Would You Like To Make a Run For It?

To my utter surprise, Gary was standing with Mr. Mime in front of me.

Delia looked between us and sent out a loud squeal, earning a weird look from Gary. I was just praying she wouldn’t say something like ‘Gary! We were just talking about you!’ Delia was lovely, but that was something she would do.

Luckily, she didn’t.

“Thanks for bringing Gary in, Mimey. I’ll leave you two to it, I did promise Mimey I’d help him garden. Let’s go.” Delia said, taking Mr. Mime’s hand as they left the room.

I didn’t say anything but kept my blue eyes upon his green ones. He sat down in front of me and cleared his throat, but no words came out. I think he was waiting for me to speak first.

“Why are you here?” I asked quietly.

“To make things right.” Was his reply.

“Oh. Continue then.” I stated, trying to act amused when really my heart was beating faster and I could feel my palms begin to sweat. I was nervous, but I have no idea why.

“I know what I said was horrible. I kind of realised it as it came out of my mouth. So I tried to pass it off as a joke, but that fell flat as you didn’t realise the joke.” Gary explained.

“So you knew it was bad, and tried to play it off as a joke. That means you felt guilty that you meant it, so tried to pretend it was a joke.” I analysed

I wasn’t angry; instead I was trying not to let the lump in my throat surface and start crying. It’s ridiculous, Gary and I weren’t anything. But this was so upsetting. I had never felt such strong emotions from Ash’s actions, yet Gary could threaten to turn me into a blubbering baby. I had built walls my entire life to keep people out, and to protect myself from such emotions I’m feeling now. Now, they didn’t exist. All because of an arrogant jerk! Geeze. Never saw this coming. I was the weariest of guys like Gary because of people like Cole back home, but Gary had slipped through.

I hated to admit it, but Gary really meant something to me. So I was going to listen to everything he said.

“No! Lily I didn’t mean it like this. Urgh, this is so frustrating!” Gary whined, running his hands through his nice hair.

“I know how you feel.” I stated quietly.

“Please enlighten me…please.” Gary said, starting his sentence in a cocky manner but sounded desperate by the end, showing that maybe he genuinely wanted to know, it wasn’t just curiousity.

“I distanced myself from people as a child, to stop myself getting hurt. My only friends were through a computer screen, no emotions involved. I even distanced myself from my mother so I wouldn’t have to feel hurt from her neglecting me or blaming me for my father walking out.” I began explaining.

“Then you met Ash and started going out with him.” Gary snorted.

“Shh…let me finish!” I laughed, smiling for the first time today “That happened, but I don’t feel any strong emotions for him outside friendship. Yes it’s nice to finally feel the warmth of friendship, but that’s sadly it, there’s nothing else I feel for him. But then there’s you…”

“What do you feel for me then?” Gary asked.

“Well, I feel the warmth from our friendship that I feel with Ash’s. But there’s more with you. Seeing you happy makes me feel happy. I love spending time with you, and it never gets old. I have a lot more feelings, but I can’t describe them in words. But I know it’s the kind of feelings I tried to avoid my entire life. It’s strange.” I weakly smiled as I explained to Gary.

“Okay, maybe you do know how I feel. What I said was a joke, but then I realised how bad it sounded. Then I felt stupid for caring what a girl thought, so I was a bit of an asshole on purpose to try and make myself feel better, which fell flat because seeing you hurt made me feel worse than covering up my feelings ever could.” Gary described.

“Well I’m glad we cleared that up.” I weirdly annotated, feeling a little awkward and unsure of what else to reply with.

“So, do you forgive me?” Gary smiled.

“Well, you didn’t apologise.” I poked fun at him.

“Oh, right. You can tell I’m not used to this apologising this haha. I’m really sorry Lily for hurting your feelings. I didn’t mean it like that, and put my own selfish interests above you. I’m sorry.” Gary apologised, and I could tell he was a hundred percent sincere.

“It’s okay. I forgive you. I empathise with you, and perhaps I’ve been a little too distant for my liking too.” I smiled.

Gary smiled for a second, but then he began to frown.

“If it isn’t obvious I like you Lily. And now I know you definitely like me too. But I think we both need to address the main question: what happens now?” Gary asked, and I could hear a little bitterness in his voice.

“You wouldn’t believe this, but Delia and I spoke about my little problem. She pretty much gave me her blessing to dump Ash and date you.” I admitted.

“Get out of here, really? You’d think Delia would be the last Mum in the world to ever say that to her child’s partner.” Gary snorted.

“You’d think so, but she said it. I think she knows deep down that Ash and I aren’t meant to be, and it’s silly for me to stay with Ash when we can both find who we’re meant to be with. That and she’s a woman, and thinks what Ash is doing for me is wrong. So it’s not just me, it’s for Ash’s sake too.” I explained.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Don’t be putting all this commitment on me all at once here. ‘Finding who you’re meant to be with’ what’s this?” Gary quickly intervened.

Usually such a commit-a-phobe response would anger me. I would feel used, ashamed and embarrassed. However, I had to chuckle. I felt I now knew Gary a lot better, and I knew he was half-joking.

“What do you think dating is for, dweeb?” I laughed, patting him on the back.

“Alrighty, just as long as you don’t go all crazy-bitch on me.” Gary laughed back.

Gary and I now had a new connection, as cheesy as it sounded. We now knew we were on the same page, and understood each other a lot better. However we still had one more hurdle to face, the most difficult one yet: Ash.