Sour Sweet Love

Chapter Twenty Two

                MAYBE I walked. Maybe I ran. At any rate, he was there before I was: standing before the entrance where we had met for the first time. My first bumping into him: it was supposed to be a chance encounter that allotted to nothing but it had an adverse affect, didn't it? It had been the beginning of everything that amounted to he and I.

"Avery," he said as soon as he saw me, a resolve clear in his eyes. "You wanted to talk to me?"

I raised an eyebrow in confusion. "What? You were the one who told me to come here."

He let his confusion show through his furrowed eyebrows. I examined him then: his messy hair, disheveled from having run his fingers through it so many times, and his eyes of ice as rumors had advertised; they were never far off. When my eyes wandered to his lips, I resisted an urge to press him unto a wall and kiss him senseless. 

"Joey," he began to explain, revealing a white sheet of paper. "She said—"

I lifted a similar paper of my own, the one allegedly from Declan. "Joey," I realized. Then came the realization that Declan hadn't wanted to see me; it was all a ploy by Joey. Knowing that it was too brutal—that I could hardly reconcile with any of this—I swiveled on my heel to leave for good. As I escaped, a soft, troubled groan escaped Declan's lips. With a newfound resolve, he grabbed my waist, spinning me around before I could get far. "Declan," I began to say. My eyes widened as he pressed his body against mine, pinning me against a nearby wall.

"Enough," he demanded. "Enough of this."

I was at a loss for words.

"I'm sorry, okay?" he continued. "I'm sorry that I'm a dick who keeps running in loops. I'm sorry that I realize how important people are to me only when they're convinced that I'm an asshole."

"Declan," I began.

He shook his head. "No, Avery, please. Just this past week has been absolute torture without you in it. And it's crazy because we're not in love—we're kids. But I'm into you. I want more of you," he hammered home. He was impossible to resist in that moment. My shameless mind envisioned this passion manifesting as wild, intangible motions that set sheets on fire.

"Molly and I are over too," he continued. "So we don't have to worry about that. We don't have to worry about anything anymore."

"Just one thing," I murmured.

He glanced at me curiously. 

"Kind of worried that you might get me a promise ring too," I jested.

His lips morphed into a grin. Without another word nor insinuation, he pressed his lips unto mine. His was a flavor of longing and affection. It was milk chocolate and the late summer rains. It was bliss in an action if such a thing existed, and you decoded the cause of my happiness to its most inane state, it would be in the person I saw myself become in that moment when him.

There was no synchronicity. There was no electricity. There was acceptance—a sense of familiarity—and an optimism for what would come. When we pulled away at last, we were breathless but ecstatic. We were kids. We were naive. Yet that naivety was all that we had.