Savior [Completed]

Savior: [Fourteen]

Fourteen - Nick

“Have I ever told you that you need help?”  

Lani rewarded me by sticking her tongue out at me. “You’re just jealous that you finished your ice cream before it melted and that you’ve got to watch me enjoy what you don’t have anymore.”

“Yes, because I absolutely adore melted ice cream and you finished one spoonful before me,” I retorted dryly, and she responded by pretending to sniff the air.

 “Yup, something’s definitely burning.”

The gleam in her eyes made me smile, but now this senseless banter about ice cream we’d kept running was starting to get old. “Would you just eat it already?”

She’d been in the process of taking her spoon to her mouth, but as soon as I’d spoken, she returned the spoon down and looked me in the eye with a playful challenge.

“No.”

“Oh, come on!” Her face fell and I felt guilty for sounding so exasperated, so I quickly went on to add a little playfulness to my words. “We’ll hang around here if you don’t want to go home yet, but please finish and let me clear the bill already.”

I’d only been kidding with my implication that she’d been trying to waste time, but when she immediately, obediently finished her ice cream, my suspicions were aroused.

“Lani?” I asked. “You’ve really been trying to keep us here for a while?”

She didn’t answer, but her expression told me that the truth lay in the affirmative.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say I felt a moment of true fear when I read her ‘yes’. I felt my stomach drop a little and…God, please no. We’d been having such a good time! I hadn’t even thought about, well, that, much, and now having it come up to me completely out of the blue.

I wasn’t ready for that, and the panic at the notion that this conversation might just happen now was instantaneous and full fledged. It had to be about this; what else could it be? There was absolutely nothing that was wrong with us…unless she wanted to talk about the future and university and stuff? Maybe…I wasn’t prepared for that discussion either, but it would be preferable over a pop quiz on my best friend. What would I say to her, anyway? Max is my friend and I miss him but I miss him so much that anyone who knows about this thinks I’m not so straight after all?

‘Breathe, Nick, and stop getting ahead of yourself. It might be nothing,’ I told myself, but it did nothing to put me at ease.

“What is it?” I cursed my traitorous body for causing my voice to shake. Of course the plan was to deny, deny, deny, if she actually made any such accusation, and it was imperative that I sound completely oblivious.

She toyed with the bowl before her for a while before answering, sending my pulse rate through the roof while I waited. God, what was she thinking? Regardless of the other things that I knew or didn’t, I knew I cared about her, and…that I’d also been very unfair to her.

She continued to play with the spoon and my throat closed up a little more. If this was about university, the air wouldn’t be so thick, and my guilty conscience didn’t allow me to imagine there could be a third possibility. What was going on in her mind? Was she thinking about all the times I’d forced myself to be with her? Had it come across and obvious, and did she now think that I’d just been playing around with her? Ryan had said it had been kind of obvious, so it was a very real possibility that she, too…

 Was she about to break up with me over this? As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I instantly regretted every second that I’d ever felt annoyed at her for what felt like her coming in between. She hadn’t, of course not! She’d just been expecting the normal from me, given me room when I needed it, been there for me, and I…I vowed then and there that if this didn’t end in disaster, I’d never again get mad at her.