At this point, she would be okay if he just told his friends he liked her. Or he could be daring and call her his girlfriend. She may even agree to keep their relationship a secret for a while, if he asked. As long as that’s what this actually was.
It was too early for I love you. As nice as those words sounded in her head, she wasn’t sure she was ready to hear them.
But she was ready for something. She was waiting for any small part of him that he would give to her. Maybe it would grow into more, maybe not.
When they were alone, she had fewer questions about how he felt, fewer doubts about what she meant to him. He told her he thought about her, missed her when she wasn’t around, how he loved listening to her breathe and would watch her smile as she slept, wondering what she was dreaming. He told her how he always thought of her when he heard that song on the radio, the one that was playing that first night he saw her.
But she always left his apartment confused, in a fog, like his words didn’t add up quite right.
He made her feel loved – without loving her.
He wanted to hang out with her, spend almost every day with her, call and text her, but not be with her. What was he waiting for? Was he hoping someone better would come along? Someone else in particular? If that were the case, he had many girls who would jump at the chance to be with him.
She cussed under her breath as she squeezed the steering wheel tighter, her knuckles whitening.
Why couldn’t she be that girl for him? What was wrong with her?
That night a few weeks ago, the one they had spent shooting hoops on the basketball court and pointing out constellations, it had taken every bit of courage she had in her to ask him what they were. It had already been two months of this – whatever this was. She hesitated even asking because she didn’t want to push him away. She wasn’t pressuring him for anything other than an answer, regardless of what that answer was. But she was willing to try, take the risk, be courageous, take a chance on him.
He said a lot of words about liking her and caring about her, but he wasn’t ready to have a girlfriend.
She had felt good about asking him and putting herself out there. But as she thought about their conversation later, she realized he essentially said he wanted things to remain the same. He wanted her to continue to be there – without actually having to be with her. He could be a politician for the perfect way he didn’t answer her at all.
It would be so much easier if she could force herself to stop caring for him. If she could just treat him casually, like he did her, and quit waiting around for this fantasy that he would change his mind and realize she was everything he was missing. She felt like she was only a benefit to him.
But as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t turn her feelings off. She couldn’t stifle that tiny bit of hope that he might actually care as much as he said he did. And she just couldn’t give up on him.
She had already fallen too far to just let him go.
*Fiction