Washed out Rock Song

Something startled me awake in the middle of the night. I opened my eyes to a moonlit bedroom and looked around my room. I flashed a look at the time on my cell phone. 3:04 am.

click

My head swung around to the sound that had come from my window. I rubbed my eyes awake and slowly got out of bed.

click

I went over to the window and saw John leaning over to pick up a stone.

It figures. I spent the past few days trying to get him to talk to me and now that I didn’t want to talk to him he showed up like this.

I stepped away from the window and grabbed a sweatshirt off of the floor of my bedroom before heading downstairs. I cracked the front door open and slipped out.

“John!” I whisper screamed as he wound up to throw another rock at my window. “What the hell are you doing?”

He turned to me and dropped the stone onto the gravel where he found it.

“I need to talk to you,” he said, taking a few steps closer to me. “Just for a second.”

“It’s 3 in the fucking morning.” I shook my head. “I tried to talk to you, but you ignored me. Now I don’t want to talk to you. Please, just go.”

I turned around, ready for that to be the end of this conversation. I wanted to curl up in bed and cry myself back to sleep. Again.

“Leah,” I felt Johns hand lightly on my arm.

I turned to face him. His green eyes dug into mine. Even now when I hated looking at him, they were mesmerizing.

“I’m sorry I wouldn’t talk to you before, okay? But I just need to say something.”

I felt my eyes begin to water. Standing in front of him like this was hard. I loved him so much, and I wondered if I would ever be able to stop loving him. Right now I was angry. Angry that he wouldn’t talk to me, angry that he had moved on and was already sleeping with random girls, angry that he said he didn’t love me anymore.

I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t walk away either. John took that as permission to continue.

“Leah, what you think you saw earlier, it’s not what you think,” he said, referring to me walking in on him and another girl half naked.

I rolled my eyes and looked to my right, just so I didn’t have to look into his eyes anymore.

“Don’t do that, Leah,” he said, “I know it looked bad, but I didn’t sleep with her. Melanie showed up, my mom let her in just like she did with you.” He paused to make sure I was still listening. "She threw herself at me, started taking off her clothes, but I pushed her away. I told her to leave.”

I let out a breath and looked back at him. “Why are you telling me this?” The tension in my voice was gone now. I believed him. If he really did sleep with somebody, he would have no reason to lie about it. I couldn’t be mad at him for something he didn’t do.

“Because I know how it looked and you needed to know the truth.”

“No, John,” I said. “Why? Why do you want me to know the truth? Why didn’t you just let me believe you slept with her?”

He sighed. “Because what you thought you saw, I knew it might hurt you. And I didn’t want to do that. Believe it or not, but I’m not a bad person. I don’t purposely try to hurt other people.”

I knew what he was really saying was “I don’t purposely try to hurt other people like you do”. Still, every time I thought John didn’t care about me he proved me wrong.

“Anyways,” he said, “That’s all I came here for.” John started to turn but I stopped him.

“Wait,” I said, “Please.”

He looked at me and for the first time it looked like he was actually going to listen. It was probably the desperation in my voice. He felt bad because I seemed so pathetic right now.

“John.” I rested my back up against the brick siding along the front of the house. “One morning, Kira came to my crying hysterically. She said that you hurt her and I got protective. I thought you were a jerk and that maybe you needed a taste of your own medicine. It was stupid, and I was wrong. I was just caught up in this idea of needing to look out for my little sister. But the more time we spent together, the more I realized that I was wrong. You’re not a jerk.” I paused. I realized how nervous I was saying this to him. It was relieving, finally being able to tell him when I’ve been wanting to for so long. I took a step towards him, leaving less than a foot between us. “John, things changed really quickly. And when they did, I didn’t plan on hurting you at all. I love you. I never lied about that.”

John sighed and put a hand through his hair. “Leah, I know.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I know that you love me. I know all of it, or assumed at least. I didn’t want to talk to you because I knew you would tell me exactly this. That it started off with some not so great intentions but that you ended up falling in love with me anyways. I know that you love me, you can’t fake that.”

“Okay,” I said confused. “If you know that, then what’s wrong? I know I lied to you, and I’m sorry.” I reached out and grabbed his arm, he reluctantly gave it to me and I slid my hand down his arm to his hand. “Can’t things just go back to how they were?”

“No, Leah.” He dropped my hand. “They can’t."

“But why?” I croaked. I tried to hold back my tears but I was unsuccessful. I felt one slide down my cheek.

“Leah,” he said sincerely. He placed a hand on my cheek and wiped the tear away, but another fell on the other side. “I have been in love with you since Kindergarden. I have thought about you every single day since I was 5 years old. I hoped that one day you would notice me the way I noticed you.” He dropped his hand. “When you started talking to me, actually talking to me. I thought that maybe you wanted to be friends again, like when we were younger. But then you told me you didn’t even remember being friends.” John shrugged. “I didn’t care that you didn’t remember. I was just happy you were coming around at all. And things were great, they were perfect. And then I found out the truth.

“See, Leah,” John said. “It’s not that you lied to me. It’s that I loved you for so long hoping that you might fall in love with me too, and when you finally did, it was on accident. You hated me so much in the beginning that you actually wanted to hurt me.”

As I looked at him, I could tell that his eyes were wet too.

“That’s what hurts more than anything. The fact that I loved you, and you hated me.” John looked at the ground and stopped for a minute. It looked like he was trying to hold back tears. “You know, I was so excited for our first date. You made it seem like I had talked you into going, but then you dressed up for it. It was like you actually wanted to be there with me. But it was all fake, it was all pretend. And I can’t forget that. When I look at you, that’s all I think about. I think about you smiling on our first date and then I think about how fake it was."

“So I’m done,” he said, “I’m done loving you. It hurts too much."

My face had watermarks running down each cheek. Tears were forming and falling more often now.

“I’m sorry, Leah,” he said, “But things can’t go back to the way they were. They just can’t.”

I took a deep breath. “But I love you,” I managed to get out.

John pulled me towards him and wrapped his arms around me tight into a hug. I buried my head in his chest, leaving tear stains on his shirt. I gripped his shirt with my hands, not wanting to ever let go.

John loosened his hold on me and leaned down, kissing me lightly on the forehead. He dropped his arms and took a step back. “Goodbye Leah."