I'll Never Say I Love You

I winced. Stella McKenzie, known to the majority of our grade as Stellar Stella, was the most popular and beautiful girl in the grade. She could pull any guy she wanted. ‘But he didn’t respond to any of them, right?’ I asked urgently.

Alex let out a whooping laugh. “Tahara...you’re jealous!” he managed to get out.

I raised my hands to object, but dropped them. Damn it, he was right. I was jealous of girls trying to flirt with Kyle, when he and I didn’t have anything set in stone yet. How pathetic was I? Sure, it was nothing new to me – I had always felt resentment towards the girls Alex dated, but to feel that towards girls who were chasing Kyle was incomprehensible. I didn’t feel that strongly about him, did I?

I turned and started to walk away instead of trying to say anything.

“Whoa, Tahara, wait up,” Alex said, jogging after me due to how quickly I was walking. He slowed down once he reached me. “What’s the deal?”

I gave him a look while still walking. Surely he wasn’t this thick?

“Avoidance,” he said knowingly. I was glad he understood. “Escape tactics. I’m talking about it, you try and escape me. I get it.”

I gave him a round of sarcastic applause. Being talented as he was – able to walk, look at my face and watch my hands at the same time – Alex was able to see all of this.

“Tarie,” Alex said pleadingly. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

I stopped and turned, looking at him. It took him a moment to realise I had stopped, and then he faced me. ‘Why would I get hurt?’ I asked, confused.

“He...” Alex seemed hesitant to answer my question. My guess, seeing his pained expression was that his reason for trying to protect me from getting hurt would hurt me as well. “He just doesn’t seem like your kind of guy, Tahara,” he said eventually.

I bristled. ‘How exactly would you know what my kind of guy is, Alex?’ I asked angrily. ‘I’ve never dated a guy, so how can you be so sure of what I do and don’t like?’

Alex looked offended. “Let me explain myself, Tarie,” he said quickly. “You haven’t seen him in action. He’s buff, he’s like a jock. When he’s around the guys, he turns into some meathead, and I know you hate meatheads.”

‘He’s different around me,’ I argued. ‘He’s a chameleon.’

“Yes, but how do you know which side is the real him?” he asked.

‘How do I know that this is the real you?’ I countered. ‘You’re not this sweet and sensitive around your guys, are you? I don’t care what he’s like around the guys. I only care about what he’s like when he’s around me.’

Alex ran a hand through his curls, frustrated. He hated to admit that I had a point. He couldn’t argue that he was the same around his guy friends that he was around me, and he knew it. I was angry he would try to talk me out of the one chance I had ever had at a relationship based on a premise that I had ruined for him in two sentences. At the same time, however, I was touched that he cared.

“All right, all right,” Alex surrendered, putting his hands up in defeat. “You win. But I worry about you, Tahara. I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt.”

I rolled my eyes. First my parents, now Alex – why was everyone so overprotective of me? I decided to tell Alex the same thing I told my parents. ‘I’m fifteen, not five,’ I signed. ‘I can look after myself just fine.’

“I know that, but it doesn’t change the way I feel.” He slung a friendly arm around my shoulders and started walking towards the front of the school, dragging me along with him. “I have to be on my guard, Tahara. You’re like my little sister. If anyone breaks your heart, I am contractually obligated to break their face. I would prefer not to have to break someone’s face, and therefore, would like to avoid seeing you get hurt,” he said, a little smugly.

‘Thanks for caring,” I signed, facing him ever so slightly. ‘The thing is though...I’m two hours older than you, so if we’re going to be related the way you say we are, you’re the younger sibling.’

“My mum’s labour started before your mum’s,” Alex argued with a laugh. It was a running joke between us, because even though I was technically older, we both thought of Alex as the older ‘sibling’.

We discussed random things on the way home. One of the things we decided was that we would be going to his house after school the next day, so that I could interrogate Bec about how to handle my hair. Alex laughed when I told him of my troubles, but not in a mean way. I let him get away with it, only because I knew he didn’t truly appreciate how badly these curls were affecting me. Being a male, he didn’t have to worry about such things. He just dragged a comb through his sexy, short curls and forgot about them, as they didn’t bother him. My curls annoyed the crap out of me at the best of times.

When we got home, Mum was waiting with a triple layer chocolate, caramel and banana cake. It sounds feral, but actually works. It’s Mum’s signature dish that she concocted by mistake. She waited until we were seated – me in my favourite chair, and Alex on the futon – to bring us a slice each. She sat down in the other chair with a slice of her own.

“Tahara,” she said once she was seated. “I talked to Cass at work today.”

I put my bowl in my lap, grateful that Maxwell was in Alex’s lap instead. ‘And...’ I signed, confused.

“She thinks you did a great job as barista the other day,” Mum said proudly. “She thinks it would be a great idea for you to be out front permanently.”

My jaw dropped. “Tahara, you never told me you were barista the other day,” Alex said.

‘It slipped my mind,’ I admitted. My mind had been so clogged with Kyle, schoolwork and then Alex’s breakup that I had completely forgotten. I turned to Mum. ‘Are you serious? I get to be barista on the weekends now?’

Mum nodded, beaming. “She thinks you’re the best one on there.”

I was shocked. This was like a dream come true. ‘What about Jess?’ I asked.

“She’ll be put down to kitchen hand,” Mum answered sadly. “She’s not going to be happy about it, but Cass and I both agreed that she was the worst. We have to do what’s best for business.”

I nodded, showing sympathy, but I didn’t really care about Jess. The only thing I cared about was that I was getting a promotion, more hours, and a position that I was going to love.

***

Wednesdays are quite possibly my favourite day of the week, largely due to the fact that I don’t have Science or Social Studies. If I had double Home Economics instead of double Math and double Information Technology instead of double English it would be the perfect day, but I’ll take what I’m given. I don’t mind Math or English much...I just prefer my other two classes.

But the thing I liked about that particular Wednesday, that was just an added bonus on other days, was that my first class was Home Economics...with Kyle. How much better could things get?

After the coffee discussion Tuesday, Alex and I had spent the afternoon doing our schoolwork, and then I slept over at his house. That gave me an opportunity to discuss the problems I was having with my hair with Bec, which she laughed about. She told me to stop being such a perfectionist and just go with the flow. The three of us were up late playing video games, and so Alex and I ended up sleeping through his alarm. Thankfully, my natural inclination to wake early saved us, and I woke both of us up with enough time for both of us to get dressed, shove some food down our throats and head to school together.

Alex and I walked into class just as the bell was ringing, and took our regular seats on the opposite sides of the classroom. Melissa raised an eyebrow at me, as if to ask what was going on. I quasi-signed that I would tell her later. She sighed and went back to copying down the recipe that was being projected onto the board.

Every now and then, I dared to look across the room at Kyle, but never managed to catch his eye. When he wasn’t studiously copying down the recipe, he was laughing and whispering with his friends. The best hope I had was that he was looking at me while I was copying down the recipe, and we just kept missing one another.

As soon as the bell rang, I stood up intent on talking to him. Fortunately for me, he seemed to have the same intentions, and got to me before I could get to him. That was good, because to get to him I would have been going against the crowd, something I’m not very good at.

“Hey, Tahara,” Kyle said, smiling as he reached me. There was something about him that was hesitant and uncertain.

I smiled and waved at him.

“I want to ask you something before our next classes start,” he mumbled, his eyes darting anywhere but mine.

I looked at him expectantly.

“Tahara!” Melissa groaned. “Quit flirting, we have to go to Math, unless you wanna be late for that too?”

I felt my face burning as I blushed.

I could see that Kyle was blushing slightly as well. “Look, I’ll ask it real quick then. Tahara, would you like to go to the Valentines Dance with me?”

I felt my jaw drop and guessed that I was once again standing in front of Kyle looking like a fish. I was so stunned that I couldn’t react immediately. Thankfully, it was easier to say yes through actions than words, and my body sprung to life. I nodded, smiling.

“Great!” Kyle exclaimed, beaming. “I’ll pick you up at seven on the day!”

He ran out of the room quickly, and I debated with myself about whether it was for fear of missing his class or out of sheer joy from getting a yes from me. I shook my head briefly, half-expecting to be seemingly transported back in time and realising that everything that had just transpired was a cruel trick of my mind. All I got was Melissa giving me a look that was half glare, half excitement. It made her look pretty creepy.

“Come on,” she said, grabbing my elbow and dragging me out of the room. “Save the staring into space for English. Right now, we have to get to Math and discuss everything that just happened.”

I shook myself free of her grip – difficult, considering it felt like iron – and walked alongside her to Math. Along the way she gushed and ranted about how cute Kyle was, and how lucky I was to have him, even if I only sort of had him, and that I should sink my claws into him and claim him for myself before other girls tried to. I wondered if she knew about the girls such as Stellar Stella who had been flirting with him during Alex’s Phys Ed class yesterday. I silently cursed Kate and Janice for choosing pottery over Phys Ed.

Mr. Miller spent the double Maths lesson speaking, and so Melissa and I couldn’t exchange a word, per se. It worked out to be for the best anyway, because if Janice and Kate discovered that Melissa and I had discussed my date without them, they would have flipped out.

Date. It seemed so weird to be referring to a date and myself in the same sentence. I hoped that would change in time.