Laugh Until You Cry

17 Second Guessing

“I’m not so sure about this anymore,” I choke out as I’m standing in the terminal with my carry on hanging in the crook of my elbow and Andrew’s standing across from me.

He frowns a little bit. “You don’t want to come anymore? Why not?”

“Because…” I trail off, looking down at my shoes. My heart is pounding in my chest with nerves as I continue to second guess my decision to tag along on Andrew’s trip to New Mexico to see his family. My knees are wobbly, my palms are clammy, my forehead is covered in a thin layer of damp sweat. “It’s such a bad idea. We… we can’t do this. What were we even thinking?”

“We were thinking that it’d be nice to spend some time together- to be able to talk things out- and to be friends again,” He reminds me. “It’ll be fine, Stella. I promise.”

“Because your promise means so much?” I snap at him. He starts to chew on his bottom lip and looks down to the ugly carpet below our feet, looking a little embarrassed. “I-I’m sorry. That was mean but I’m just saying that we can’t be together like this without something happening. Not anymore.”

“So then let something happen,” He says, putting a hand on my shoulder to keep me from walking away, which I’m not going to do yet but I can tell that he’s afraid that I will.

“But what if it’s not a good thing? The thing about us is that we’re passionate about each other. Everything that we feel, it’s passionate. Whether that be love or anger. So this trip could either go terribly wrong or really awesome and I’m really afraid that it’s going to be the former.”

“It doesn’t have to be though,” Andrew assures me. “Come on, Stell. Give it a chance, okay? You never know.”

Over the intercom, the lady announces that they’re ready to start boarding for our flight and my knees become even more wobbly. I could just walk away- just pay Andrew back for the plane ticket and catch a cab back to the school where I can spend two weeks hanging out with Mason and Sienna and Brian, who all have family here in California and don’t need to go anywhere for their holidays. I don’t have to do this. However, even as I think all of these things, I still find myself walking towards the gate, getting in line with everybody else on their way to ABQ.

“This will be good for us, you’ll see,” Andrew tells me, putting his hand on my shoulder again and squeezing a little bit for comfort.

“I just don’t want to fight,” I mutter under my breath. “I’m so tired of fighting.”

“I know. Me too,” He agrees. The line starts moving at a rapid pace and then suddenly, we’re that the front so I hand the lady my ticket, she scans it, and then I walk past her, into the little hall thing that leads us into the plane. I think that Andrew switched our tickets on purpose because my ticket says Andrew Haggerty on it and his has my name on it. I wondered why he did that as we were sitting in the terminal but now, as we’re on the plane, I realize that his seat is a window seat and he knows how much I love windows.

A smile tugs at the corners of my lips as I slide into the seat and Andrew sits beside me. It’s a small plane, so there’s only two seats on each side of the plane which means that he doesn’t have to sit next to any strangers, which is nice because that’s always awkward.

“So,” I say after about a ten minute silence as everybody files into the plane. “Can I ask you something?”

“You can ask me anything,” He assures me and I notice how he’s resting his hand on the armrest with his palm up like an invitation for me to hold it, but I don’t. “What is it?”

“Have you talked to Charlotte lately?” I ask him, remembering the conversation that I overheard from her and her sister a few days ago at the after party.