Nothing but the Truth

I hadn't been inside the theater more than five minutes before Elias was shuffling me right back out, mouthing something I didn't catch to Abigail. Maybe I should've worried about what he was going to do, or have been excited that he noticed my distress even after nearly two years apart and two weeks of dealing with each other only as much as necessary. And yet, I just felt drained and low, like a giant vacuum had sucked out my brain and heart and guts.

Eli led me to a corner of shore, a place that would've gone on forever were it not for a huge stone cliff. It was this cliff I leaned against, pushing my hair away from my face and biting my lip. It was there where he finally caught my gaze and held it, the chocolate brown connected with the tear-stained blue. And it was there where I started to cry.

“Why are you doing this?” My words were phrased as a question, but my broken voice made it come out more like a statement. I hated how weak I sounded.

He gathered the thick dreads at his neck, then let them go, a gesture that seemed almost anxious. “You were upset.”

“It's not any of your business.”

“I want it to be.” Elias swallowed loudly.

“No, you don't,” I said listlessly, looking down at the sand. “You don't even want to look at me anymore. You forgot about everything that happened that summer because you realized – I don't know, that I was too young or too crazy or just plain not good enough or whatever the fuck you realized. Whatever. But something changed your mind, because you used to never take your eyes off me and now you won't even look at me.”

After a few beats, he replied, “You must not be looking at me very much, then. Abigail has called me out after practice for staring at you all the time four times in two weeks.”

“Miranda was only my half-sister.” The words tumbled out, irrelevant to the conversation but needing to be said. My anger wasn't because of Elias. “She had a different dad.”

I heard his sharp intake of breath, not quite a gasp. “Did she know?”

“Yeah,” I told him, now trying to wipe the tears off my face. I felt too exposed, crying and discussing the real rationale for my fury. “She knew.”

“So that means...” he trailed off, probably thinking of everything I told him. The things I'd told to only him.

I met his eyes. “Yeah.”

In a fluid motion, he moved close enough to me to enfold me in his arms and press my face into his chest. I tried not to cry, but once someone has touched you, the floodgates open even worse. My body twitched with jerky sobs that I resented, a telltale sign of my total loss of control.

“You need me again,” Elias murmured into my hair. I wanted to tell him that I always had, but I couldn't get the words out. “I'll be here. I will. This isn't like last time.”

I should've been happy that he was holding me, and way below the surface, I was, but the vacuum had taken my emotions too. My nerve endings told me how nice it felt to be in his arms again, though.

“Why did you leave last time? You didn't call or email or anything. It was like you disappeared.” My voice conveyed more hurt than I had wanted.

“I thought maybe if I acted like it had never happen, I could move on. I thought I needed to, because you needed somebody and I needed some growing up. I thought it would never work out because of how people perceived the age difference, so I tried to move on,” he explained. “I couldn't. All I've done for the past two years is miss you.”

I whispered what my heart had been dying to scream: “I still want you.”

“Glad we're on the same page. But we can talk about this later, baby doll. Don't worry about it right now.” And his voice was so soothing, and his hands, one cupping my head and the other on the small of my back, felt so good that I closed my eyes to the world, if only for a little while.