heartbreak girl | s.m.

8 | secrets

chapter playlist ⏯
• you and me - lifehouse
• chasing cars - snow patrol
• georgia - vance joy

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shawn mendes >>>

I know I said I was done with this whole "crush on Gemma Clark" thing, but seeing her in person brought it all back. I can't help but feel things when she looks at me like she does. Her smile, and her eyes, the way she laughs. It makes me feel like such an idiot. She's perfectly amazing, and she can't be mine. She doesn't want to, anyways.

Stop it.

She drove with her hands firmly on the steering wheel, positioned exactly where they tell you in driver's ed. Every once in a while, she removed her hand from the wheel and ran her pink fingernails through her dark hair, absentmindedly making me want her even more. Maybe it was a mistake agreeing to hang out with her. All I'm doing is torturing myself.

No. I have to just be her friend and not want anything more. I don't know why this is so hard for me; with Natalie, it was like I was trying so hard just to feel something, but with Gemma, I'm trying so hard not to. It can never just be convenient, can it?

Her voice interrupted my thoughts, and I remembered that we had been talking about home. Our lives before we moved away.

"Back home in Nebraska, I had this best friend named Casey, and every Friday night, if we were both free, one of us would pick the other up, and we'd get a pizza, then park the car on top of this really pretty hill that overlooked a really pretty lake a few miles from our school, and we'd listen to music and just talk about everything," Gemma explained as we drove, glancing over at me quickly.

I smiled. "That sounds like fun."

She smiled as well. "It was. Those were some of my favorite memories," she said, reminiscing happily. Then she sighed. "Then I moved away and I haven't done it since."

"Do you still talk to her?" I asked.

"On occasion. Holidays and birthdays or if one of us digs up an old memory. We used to stay in touch a lot more, but then Jake happened and she got busy as well, so we just don't have enough time anymore. She was my best friend though," she said. "People grow apart, I guess." She shrugged.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Leaving people sucks."

She nodded. "More than anything."

I looked out the window, the night sky dark but the stars bright. She tapped her fingernails on the steering wheel as we waited at a red light, humming along to the radio.

"So that's what we're going to do, right?" I asked her.

"What?"

"What you and Casey did. That's what we're going to do, right?" I asked.

She laughed softly. "I mean, only if you want to. I don't want to bore you to death."

"Impossible. I say let's do it," I told her, and she smiled.

"Okay."

And so we did, and a little while later, the car was parked on a bit of a hill, where you could see the ocean. It was apparently her secret spot, and if I told anybody, I'd be dead. So I'm not going to tell anybody.