Give Me Back Whats Mine ➳ David Dobrik

Chapter Seventeen ➳ Alright Mischief Maker

DAVID

What I kept thinking about was the dance we went to our freshman year of high school.

Natalie had asked me.

Kind of like how she'd kissed me first on New Year's Eve.

What she didn't know at the time was that I kind of had a bit of a crush on her.

She'd been the coolest girl I knew. She liked hanging out with me and the guys and she loved playing soccer and she was competitive as all hell.

And pretty. Like really, really, stupidly pretty.

So when she asked me to the dance that year, it felt to me like a shift in our friendship was coming. Like we were going to go to that dance as friends and leave as a couple.

That wasn't the case of course.

I wasn't the only boy who had a crush on her.

I danced with her just once that night, and then proceeded to watch her dance with every other guy in our school.

When my mom came to pick us up after the dance was over, I remember sitting next to Natalie in the back of our car, trying to gather all the courage I could. I wanted desperately to tell her how pretty she looked. But I couldn't make the words come out.

The next morning, she'd knocked on my bedroom window, soccer ball in hand, her hair in a messy bun, last night's makeup smudged under her eyes.

My heart had skipped a couple of beats at the sight of her there. But it wasn't because I'd had a crush on her. It was in that moment I realized what we had already, a friendship that was so strong. A friendship that I relied on with every bone in my body. She was the person I trusted the most.

I'd never been so glad to be so cowardly in my entire life.

If I'd told her how pretty she'd looked, if I'd told her how much I'd liked her, I could have destroyed everything.

She was my best friend. And when it came to her that was enough.

It was enough then, and it was enough now.

And because I had an overactive imagination, I remember in my head seeing myself physically put all my feelings for Natalie in a storage box and taping it up and tucking it away into the deep, dark depths of my mind.

So that's what I did again.

I kissed Natalie one last time just before we landed back in LA. And on the drive home from the airport, I tucked that memory into the battered box that held all my feelings, taped it back up, and put it away for good.  

When we finally got home I watched Natalie fuss about with our bags, a conflicted sort of look on her face.

'Nat.' I said, getting her attention.

'Hmm?' She mumbled, turning to face me.

'Leave that stuff. Let's go kick the soccer ball around outside for a while.'

She just looked at me, almost as if she might cry. But not because she was sad. You could see the conflict leave her face, washed away by an immense amount of relief.

'That'd be nice.'

***

'Natalie!' I yelled through her bedroom door, knocking at the same time. 'Get the fuck up, we've got shit to do!'

I walked back towards our living room, already a hive of activity.

'Dude.' Jeff laughed. 'She is going to be super pissed when she comes out of that room.'