Click to Subscribe - By L. M. Augustine Page 0,54

if it were a thousand miles long because I can’t stop smiling. My whole head is filled with Cat Cat Cat and me me me, and how did I not notice, how could I have missed that I’m in love with my best friend this whole time?

It’s midnight, so I run in tune with the crickets chirping in the distance, smiling as the wind ruffles my hair. A few minutes later I arrive at her front door, panting like crazy, my whole body so light I might as well as be flying, my heart skittering in my chest.

I’m in love with Cat. I’m in love with my best friend.

Oh my god. Oh my god oh my god oh my god. This is really happening, isn’t it? I’m really in love with her?

Cat opens the door a minute after I ring the doorbell, yawning a little.

She frowns when she lays eyes on me. “West? Everything okay? It’s late.”

I look at her. She’s dressed in her Harry Potter pajamas and a pair of pink socks, and she holds her hands at her waist. Her hair is a mess, but it looks so adorable and perfect in its own little way. Dark circles surround her eyelids, but her blue eyes shine so brightly it still looks like she can take on anything.

“Yeah,” I say, “everything’s fine. Sorry to wake you, it’s just…” I step forward, not taking my eyes off her, her lips, the tiny traces of freckles that dot her nose. I’m not sure how to tell her. Tell her that I love her. That I know it for real now. That I want to be with her forever and ever.

But I know I have to.

“Why do you love me?” I say instead, taking a deep breath and watching her closely.

“What?”

“Why. Do. You. Love. Me?”

Cat shakes her head. “West, no, c’mon, we agreed to forget—”

“Cat,” I say. “Please just answer me.” I grit my teeth. “Why do you love me?”

“You really want to know?”

“I do.”

She sighs. Turns. Looks at me. Her eyes linger on mine for the longest time before she says anything, taking me in, studying me. She’s so beautiful, I realize, as the moonlight pours down on her. Perfect even though she just rolled out of bed—perfect to me.

I love her. I need her. We know each other inside and out, and she is my everything. She has been my everything since the beginning.

“I love you, West Ryder,” Cat finally says, “because you’re you. Because you’re smart and funny and weird and so goddamn charming”—she smiles distantly—“and you aren’t afraid to be you. I love you because we mesh, because you’re weird and I’m weird and we’re all weird together. When I’m around you I can’t stop smiling and yeah, that’s incredibly cheesy, but it is entirely true. I love you because I feel lonely when I’m not talking to you, not with you. I love you, West, because you are the one for me.”

She stops then, draws in another breath, and steps closer to me. It’s only a fraction of a movement, but it makes my heart skip a beat.

Her words seem to echo throughout the neighborhood. I love you because you’re you.

“And you, West? Why are you asking this?” She says it so carefully it’s like she’s testing a frozen pond to make sure it supports her weight.

I give a little half-smile. “Can’t a guy ask a question without ulterior motives?”

“Some guys, maybe. But you sure can’t. I know you too well for that.”

There’s a long pause, and I can’t stop staring at her. I feel so invincible now, because I love her and I finally, finally know it. I don’t know how to tell it to her, to possibly put all she means to me into words. I can’t, though. Words can’t ever express how important Cat is to me, or how much I love her. “You know,” I say quietly, “how every winter that creek down the street would freeze? And you’d always race down to it and when it was solid enough to walk on, you’d get all agitated? Well, I remember asking you what was wrong, because we could play on the ice and wasn’t that a good thing? But you just shook your head like you knew something I didn’t, and you told me that was the problem.”

“It makes no sense, yeah,” she says, looking at me uncertainly. “But I was eight.”

I step forward again. I notice how her lips curl at my