Trust Me, Don't Leave Me

~~~~Liz’s POV~~~~
I ended up changing into sweats and sprawling out on the hotel bed. Staring at the blank ceiling wasn’t doing much for me. Memories of the day swirled through my head.
Holding Dougie’s hand before he kissed me.
His fingers on my blond streak.
His hand expertly popping my middle knuckle back into place while I sat in his lap. Then him kissing me while in the same position.
His voice asking me to let go, to be with him. Then him kissing me in front of the glass doors.
Him sitting with me in the grass. Placing his hand on my back. Accepting my strange religious choices. Kissing me when I started to freak over him wanting to do spells. That kiss had been different from the others, deeper, more intimate.
I’M GOING CRAZY! I thought. More INTIMATE?!
I shook my head. I was thinking like I was writing those smut romances. That I read sometimes. What was wrong with me?
Another memory circled through my mind.
His voice pleading with me to return tomorrow. His eyes when I was leaving, the pleading adoration in them.
This wasn’t right. I was leaving in a week and he didn’t even know it. He knew nothing about me. He didn’t know I had just about a year prior to turning eighteen. He didn’t know how my heart had broken and how I wanted to protect him from the same pain. He didn’t know.
I pulled out my notebook and started writing what was happening to me, substituting in other names for ours. I soon had a good solid four pages.
And for the first time in almost a year, I started crying. Not close to tears like before, but actual crying, almost sobbing right out of my skin.
I scribbled one last thing on my page before putting it away.
WHY AM I DOING THIS TO HIM?!
~~~~Emma’s POV~~~~
I’d noticed Liz standing by herself at the counter during lunch. She was clearly an anti-social. I wondered what she did in her spare time. And I wondered how she had gotten to be anti-social.
After a while, she left. Then all the idiot men went to hang out in the living room, leaving us girls to clean up after them. Liz wouldn’t have taken this crap. She’d have given them an icy glare and they’d be doing all the work.
“Emma,” Gio said to me while I stood at the sink. Liz had rinsed her plate, clearly a responsible person.
“Yeah?” I asked, still looking at the dishes.
“You know how Liz is a best-selling novelist?”
“Yeah.” Where was she going with this?
“Well…” she started. Then Grace took over.
“Liz doesn’t live locally,” she said quickly. I turned then.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Her home is in the U.S. She’s here for a book tour and vacation.”
“You mean she’s not staying?” I barely stopped myself from shouting.
“Well…yeah.”
“Then why is she leading Dougie on?” I felt a sting for what this would surely do to him.
“Well, she tried to refuse him politely, but she must have failed or something. She wasn’t quite…happy when we had lunch. You must have seen that.”
“What, is she some kind of sadist then?” I was enraged.
“No!” Gio growled at me. “She told us a vague story about how she had her heart broken before. She’s learned to adapt. But she must be feeling guilty about letting Dougie get hurt now.”
“How do you think she must be feeling herself for knowing that she’s the one causing all this?” Grace put in. “She tried to protect him from this. And it must be hard for her to be in a relationship at all now.”
“Oh, I see.” I felt overwhelmingly horrible for thinking bad of Liz when she was nothing but nice to me. “When’s she leaving?”
“In one week.”
“Poor Dougie,” I said, unable to stop myself.