Bound to You

Chapter 35

I took the first flight back to Connecticut and landed in Stamford almost ten hours later. I hadn't slept a wink on the plane, instead spending most of my time alternating between crying and watching sad movies.

I fell into my bed as soon as I got to my apartment. My roommate was still asleep, all the doors closed and the lights off and the whole apartment completely silent. I climbed into my cold sheets and let them comfort me. I tried not to think about the last time you were in them.

The moon shone down on my bed, and I wanted to be able to sleep. I wanted to be able to close my eyes and forget that you ever existed.

Because it shouldn't have been this hard, right? It shouldn't have been so hard to be with someone, especially when you were completely and unabashedly in love with them the way I was in love with you. Why couldn't we just be together without one of us fucking it all up?

I couldn't sleep. I crawled into the spot inside my window frame, just big enough to sit comfortably, and watched the world function in the quiet moonlight. I watched cars drive by on the street outside our apartment building, watched people stumble in, even though it was late at night, watched the moon change as the night wore on.

And then a taxi pulled up in front of the building.

It wasn't the first taxi I'd seen that night. It was the middle of summer break, and the apartment we were renting was in a building that was full of Yale students, so it wasn't all that surprising. Most of them were spending the summer partying.

But when the door of the taxi flew open, I recognized you immediately. I'd memorized every line of your body over the last few years: the slope of your shoulders, the curve of your hip, the movement of your fingers.

And then yours eyes came up. You knew, from so many visits to my apartment, exactly which window was mine, and I knew you saw me in the window in the way you froze, one hand on the handle of your suitcase. Your eyes went wide, and I was so endeared to you in the that moment, in the way the moonlight flooded across your features, that I wanted to smack myself. How could I always love you so much when you just kept hurting me?

I moved away from the window, but it wasn't like it was going to do any good now. You'd already seen me, and I knew that any second you were going to knock on my door. I paced back and forth in my tiny room, but then decided to meet you in the hallway. If you knocked, you would wake up my roommate, and that wasn't fair to her.

I stood in the doorway and watched you climb the last few steps up into our hallway and then stop at the end of it. You set down your suitcase.

"Do you want me to leave?"

I shook my head, but my mouth said, "Yes."

Your brow furrowed, and your shoulders sagged. "Lena, I want to say some things. And when I've said them, if we're done, I guess I just have to be okay with that."

I watched you for a second, and then I backed into my apartment, waiting in the living room as you followed me in, shut the door behind yourself, and then set your suitcase on the floor by the door. I didn't want to, but I kept moving until we were in my bedroom because I didn't want to make too much noise.

You shut the door, and I crossed my arms, backing as far away from you as I could, my butt hitting the windowsill, but you weren't moving. You stood by the door, your back pressed to it. You watched me, and I watched you, and my entire skin ached, ached for you to touch me, for you to kiss me, for you to be close, pressed up against me.

"I feel like I have a lot to say that I haven't said."

I just nodded. You never said enough. I felt like I put my beating heart on a platter when I was fifteen, and you hadn't so much as said how you really felt about me.