I Want to Scream 'I Love You'

“Hey, uh, Hayley, can we talk?” Claire asked, taking a seat in the desk in front of me during history.

“Sure, of course.” I was cautious; Claire and I had learned to keep our distances from each other. The fact she was talking me to without Patrick being around was sort of a huge step for her.

Her foot bounced up and down on the carpet for a few silent moments as she chewed on her bottom lip. “You and Patrick, you guys are good friends, right?”

I nodded in response and she gave me small, forced smile.

“Alright, I don’t know how to put this any nicer, um, just don’t take offense to what I’m about to say.” She paused, taking a deep breath. Her dark eyes caught mine for a minute, before glancing away. “Can you back off a little? I mean, we’ve been dating for two weeks today, and it feels like, whenever we’re at school, you’re always around Patrick. I’m not saying you have to stop hanging out with him, just, give us a bit of breathing room, you know?”

A mess of words caught in my throat. I wanted to bring up every time she’d interrupted a conversation between Patrick and I, every time she’d made him go fetch something for her, every time Joe, Noelle, and I had felt like we didn’t even exist in Patrick’s life because of her.

Instead, I pursed my lips into a tight smile and nodded slightly. “Yeah, I know, breathing room. Gotcha.”

She let out an exasperated sigh, as if I’d just taken a huge load off her shoulders. “Thank you, I appreciate it.”

She hopped up, waved, and left, walking over to where her group of friends stood. I slumped back down into my desk, just realizing what exactly I agreed to.

As if this whole situation wasn’t killing me enough.

***

I grabbed Noelle’s arm, pulling her away from Patrick and Claire’s table before they could see us.

“We’re not sitting with them today,” I whispered, motioning towards another table with my head. “Come on.” I turned and started towards it, pestering her slightly to hurry up.

She followed skeptically, “Wait, why aren’t we sitting with them? We always do, and what about Joe?”

“I’ll explain, just… sit.” She did as I said, still eyeing me and my every movement. I slid my tray onto the table, trying to ignore her glower, growing stronger by the moment.

“Finally sick of Patrick and Claire…? Or, did you or Patrick say something stupid to the other…? Are you guys not talking again? Or-“

I silenced her babbling with my hand, holding it up between us. “Shh, I’ll explain, just chill, ‘kay?”

Her eyes darted from me, to Patrick, sitting on the other side of the cafeteria, to her tray, and back to me, practically burning a hole through me as she stared me down.

“Patrick and Claire want space.” The words were mumbled and slurred as I forced them out. I was sort of surprised when I looked up and she understood what I had said.

“Patrick…out of all people, Patrick said he wanted space?”

I shook my head slowly. “No, Claire did.”

“And she said Patrick wanted space? From you? How do you know that’s what he-“

“She asked for space, I’ll give them space. Let it go,” I snapped, glancing up cautiously after the words shot out of my mouth.

Noelle opened her mouth to say something, but stopped, instead, looked back down at her tray and pushed her food around some more.

“Sorry, I was… I was just asking. That doesn’t sound like him.” She pulled the sleeves of her hoodie over her hands, pushing her tray away from her.

“Don’t… don’t be sorry, I shouldn’t have flipped.”

Her eyes floated up to me and a smirk slid across her lips. “You like him way too much.”

I started coughing, shaking my head incredulously at her, as if she were making the biggest assumption.

“Oh, don’t deny it. It’s obvious, come on now.”

Our eyes locked and her smirk grew, as if she had just caught a fly between the window and the screen. I groaned and buried my head into my folded arms on the table.

“Between you and me, I don’t like Claire anymore,” she whispered to me, leaning over the table slightly. “The only reason she wants space” –she spat the word– “is because Patrick likes you better. Trust me.”

“Mm, I’m sure,” I mumbled from my shelter. She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and tapped her fingers against the wood.

“You don’t want to believe me, fine, but this something I know. You know me, I’m that horrible friend that can’t stop the truth from coming out, for example, your hair looks like shit today. I didn’t want it to come out that way, but it was going to come out sooner or later.”

***

“Don’t splash, else you can clean up the water afterwards,” I told Danielle, as she sat in her bath, surrounded by swarms of rubber duckies; yellow plastic and orange beaks as far as the eye can see.

She smirked and laid back in the tub, the mounds of ducks bobbing up and down in the water.

“You got it under control?” I asked, and she responded with a nod and a thumbs up. “Alright, call me when you want out.”

Leaving the door cracked open to the bathroom; I made my way to the living room, crashing onto the couch for the first time all day.

It must’ve been two seconds of peace before a knock came from the door. I thought about just telling them to come on in, but, with my luck, it’s some kind of escaped convict or something. Instead, I threw my feet over the side of the couch and pulled myself up.

I checked through the peephole first before sighing and swinging the door open.

“You know the door’s open, right? You’ve let yourself in before,” I said to Patrick, who was standing awkwardly, a bag dangling from his hand.

He chuckled and gave me an innocent shrug, still standing in the hallway. I waved him in and he took a few careful steps in, sliding his shoes off and pushing them next to the door.

I thought about returning to my spot on the couch, but, as I glanced around the room, it was a mess; random shit scattered just about everywhere.

Running a hand through my hair, I started picking them up.

“So, what’s up?” he asked, still standing next to the door. He was holding onto his forearm awkwardly, almost as if he was waiting for an invitation to sit down.

“Nothing… You can sit if you want, I’m just straightening up.”

“I- nah, I’m good. Thanks though,” he shifted his weight to his other foot and started chewing on the corner of his lip.

“Alright, dude, what’s going on?” I stopped what I was doing; setting down the pile of things I had picked up on the table. He gave me a weak smile and held up his bag.

“I brought video games-“

“Patrick…”

He sighed, his shoulders sinking like he had lost some kind of game. “You’re not mad at me, are you?”

I was pretty sure I could hear my heart shatter at his words. Space, I was just giving you space, I wanted to say, but the words failed me, so he continued.

“Claire… She told me what she told you,” his eyes fixed on mine, “that’s not something we agreed upon.”

A shaky breath escaped my lips, maybe a little too loud. “I just figured… I hang around you a lot; maybe you two wanted it to be just you two.”

The bag was out of his hands and I was wrapped in his arms before I knew it, a fistful of his shirt gathered in my hands as I clutched onto him.

He took to rocking me back and forth as I just continued to hold him, as if my life depended on it. It seemed like, after two weeks of it all building up, I could just be me around him again; even if it meant me pretty much breaking down in his arms.

“She may be my girlfriend, but you’re my best fried. That doesn’t give her any right to push you away from me, or even move where you sit during lunch.” A shiver ran down my spine as his lips brushed against my ear. I held back every bit of me from pushing my lips against his plump ones.

Instead, I buried myself into the crook of his neck, nodding at his words as his hand ran up and down my back soothingly.

It’s never bugged me before that we’re just friends, why now? Why when he gets a girlfriend? Why when I can’t have him?

“I call first controller,” he whispered, moments before his touch was slipping away from me.

Maybe it’s because I’m starting to realize that’s all we’ll ever be: friends; just friends.