You can change the topic."

"No. It's okay. After we hung up, I wanted to delete your number and our messages and our pictures because I was so mad. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. We went through so much together. So, I uploaded all our pictures onto– or is it into??... I don't know– my computer and deleted them off my phone. I never deleted our messages because it reminded me of how happy and cringe we were. Small things like that made me smile. Then I soon realized, we weren't a couple anymore. And knowing that really sucked. I never threw away the pictures that we took. I never took the frames off my shelves. I don't know why, but I didn't. I wanted to call you or text you just to talk to you again, but I never had the courage to. All the feelings and memories would've just come flooding back. That's why I never wanted to hang out with you or Ethan. Instead, I isolated myself." I sighed, "seeing you in class everyday sucked. It was just a constant reminder of what I lost. Emily was always rubbing it in my face that we broke up."

"And you took most of the impact. No one ever said anything to me, but people said stuff to and about you."

"It's all over with now. Can't go back and change anything so we may as well move forward. Like they say– or at least I think it's what they say– no other direction to move than move forward."

"That was disgusting." he laughed.

I smiled and kissed him.