Ignite Me - Tahereh Mafi Page 0,67
you always seemed so happy with Kent. This is a little hard for me to process.” He hesitates. Rubs his forehead. “Well. Actually, you were a hell of a lot weirder when you were with Kent. Super whiny. And so dramatic. And you cried. All. The. Damn. Time.” He screws up his face. “Jesus. I can’t decide which one of them is worse.”
“You think I’m dramatic?” I ask him, eyes wide. “Do you even know yourself at all?”
“I am not dramatic, okay? My presence just commands a certain kind of attention—”
I snort.
“Hey,” he says, pointing at my face. “I am just saying that I don’t know what to believe anymore. I’ve already been on this merry-go-round. First Adam. Now Warner. Next week you’re going to try and hook up with me.”
“You really wish that were true, don’t you?”
“Whatever,” he says, looking away. “I don’t even like you.”
“You think I’m pretty.”
“I think you’re delusional.”
“I don’t even know what this is, Kenji.” I meet his eyes. “That’s the problem. I don’t know how to explain it, and I’m not sure I understand the depth of it yet. All I know is that whatever this is, I never felt it with Adam.”
Kenji’s eyes pull together, surprised and scared. He says nothing for a second. Blows out a breath. “Seriously?”
I nod.
“Seriously, seriously?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I feel so . . . light. Like I could just . . . I don’t know . . .” I trail off. “It’s like I feel like, for the first time in my life, I’m going to be okay. Like I’m going to be strong.”
“But that sounds like it’s just you,” he says. “That has nothing to do with Warner.”
“That’s true,” I tell him. “But sometimes people can weigh us down, too. And I know Adam didn’t mean to, but he was weighing me down. We were two sad people stuck together.”
“Huh.” Kenji leans back on his hands.
“Being with Adam was always overshadowed by some kind of pain or difficulty,” I explain, “and Adam was always so serious. He was intense in a way that exhausted me sometimes. We were always hiding, or sneaking around, or on the run, and we never found enough uninterrupted moments to be together. It was almost like the universe was trying to tell me I was trying too hard to make things work with him.”
“Kent wasn’t that bad, J.” Kenji frowns. “You’re not giving him enough credit. He’s been acting kind of dickish lately, but he’s a good guy. You know he is. Shit is just really rough for him right now.”
“I know,” I sigh, feeling sad, somehow. “But this world is still falling apart. Even if we win this war, everything is going to get much, much worse before it gets better.” I pause. Stare into my hands. “And I think people become who they really are when things get rough. I’ve seen it firsthand. With myself, my parents, with society, even. And yeah, Adam is a good guy. He really is. But just because he’s a good guy doesn’t make him the right guy for me.”
I look up.
“I’m so different now. I’m not right for him anymore, and he’s not right for me.”
“But he still loves you.”
“No,” I say. “He doesn’t.”
“That’s a pretty heavy accusation.”
“It’s not an accusation,” I say. “One day Adam will realize that what he felt for me was just a crazy kind of desperation. We were two people who really needed someone to hold on to, and we had this past that made us seem so compatible. But it wasn’t enough. Because if it were, I wouldn’t have been able to walk away so easily.” I drop my eyes, my voice. “Warner didn’t seduce me, Kenji. He didn’t steal me away. I just . . . I reached a point where everything changed for me.
“Everything I thought I knew about Warner was wrong. Everything I thought I believed about myself was wrong. And I knew I was changing,” I say to him. “I wanted to move forward. I wanted to be angry and I wanted to scream for the first time in my life and I couldn’t. I didn’t want people to be afraid of me, so I tried to shut up and disappear, hoping it would make them more comfortable. But I hate that I let myself be so passive my whole life, and I see now how differently things could’ve been if I’d had faith in myself when it mattered. I don’t want to go