"You kissed her again?" Lucas questions at the beginning of lunch two days later.
Yesterday's lunch was spent talking about everyone's loosely thought out New Years resolutions.
"Mhm." Ava answers.
"Damnit, you're in love with her! It's obvious!" He says, his voice almost raising.
Ava looks over her shoulder to make sure that Lilly isn't on her way back from the bathroom yet. She then looks at him curiously,
"Obvious?"
"You've kissed her, what, five times now?"
"Four." Ava corrects.
"Right, so there's that and the way you stare at her in admiration and love and how your eyes look like little hearts!" He exclaims. "Rose, help me out here. Aren't I right?"
"He is sort of right. You find any way to talk about her. You're just very... lovey with her."
Ava sits with that for a minute, all of her friend's words bouncing around in her head.
"Okay... um, thanks." She says softly.
A minute later, Lilly comes back from the bathroom and sits down.
For the first time ever, Ava is consciously aware of how she looks at Lilly.
It's strange being aware of things like that.
She can feel the absentminded smile that spreads across her face and she can feel her face warm up when Lilly looks back at her.
After school, Ava sits at her desk with a notebook in front of her.
There are so many things bouncing around in her mind and she has to get them out or she swears she'll explode.
She writes down a concrete list of everything she feels about Lilly and everything her friend's have said about it.
-Rose and Lucas think I love Lilly
-I'm "lovey" around her
-I really like being around her
-Lilly is really pretty
-Hugging her and holding her hand makes me feel calm
-I keep dreaming about her
-She's all I think about
-I want to kiss her a hundred-million times
-She makes me super happy, the happiest I have ever, ever been
The list goes on, talking about how her heart feels warm when Lilly is around her and how happy Lilly makes her.
She looks at the last few points on the list.
Lilly is all she thinks about, she wants to kiss her a hundred-million times, and she feels the happiest she's ever been when she's around her.
It sounds like love, Lucas and Rose were right.
They were right.
She loves Lilly.
She loves Lilly!
The thought sticks itself to the front of her brain, it's all she can see.
I love Lilly, I love Lilly, I love Lilly!
It's a thought that makes Ava's heart light up like fireworks on the Fourth of July, sparkling and shining and exploding with so much color.
She wants to thank Lucas and Rose for helping her realize it and tell Lilly-
Tell Lilly.
She has to tell Lilly that she loves her.
That stops her heart's fireworks for a bit.
How does she tell her?
She can't just say it, can she?
Lilly deserves something nicer than just saying it.
She has to make it special. Lilly deserves something special.
Lilly is the best, sweetest, and kindest person in the world.
She deserves the best, the best that Ava will try her best to give her.
But "the best" is extremely broad, too broad for Ava to wrap her head around.
The thought of what "the best" could be nearly gives her a headache.
She flips to a clean sheet of paper in her notebook.
She may not be able to give Lilly the best, but she can give her best.
Ava can give her all that she has inside of her, all of her heart.
She sits hunched over her desk long after the moon rises, scribbling down words and erasing them, brushing away eraser shavings and adjusting her glasses every once in the a while.
Even after Donna comes into her room and kisses her goodnight, she stays at her desk, words spilling onto the paper hastily.
A little after midnight, she has two pages filled with rambled words for Lilly to eventually read.
The pieces of paper explain her feelings better than she could explain them verbally.
She knows it in herself that if she tried to say all of this to Lilly directly, she would stammer through it and her hands would be fidgeting nervously the entire time, and it would be very, very far from what Lilly deserves.
She doesn't deserve a stammering, fidgeting mess of words.
The pages are the best she can give Lilly, she knows that like a fact.
Ava rips the pages out of the notebook, placing them on top of it.
When she later crawls into bed, she's happy.
Tired, but happy.
BẠN ĐANG ĐỌC
One Day At A Time
Lãng mạnAva Graham, an autistic teenager with a passion for dragons, fantasy, and "The Elderscrolls V: Skyrim". Lilly Miller, Ava's best friend since childhood who has a love for the outdoors and a habit of getting high in unorthodox situations. Since mid...
