Best Intentions

It's been 2 days since my little escapade with Alex. I've been avoiding him. Ignoring his texts and when he calls and asks if I want to hang out I'd make some poor excuse not to. I don't even know what I was doing, hanging out with him again. But a small part of me was hated that I knew that I had to push him away again. I knew that I wasn't supposed to get too close to him again. But I let my guard down. I let him in, more than I should have. Now I'm stuck in this fucking rut. I deserve this. I let him in, now I have to push him away again. I knew that I shouldn't have let him get too close to me anyway, but I let my fucking guard down. And now I end up hurting not just myself, but him too. And I never wanted to hurt him. Not before, not now, not ever. But I screwed up. I fucked things up. Big time. Now I have to live with this.

I was snapped out of my trance when Cass came in the door of the empty shop I work in.
"Hey Tay! Bahahaha it rhymes!!" Cass said
"Oh my God what.." I said
"I was kidding! But it really does rhyme" she said laughing
"Oh God, Cass" I said laughing too "You are so immature sometimes" I added
"Look who's talking" she said
"Whatever" I said
"You still ignoring him?" she asked
"Ignoring who?" I asked, playing dumb
"Don't act stupid, Tay. I'm talking about Alex" she said
"I'm not ignoring him" I said
"Oh please. I know you, Tay." she said
"Fine, maybe I am" I said. The door rang and a tall boy with messy dirty blonde hair coming in.
"Tay, can we talk?" Alex asked
"Oh Hey Alex! Sure" I said with a nervous smile on my face. Cass gave me a nod that signaled that everything was gonna be okay.
"Are you avoiding me?" he asked
"No! Of course not! Why would you think that?" I lied
"Well for one, you've been ignoring all my texts and when I ask if we can hang out you'd make some lame excuse." he explained. I was silent for a while. "Did I do something?" he asked
"No no no!" I said
"Then what's wrong?" he asked
"I don't think this is a good idea" I said
"What do you mean 'this'? What does 'this' even mean? One moment we're okay, then the next you put the walls back up" he said.
"We can't hang out anymore" I said
"You're doing it again" he said.
"Doing what exactly?" I asked
"You're doing what you did to Tim to me" he said.
"It's not like that" I said
"It sure as hell looks like it" he said
"But it's not" I said
"Yeah, this time I'm not letting you go." he said. I just stared at him. My eyes starting to get watery. "I'm not letting you slip away, like I did 5 years ago. Not this time. Not ever." he added
"Alex...--" I said with a pained look on my face. I was certain that he saw this which is probably why he cut me off from what more I was about to say
"But if you really want me to leave you alone... I will. Because I love you. And I want you to know that. So if you love me too like I think you do tell me now or I swear I'll leave. I'll turn away and I'll leave you alone." he threatened. I still stayed silent. "Fine, have a nice life, Tay" he said he was about to turn around when I spoke up
"Fine, leave! That's what you're good at anyway!" I said to him
"Don't act like you don't want me to leave. Don't you dare say that to me. We both know that you wanted me to leave before and you want me to leave now" he said
"God knows that I don't and I didn't" I said.
"But I don't" he said
"I just told you, didn't I?" I said
"It doesn't seem like it" he said. With that he turned around and walked away.