Off to Neverland

Off to Neverland (45)

“So what do you want to talk about?”

Crap. In all honesty, I didn’t even know what I wanted to talk about. All I knew was that I wanted Jack to stay out of that restaurant while Tyler and Henry were inside. I didn’t even know when they were going to come out, so I didn’t know how long I was going to have to sit out there with him for.

“Just… us,” I excused lamely, not able to think of anything else to say. “I just want to talk about what went wrong for us. I’m tired of avoiding you at school. I just want to make everything okay with us again.”

“Okay,” Jack nodded, and it was obvious he wasn’t going to start talking until I did. “Anything specific?”

When my phone buzzed, I nearly fell off of the bench we were sitting on in surprise. Jack smiled at me, looking down at my pocket as he said, “I see you got a new phone.”

I nodded, chuckling nervously as I pulled it out of my pocket. “Yeah, my dad decided to get me one now that Eli’s giving us money to stay in our house…”

I looked down to see that I actually had a text from Eli, asking me if he needed to leave to meet me now. I quickly told him that he didn’t and that I would text him once I left. I then suddenly got an idea and quickly opened up another message without Jack even noticing.

You and Henry need to get out of the restaurant as soon as you can! Jack is outside and I’m trying my best to stall him!

I quickly sent this to Tyler, shoving my phone back into my pocket right afterwards. At least now they would leave faster…

“Well, I really wanted to talk about Emma, to be specific,” I now said, getting back to our original topic so he wouldn’t think it was weird that I was typing so fast that it was like my life depended it. “I really never gave you a chance to explain like you wanted to. I just… blew everything out of proportion and didn’t let you explain.”

He laughed without humor. “You didn’t blow it out of proportion. You had every right to act that way toward me after what I did to you.”

“But… could you explain it now?” I asked, not one hundred percent sure that I even wanted him to explain. “I really want to know how you feel and everything. I was being unfair to you and never let you tell me how you felt.”

Jack let out a sigh, straightening his collar as I waited for him to say something. I was afraid that he would say he really did love Emma more than he loved me, which I already knew was the truth. I just didn’t want to hear it from him face-to-face… no matter how much I had to.

“I really am in love with you, Ivy,” Jack started, and I bit my tongue to stop myself from saying anything back to him. “I never lied to you when I told you that I loved you. I’d always been telling you the truth. But to be honest with you, I did think of you as a replacement when we first started talking.”

Even though I knew it was true, it hurt even more when he said it. I really had just been a replacement for Emma… That was what I had been fearing the most this entire time.

“But after I got to know you more, I did fall in love with you,” he continued now, and it only made me feel a little bit better. “After that, you weren’t a replacement. You were a person that I would have loved to spend the rest of my life with, and I was happy with that… until Emma showed up.”

I bit the inside of my lip, not knowing if he wanted me to say anything to him after that or not. There really wasn’t anything I could say at that moment, so I let him continue.