With You ✔

30

Kit

"Damn Kit, look at your girlfriend right now."

"Dude, shut up." I smack the back of Parker's head as he stares at Ellie, who is currently at her locker down the hall, bending over to put her textbook in her backpack. When Parker doesn't take his eyes off of her, or seem to notice that I just smacked him, I do it again - harder this time.

"Ouch! What?" He turns his head towards me, raising a hand to rub the back of his head.

"Stop staring at my girlfriend, dumb ass."

"You know, she wouldn't even be your girlfriend if I hadn't turned her down."

"You turned her down? Really?" I raise a brow, knowing for a fact that that's not at all what happened. Parker never had a chance with Ellie, she never even saved his number in her phone until Finn included them in a group chat together just a few months ago.

"You don't believe me?"

"I believe it as much as I believe that Ivy Hill kissed you when we were thirteen years old."

"That really did happen! Why don't you guys believe me?"

"Because Ivy would never- " The gym doors open, and someone comes running out, bumping into me and almost falling to the ground if I hadn't reached out to grab their arm. "Sorry, are you - are you okay?" I ask when a set of all too familiar eyes look up at me. I let my hand fall from her arm as she moves to brush her hair out of her face.

She doesn't try to hide her shocked expression, as I say the first words I've said to her in over a year. Being this close to her, and seeing how she reacts to me, I feel all the guilt that I've been avoiding hit me at once. Hannah and I weren't the perfect couple, we weren't even a good couple, but however short and meaningless our relationship was - she didn't deserve to be ignored and treated like she was unworthy of an explanation.

"Uh, yeah. I'm fine."

"Hey, Hannah." Parker winks and I notice Hannah blush a little as she smiles and says hello back. I resist the urge to roll my eyes at Parker and his never ending flirtation.

When the school year first started, Hannah had spent weeks trying to get me to speak to her, and then one day she just stopped. I don't know if it was because of Ellie, or if it was because of me - maybe it was because she just didn't care to talk to me anymore, but whatever the reason, she can't seem to make eye contact with me now.

"Hannah, can we talk?"

She's even more shocked than she was before, and her mouth opens but it takes a few seconds for the words to come out. She looks from Parker to me and back again before she finally says, "Okay."

"I'm going to head to the cafeteria with El. See ya, man." Parker claps a hand on my shoulder before walking down the hall towards Ellie, who is looking in my direction curiously. Hannah has had it out for Ellie since her first day here, but is Ellie mad or jealous that I'm skipping lunch to have a talk with my mean girl ex right now? Of coarse not, because that's not who Ellie is, and once again I'm reminded of thankful I am for that fact.

Hannah turns and walks back towards the gym, and I follow after her as Parker and Ellie go through the other set of double doors towards the cafeteria. The gym is empty, aside from a couple of drama students painting props on the stage. Hannah walks past them and towards the bleachers, taking a seat on the bottom row. I sit down beside her and realize that I have no idea what to say. I want to apologize for the way I ended things and the way I treated her but it seems long overdue and kind of pathetic.

I don't know where to begin, and after a few minutes of me trying to come up with the words, Hannah is the one that breaks the silence. "Look Kit, if you're going to say sorry for breaking up with me, you don't have to. It's not like we were together for years and in love or anything. I'm over it, you seem happy with Ellie, so lets just forget it okay."

She stands and grabs her backpack from where she placed it on the ground beside her and turns to walk back towards the doors. This time, I'm the one that's shocked and before I can even fully comprehend what just happened, Hannah turns around, her expression noticeably angry as she storms towards me. "No, you know what, I want an apology. I want to know that you know you're a dick, Kit Kennedy. You just up and left school for months and didn't tell me, your girlfriend why. You never even broke up with me, really. You just ignored my existence for over a year. I don't think you even looked at me until today, and do you have any idea how that made me feel?"

I open my mouth to apologize, to tell her that I do know and that I'm sorry. That I am truly sorry, but she doesn't give me the chance to speak. "And then you start dating Ellie, and everyone thinks that I'm crazy or that I'm the reason you left and stopped socializing, because why not? The timeline matches up, your actions prove the theory, and you're all happy and better with her. You were never that way with me, Kit, and that's fine because we were never meant to be together, but I'm still a human being and you never treated me like one."

"I have a brain tumor." I blurt out the words before she can say more. I hadn't planned on telling her, and I'm not using it as an excuse, but I can't give a true explanation without telling her the main factor in my behavior.

"What?" Her eyes widen and she takes a step forward, all of her anger suddenly gone as the weight of my words hangs between us.

"I have a brain tumor. I was diagnosed junior year and that's when I stopped coming to school. I spent months in the hospital and at home, and I ignored you because I didn't want anyone to know. I didn't want to talk to anyone because I didn't know - I wasn't dealing with it well. I didn't even talk to my family for awhile, and then when I saw what my tumor was doing to them, I decided that it was best to cut everyone out of my life so that less people would be hurt in the end."

"In the end? Are you...Kit, are you going to die?" She actually said it. She actually asked the question and spoke the word that everyone else dances around, hoping that if we just ignore it, it can't happen.

I shrug, "We're all going to die."

"You know what I mean." Tears begin to form, slowly falling down her cheek as she waits for me to answer her question.

"It's a very high possibility."

More tears fall as she sits back down on the bleacher beside me, pulling me into a hug and letting them fall on my shirt. "I really am sorry, Hannah. For everything. I owed you an explanation and I should have given it to you a lot sooner, you deserved a lot better."

"I don't care about any of that. It's fine, really."