Save Tonight

Was it bad that I kind of sort of follow her more than I should? It wasn’t stalking, but instead of avoiding her, I would make it a point to travel in her general direction. I needed to figure her out because it was driving me crazy. But what was I supposed to do during break? I couldn’t very well follow her to class when we weren’t in class…

“I absolutely love your family,” Emery told me a day after Easter when we were hanging out at the park close to his house. That kind of surprised me to be honest. No one ever loved them-thought they were funny sure, but never said they loved the family. Nathanial is even still on the border with that one.

“Really?” I gave him a skeptical look to show that I was not convinced of this.

“Are you joking? Of course! They were so freaking hilarious and such nice people. I know you guys have some problems, but it seems like with a family like that you can always work things out.”

After staring at him for a while, I got up from my swing and hugged him for a really long time. Not only did he get me, but he got my family too, and believed in all of us. He didn’t think we were crazy or insane; he thought we were special and funny. We were definitely certifiably insane, but he was able to look past that and see who we really were. Wow.

“Oh guess what I figured out!” I exclaimed suddenly, almost making him fall out of his swing.

“What’s that?” he wondered after he stopped laughing at my outburst. I’m sure I scared him with the outburst, but he still had a smile on his face.

“I wasn’t really in love with Hayden.” There was a huge smile on my face as I said this and an excited bounce in my step. Emery looked confused, but a smile was slowly forming on his face at the prospect of what I was telling him.

“How do you figure? You seemed very sure that you were in love with him and there was no other explanation for it.”

“Well, I was talking to my Nana and she had some very good insight. She told me that it was only infatuation and not love that I was experiencing with Hayden, which makes perfect sense when I think about it.”

“Since when has there been a difference between love and infatuation? Aren’t they the same thing essentially?”

“See, that’s what I thought too, but apparently they aren’t the same at all. Infatuation seems like love at first because there’s the initial passion and everything, but it’s not really healthy. Well, I guess some is-this one wasn’t thought. He was too clingy and dependent rather than giving me the space I need to have a life outside of him. It was perfect, but it wasn’t meant to last.”

“Well I always liked your Nana, she is such a wise lady,” he commented with a wink. I smirked at him, knowing he knew I was that much closer to being able to tell him I loved him.

I wasn’t there yet and he wasn’t about to push me, but I was getting so much closer to it. I was finally mending my heart with Emery’s help. That piece of me that I was convinced I had lost forever was actually becoming full again; I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before. Infatuation describes our relationship so well.

Emery and I decided that we would walk back to his house and watch a movie so he took my hand and we began at a slow pace. Though I constantly walked very fast no matter how much time I had, with Emery, I loved walking slowly just to enjoy the moment. I was living so much more in the moment with him than I ever had before. It was awesome.

I know for a fact that I will be sounding like a nerd right now, but there’s this book I had to read in school. It’s called Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. It was painfully hard to read, but there was a really good message in one of the chapters. As we get older, we seldom live in the present. We are always thinking about something else that had happened or will happen and we miss out on so much of life. If we just take the time to listen to the world and live in the present then life will be so much more worth living. Emery was good at helping me do that.

I told him this and he just laughed, calling me a nerd like I knew he would, but that’s okay. Being a nerd was fine with me and he didn’t seem to mind that about me. He loved to read too and was able to appreciate the reference even though he had never read the book before. I liked that about him-and just about everything else about him too.
“What would you do if I fully turned into the girl I portray to the media?” I asked randomly as we approached his house.

“What do you mean by that?” he looked confused and I could tell he thought I was crazy for the question.

“I mean would you still like me if I was always Felicity and there was no Onyx? If I didn’t have this part of my personality would you find me annoying and petty?” It worried me that he really wouldn’t like me if I was only one person so his answer was really important to me.

“The fact that you think Felicity is an awful person astounds me Onyx, it really does. Both Felicity and Onyx are amazing people. Yeah I have more in common with Onyx, but Felicity is the same person. You seem to think that they are totally separate people, but they’re not. Yeah they’re different, but they are both you and I like you. I wouldn’t find you annoying at all and I definitely would not find you petty. Silly girl.”

I looked at him for a long time, not sure what to think about that response. It seemed too perfect to even comprehend, honestly. How could someone know all the right things to say all the time? It just did not seem possible that he was that good and was that content with who I was that he didn’t mind any of the many facets of my life. Who does that?

“Why are you so good to me?” I whispered pathetically. “I cannot see how you are this perfect guy all the time. It’s not just that you’re a good person, but you treat me like I am the most important thing in your life and I just don’t get it. You’d be able to get over me if I left.”

“Ny, I treat you like the most important thing in your life because you are and it’s as simple as that. I know you can’t love me yet, but I’m falling hard and fast for you and I can’t stop it. I wouldn’t get over it if you left.” I kind of just looked at him for a while until he rolled his eyes at me. “Okay, don’t make fun of how cheesy that was! I know it was lame, but I am falling for you. It’s like the Kesha song- you’re love is my drug. Except I think it’d be more like wine,” he said winking. I laughed so hard.

I could not wipe the smile off my face the rest of the day. He was just too perfect.