☆Featured in Teen Fiction's "Soul Deep" reading list☆
☆Featured in New Adult's "Mental Health" reading list☆
//COMPLETE & EDITED
I send him a string of paper airplanes: You're the sum of all tomorrows. And I'll say that tomorrow. And the day after...
"Even ten years from now if you haven't found somebody I promise I'll be around Tell me when you're ready I'm waiting"
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After baseball training one day, I go back to the park near Kat's house and sit on the swings. I sway back and forth slowly, my sneakers dragging along the pebbles in the dirt. It's been almost two weeks since I last saw Katherine, and even more than that since I last spoke to her. My phone buzzes and I check it, knowing that it's not going to be her, but my heart sinking nonetheless when it's a text from Steve on the group chat; he's sent some joke he found on the Internet.
I look up and see the gray clouds overhead. I close my eyes, feeling a drop of rain land on my forehead and slide down my nose. I capture it on my top lip, fully aware that I should go back home before I get soaked to the bone and my mom does her classic what-were-you-thinking-you-could've-gotten-bronchitis monologue. I stay there as the drizzle becomes a torrential downpour and when I open my eyes, water drips into them.
"Ashton!"
I hear a call through the roar of the rain and see someone - is that Chase? He pushes a bicycle as he approaches me where I sit on the drenched swing. He looks equally wet, his usually flawlessly tousled hair hanging over his forehead in dark strands.
"What are you doing here?" I say loudly over the rain.
He lays his bicycle down on the pavement and comes closer until he's standing a few feet away from me. "I could ask you the same question."
"My house is close to here. Yours is pretty far away."
"Yeah? So why aren't you back home, Curly?"
"Because-"
"I have a reason," Chase says, but I can't quite hear what he's saying over the sound of the rain. "I was delivering Kyle the sneakers he forgot to bring home after football training yesterday but-"
"Because I just wanted to come here, okay?" I finish.
Chase stops talking and looks at me. "God, Ashton, when will you actually just admit that you're in love with her?"
I blink. "What?"
"You love Katherine. It's obvious, okay?"
I break my eyes away from his gray stare and look at my shoes instead, the dirt now swirling around them like mud. "I don't love her," I say quietly.
Chase takes a step closer, his voice now hard. "Yeah?" he says. "Then why are you so miserable now? Why do you barely speak to any of us at school? Why did you lie in Never Have I Ever?" The last part comes out angrily. "You did it just to hurt Kat, and I know it. Even if Kyle and the others didn't realize, I did. You lied about making out and hooking up with loads of girls just to make her jealous. And you didn't even fucking think about how Em would feel."
