Unfair

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”

-Voltaire
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He had held me for a while after that. We just laid there on my bed and every so often he would place a light kiss on my forehead or lips. We both seemed at ease. After about two hours, he decided he should go back to his dorm before someone knew that he was missing.

Another kiss, this one with a little more passion, a whispered promise that he would see me the next morning, and he slipped out of the window. I stood looking out that window for a few minutes before falling onto my bed and staring at the ceiling. I felt…like curling up and smiling for the rest of my life. As if curling up into a ball would keep this light feeling in my stomach and never let it fade. I just had my first kiss with a boy. A cute boy. A boy that seemed to care for me even though he had no idea who I was.

So I laid back on the bed. Then a wave of uncertainty passed over me, stealing that light feeling from my stomach and replacing it with a tight feeling. Why had he kissed me, and what did it mean to him? I knew that it meant a lot to me, but in this day and age one never knew the standards other people held for a kiss. I had never seen him making out with another girl or kissing her like he did me. Now that I was thinking about it I had never seen him until that day in class.

Maybe he was a new transfer student. Either way, I didn’t know where he stood on the kiss. A kiss to me meant that he would ask the girl to be his girlfriend. Maybe to him it was a prelude to many dates before he asked a girl to be his girlfriend. What if that was the case and he didn’t like me after said number of dates? My first kiss would have been stolen and meaningless. Just taken by a guy who had fleeting feelings and just became bored with the wallflower girl.

I did curl up before falling asleep, but it was to try and keep the pain of reality out.

For whatever reason, I woke up at five that morning. The pain in my gut had dulled slightly; I tried not to think about it. The thought made me nauseous.

I did my usual routine and heaved up my books with a little more difficulty than normal. The walk to the lounge was a quiet one. There was no one else up at this time. I got my usual coffee and walked outside.

The cold felt good when it hit my face. Leaves were falling like orange snowflakes acting as a reminder that it was only the beginning of the school year. I walked to a table on the grounds and set my books down. When it was completely barren, the school was peaceful—maybe even beautiful. I reveled in the quiet, listening to the birds waking up in their nests and the rustling of leaves.

The only bad thing about the silence was that it gave me no distraction from my thoughts. I stared down at the Styrofoam cup between my palms and watching the swirls of cream slowly move in circles. Finally, I let out a sigh and took a long sip from the cup, letting the coffee warm me from the inside. I placed it back down between my palms and continued to stare at it.

A loud snap of a door lever being pushed down, snapped me out of my reverie. The sound had come from the boys’ dorms across the way. I looked around myself, the campus was still empty. Lonely looking tables and benches cemented into the ground dotted the grass in the shade of the trees. My sights turned back to the two boys coming out of the door, still in an argument that had been silenced until the door had been opened.

“But I don’t get it! You could have any girl groveling at your feet! Why that one?”

“I don’t care that I could have any girl. Yeh don’t understand that! I don’t want any other girl!” I froze where I sat. I recognized that accent.

“Any girl, Caeden! Did you see the size of the group around you yesterday?”

“And they didn’t have a single thought fer themselves. Deirdre has wit. She’s clever an’ interesting an’ kind an’ warm. She’s Deirdre! Not group’d inteh the any girl category and that’s why I like her! She’s the first girl in a long time teh catch my attention and I’d really appreciate it if yeh would shove off an’ leave me alone!”

I didn’t dare move as they glared at each other. Caeden’s “friend” stared at him through the blonde hair that fell in front of his eyes before stomping off back into the building. My lungs burned to take a breath, but I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself. He stood there for a while staring at the door, before running a hand through his hair and letting it rest on the top of his head.

Then he turned around, glanced at the girls’ dorms, and began to walk that way. I took a small breath, but I must have twitched or something because his attention snapped to me.

If I don’t move, he can’t see me. The momentarily insane thought flittered through my mind before all thought left me as he walked cautiously toward me.

I moved my eyes back down to my coffee cup and hoped that the swirls could distract me again. The pounding of my heart made it kind of difficult to ignore the crunching footfalls over dry, fallen leaves. The bench across from me creaked slightly as Caeden slid onto it. I saw him lean on his forearms and clasp his hands together.

We stayed silent, a kind of understanding passing between us and yet—

“So…”he started. I jumped slightly at the sudden sound, the coffee in the cup sloshing slightly. I realized then that the coffee had become a distraction to the awkward conversation about to take place. It was no longer about the ache that I had felt the night before. “How much did yeh hear?”

I sat still for a second before looking up at him. His deep sea blue eyes stared at me as he waited patiently for an answer. “All of it,” I replied quietly, moving my eyes back to the cup. Another moment of silence passed.

“I meant every word.”

The Styrofoam squeaked in my suddenly tight grip. Very slowly, my eyes slid up to meet his gaze. I hated how innocent my gaze must have looked to him. He reached out and placed a hand over the top of the cup, stopping it from shaking violently. I hadn’t realized how nervous I was at the moment. My eyes narrowed infinitesimally as I finally absorbed his words. “Really?”

Caeden’s face tightened slightly, but not from disappointment. He was trying to hold back a smile. He was trying really hard. Standing up for a moment, he pulled me up with him and held me in his arms, his hands locked behind my back. His eyes stared down at me with such intensity that I had to look away.

He leaned down and turned his head so that he could see my face before he kissed me. Caeden tightened his grip on me as he showed me his feelings because words failed him. I stood stiff for a few seconds as my stomach spun and my mind went missing for a moment. Then my eyelids fluttered shut.

I would never question him again.

Or maybe I would. For the hell of it.