I Am Not Jessica Chen(59)
“That’s not true,” I start to protest, though I feel my tongue falter.
“I’ve seen it happen,” he says. “When you were thirteen, you begged for this dress for months and months, as if it was the only thing you could ever look beautiful in, but after you got it for Christmas, you only wore it once because it wrinkled too easily. I remember when you made it your goal to get over eighty percent on your end-of-year exams, and you were happy for maybe a couple hours after you achieved it. Or when you claimed that all you wanted was to place in the top three for the school’s essay contest, but before your certificate had even been printed, you were wishing out loud that you could come in first for next year’s contest. And if I’d let myself kiss you that day—” His breath hitches. I watch him try to steady himself against some invisible emotion.
“Maybe you would’ve been glad at first. Maybe you would’ve agreed if I’d asked you out. But what would have happened after two days? Two weeks? After you discovered that I’m not perfect—that I’m a coward, that I’m awful at making decisions and regret half the things I’ve done, that it’s nearly impossible for me to warm up to new people, that sometimes I’m hit with grief so heavy I can’t do anything except lie down in silence? After you realized there was no point wanting me anymore, because you already had me?”
I feel stripped to the bone, so exposed I wouldn’t be surprised if my skin was rubbed raw.
“If I’d kissed you,” he goes on, “you would have wanted me for an afternoon, and I would have wanted you for the rest of my life. But even though I knew it wouldn’t work, I also knew that if I stayed, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from kissing you anyway.” The bitter crack of a smile. “I only have so much self-control.”
“So . . . you left for Paris,” I whisper.
“I fled to Paris,” he corrects. “They’d sent me an invite to their gifted kids’ program months before, and I’d planned to decline, but then it seemed like the perfect opportunity to clear my head and stop myself from doing something I regretted. But you see . . . it was absurd,” he says quietly, resting his head back against the wall. “There I was in this new city, free to go anywhere I wanted, without anybody to tell me what to do, and I felt so—trapped. Almost claustrophobic. Every time I thought of you, of how far away you were, the last time we were together, the room seemed to shrink around me.”
My voice catches over my next words. “What are you saying?”
“The world just felt smaller without you,” he tells me. It’s the kind of sentiment most people would be afraid to say out loud, but he looks me straight in the eye when he speaks, his chin lifted a few degrees, as if in challenge. “Or maybe you have a way of making the world feel bigger. I missed you. I’d miss you everywhere I went: in the car and at the mall and in the winter. I know I stayed there for a full year, but you must realize—by the end of the first week, I was ready to fly back. It was only out of pride that I didn’t. I still kept everything . . . I would check the time and weather back here—back home, where you are. I thought . . . I tried to convince myself again and again that there would be an expiration date on what I felt. That I only had to push past a certain point and I would be better. I wouldn’t want you so much. I wouldn’t need you so badly.”
“And?” I whisper. “Did it work?”
The corner of his mouth rises higher, a smile laced with self-mockery. “What do you think?”
I’m speechless.
I’m hallucinating. I must be hallucinating. There’s no way at all—
“I was completely wrong,” he says, and he moves forward. I freeze and stare at him as he bows his head before me, vulnerable, sincere, pleading. I’m definitely hallucinating. “The second I saw you again, I realized there was no avoiding it. I was going to want you either way. Even if you only cared for a day and then moved on . . . I could make myself live with that. I’m sorry I understood too late, I really am. I promise, as soon as we find a way to undo this . . . curse of yours, I’ll make it up to you.” He lets out a shaky breath. “But I can’t let you find this person alone. I’m concerned about you. Your soul. You have to be safe. I can’t—I can’t lose you again.”
“I will be safe,” I say weakly. “You can come with me, if you insist. I just . . .”
When he looks up at me, I can see the dark shadows of his lashes. The hope in his eyes. “Yes?”
“I think . . . I need to process everything,” I stammer, desperately trying to reorient myself. But there are too many limits to what I can say or do. If I tell him everything I want to, everything he’s right and wrong about, it’ll be Jessica’s lips forming the words, Jessica’s eyes he’ll be gazing into. So far, her life has felt like an escape from my own, but in this moment, it feels more like a cage, one I can’t claw my way out of. “There’s so much going on right now. Can we . . . can we please talk about this later?”
I track the movement in his throat, the way he attempts to hide his hurt. “Sure,” he says at last, reaching for the door behind him. His fingers fumble around the knob twice before he grips it, his knuckles white. “Anything you want. I’ll be here, always.”