Half of My Heart ✔️

56 | believe in us

Jack freezes and turns to me, following the sound of my voice. Then he looks around for a second, probably making sure his coach doesn't see him talking to someone when he should be boarding the bus. I make myself invisible behind the corner of the building, peeking out slightly.

"Jackie!" a familiar voice yells out from the bus. Archer pokes his head out of the bus doors. "What's the hold-up?"

"I'm just—my mom is calling me right now." Jack makes up an excuse, holding his phone up and making a show of holding it up to his ear. "I have to take this. It'll only be one sec."

"Tell her I said 'hi,'" Archer says. "Then get your ass on this bus. Gomez is tryna take your seat next to me, and he smells like horse shit."

"That's just your upper lip, bro," someone from inside the bus—presumably Gomez—fires back at Archer, causing some of the other guys on the bus to erupt in laughs. Archer hides a smile and disappears.

Jack joins me around the corner, taking slow, almost unsure steps. "Surprised you came," he says monotonously.

I shrug, giving him a shy smile. "Change of heart, I guess."

"Seems like you've been having a lot of those lately," he says, not maliciously, but matter-of-factly. And he's right. He crumples the towel in his hands and stuffs it into his bag, looking anywhere but at me.

For a second, I forget what I came here to say. All I can focus on is him, thinking of the days when we'd stand so much closer than this.

"They're waiting for me," he says, gesturing toward the bus, and it's obvious he's trying to make a polite escape from this conversation. "I'm glad you came, though."

"Jack, can you just . . . hear me out for a second?" I ask, trying not to sound as desperate as I feel. "I need to get this all out there, then you can decide if you never want to see me again. I just need you to hear this. And I think I need to hear myself say this."

He's silent, finally looking at me in the eyes, and I take that as my cue to go on.

"I've been terrible to you, to say the least. Unfair," I say, not knowing exactly where to start. So I state the obvious. "I broke your heart more than once, and I think the only reason I was able to do that is because, deep down, I knew you'd always be there for me. I took you for granted."

The fact that he doesn't deny my statements only pushes me to keep talking, even though I know it'll take more than words to fix the damage I've caused.

"I never considered how you felt," I continue. "I never thought about how hard it'd be for you to keep loving me even with the possibility that I'd never come back to you. You even told me you'd never stop loving me, and I refused to realize how much that actually meant. How rare that type of love is."

I feel a drop of water on my face and don't even have to wipe my eyes to know that I'm crying. My vision gets all blurry, so I can't see the expression on Jack's face. In a way, that makes it easier. I need to finish this regardless of his reaction, and I know that seeing a look of disinterest or resentment in his eyes will make it impossible for me to go on.

"I've found that it's pretty easy to get distracted and chase after other things when I know someone like you will always be there for me," I admit, feeling a bit of my anger toward myself leaking into my voice. "But in the last few months, having someone continue to love me like you love me, made me realize that nothing could ever compare. That no amount of newness or excitement or mystery will ever come close to the way that you manage to make me feel every single time I'm with you."

The tears rolling down my face become all too much, and I force myself to bring a hand across my cheek to wipe them away.

"I'm sorry it took me this long to pull my head out of my ass and acknowledge how much you mean to me," I say quietly. Then I raise the volume of my voice to add, "How much I need you in my life."