What’s more — this one’s a shocker — is that even when I loved, I thought of him.
Even when I thought of Jimmy, I thought of Alaric.
The whole reason I felt a pull toward Jimmy and his smile was because he never smiled at me. The whole reason I felt the need to talk to Jimmy was because he never talked to me. The whole reason I felt that I needed Jimmy’s love was because he hated me.
Him, him, and him.
It has all been about him.
Alaric Rule Marshall.
My soulmate.
So maybe what I felt for him back then was this intense, magnetic pull. This intense, magnetic and strange rearranging of my molecules. This strange realignment of my cells and my organs.
And maybe it hurt, that strange rearrangement and realignment.
And that’s why I named it hate.
And maybe it happens to everyone around the world. To every girl who meets her soulmate in a man. Maybe it hurts and aches and burns and so she thinks that she hates him, that she wants him to go away, that she wants to run from him.
When in reality what she wants is to get closer.
To merge her heart with his, and to fuse her soul with his.
This also solves the mystery as to why I’ve been feeling so sad about summer school ending and me graduating.
So yeah, I love him and he left me.
Naked and crying in his bed last night.
And he never came back. I waited. I stayed in that cottage, in that bed, smelling of him and me and our lovemaking, but he never showed. And so I left. I had to. Because of all these limitations that the world has put on us. And texted him to say that I got back safely.
I waited for him at the school as well.
Waited for him to take that walk from his cottage to the school building in case he’d come back at some point at night. Or show up later in the day. Although I knew that he was leaving for California today, I never got a chance to ask him all the details as to when or for how many days. So I was hoping against hope that he might still show up.
I was hoping against hope that we might get to talk about it.
And other things.
God, so many other things.
But again, he never came.
And now I’m here.
At the mansion.
It’s Friday and it was an impromptu trip to go see Mo. I haven’t seen her since she came into my room after my first night with Alaric and asked me if I was okay. That was three weeks ago.
Even though I have all the privileges that I want now and can come and go easily over the weekends, I refrained from making any overnight trips back to the mansion in favor of spending time with Alaric on campus, either in his cottage at night, or at the library where he sometimes works or in the cafeteria where he eats; at both those places, we don’t talk to each other and sit at different tables but it’s always good to know that he’s around, that I can see him and watch him.
And secondly because I’ve been doing this thing at St. Mary’s.
It’s crazy and exciting and I never thought that I’d be the one handling it all.
Well, with the help of Echo and Jupiter, and also my other two friends, Callie and Wyn, who have graduated but were eager to help when I told them about it; we’ve been meeting every weekend off campus; the one thing I wanted to leave St. Mary’s for.
We’re throwing an end of summer school slash graduation party.
Yup. A party.
At St. Mary’s.
Who would’ve thought?
It’s not lavish or big by any means. We don’t even have the time to put something like that together in such a short period of time, but it’s going to be fun I think.
We’re turning the cafeteria into a party hall. Callie is handling all the invitations; we’re inviting the seniors who just graduated and who live close by and can attend, and since Callie knows everyone, she’s the best person for the job. Wyn is obviously handling all the decoration stuff with her artsy streak. Echo is helping Wyn with all that since Echo can be pretty artsy too.
Oh, and I roped Salem in as well. She is going to be our music person because we all wanted that sexy, heartbreaking feel of the Ballad of the Bards, and who better to handle this than the lover of sad songs herself? She’s arranging everything from California and coordinating with Jupiter and guess what, she’s going to be here for it next week.
Yay.
Lastly, I’m handling the food and setting the menu. Which is obviously coming from Middlemarch, meaning Mo and the rest of the staff at the mansion. And of course all my friends’ costumes.