me out when I was working. I should have known something was off, but I was too damn happy that you were finally talking to me. You were so different from the girl I’d been watching from afar for two years. Different from the rumors I’d heard and the things I’d seen with my own eyes.”
“Different how?” I whisper, unsure if I want him to answer since I’m starting to realize that I might have been a really awful person before all of this happened.
“I don’t know, just different. Your hair was always perfectly done and your dresses were always perfectly pressed. You walked around with your nose up in the air like you were better than everyone,” he informs me.
“Well, that explains why you had a crush on me. I sound like a wonderful person,” I reply sarcastically.
“Ravenna, I’m a guy. And you are very, very beautiful. My crush was only skin deep, believe me.”
That makes me feel so much better.
“Until two weeks ago,” he continues. “Then you were just…completely different than what I thought. You wore your hair down whenever you came to see me and you always had on jeans and a t-shirt, like right now. For the first time, I didn’t feel like I was a complete loser not worthy of your time. It was definitely weird that you started doing this out of the blue, but I wasn’t about to question it. I liked spending time with you. I guess I was pissed that day I dropped off the flowers because, all of a sudden, you were back to being the snobby girl with the perfect hair and the perfect clothes. And you clearly wanted nothing to do with me all over again.”
I can’t even be happy about the beautiful comment or that he liked spending time with me. I’m too busy being stuck on the fact that I was a huge snob. I was mean and I was a snob.
“And so you just naturally assumed I was faking a brain injury so I wouldn’t have to own up to treating you like a human being for the first time in two years,” I reply sarcastically. “That’s just wonderful.”
He takes a step toward me and he’s so close that I have to crane my neck to look up at him. His eyes are the most gorgeous shade of blue I’ve ever seen and I have a hard time looking away from them. I feel like I’ve waited my whole life for someone to look at me like I mean something to them and it makes my stomach churn and fills me with anger that I never got what I deserved. I deserved a good life, I deserved to be loved, and it’s not fair that the only thing I ever got was pain.
That thought…those words ringing in my head are so familiar that it makes my chest ache. I know those thoughts are true and something I believe with all of my heart. Something I cried and screamed and raged about for so long that it became my mantra, my way of life, and something I knew I would spend the rest of my life feeling because there would never be any escape from the pain.
I take a step away from Nolan and close my eyes, trying to picture myself saying these things. Trying to envision my surroundings and what would make me feel so desolate, but all I see is the darkness behind my eyelids.
“If it makes you feel any better, I definitely prefer the way you look right now,” Nolan says softly as I reopen my eyes to look at him.
“And how is that?” I whisper.
He shrugs, sliding his hands back into his pockets. “You look like you. Not like you’re trying to be someone else.”
It’s the most perfect thing he could have said to me right now and it gives me hope that I’m not crazy for feeling off whenever I look in the mirror. Since Nolan seems to have no problem being honest with me even if what he has to say brings him some embarrassment, I move on to one last question.
“How well do you know Ike Jenson?”
Nolan flinches at the mention of Ike’s name.
“He’s been here since I started, keeps to himself a lot. Why?” Nolan asks, one of his hands coming up to rub the back of his neck in a nervous gesture.
“My father mentioned something about how he hasn’t been to work in a few days and