Dreams of 18

He likes you too…

He likes me. That means he knew who I was on my eighteenth birthday. Not only that, he kept asking me to leave. I was throwing myself at him but he kept saying go home.

Go home, Violet…

And then, I realized the only reason he did all of that was because he was ashamed.

Just like me, he was ashamed of his desires, his wants. Long before everything went to hell. Long before he found out about Brian’s crush. Long before he started to hate himself for wanting what his son wanted.

His eyes narrow at my declaration. There’s a genuine curiosity, disbelief, shock in them. “You watched me?”

I could’ve laughed. I could’ve cried.

Jesus Christ.

Have there ever been any other two people so fucking similar to each other?

All the while I was dreaming in my bed, he was across that driveway, dreaming in his. All the while I was writhing, he might have been longing for me too.

I nod, smiling slightly. “Yes. I did. I watched you like there was no one else in the world.”

“Why?”

“Because I had this massive, gigantic, epic crush on you.”

“You had a crush on me?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t a stupid, drunken mistake, Mr. Edwards. I would’ve kissed you regardless. I would’ve kissed you because I wanted to kiss you. I’ve wanted to kiss you since I was sixteen.”

He breathes out after I finish.

A tight but long breath as his eyes sweep all over my face. They sweep and swirl until I think he’s touching me with his gaze.

Touching me and holding me up, keeping my feet on the ground because I wanna fly right now. It feels so, so good to finally tell him that.

To admit my truth to him.

But then, he speaks and his voice is tight and angry. “You know what happens when a thirty-four-year-old man watches a sixteen-year-old girl?”

“But I’m not… I’m not sixteen anymore.”

“Tell me what happens.”

I swallow, my heart hammering in the chest. “He goes to jail.”

He nods. “Now tell me what happens if he kisses her.”

I take a step toward him. “It doesn’t matter. Because you didn’t. Nothing happened.”

He scoffs, running a hand through his drenched hair. “Yeah, nothing happened. So that makes all of it okay, doesn’t it? It makes everything okay. I’m off the hook for all the things I thought about a sixteen-year-old girl.”

Fuck it.

I’m going to him.

I don’t care if he doesn’t let me touch him, I’m going to try regardless.

Thankfully though, he lets me touch him and I make contact with his bare skin for the first time ever.

I put my hands on the globes of his shoulders, touch my bare toes to his and crane my neck up to look him in his tormented eyes. “Yes. You are. You’re off the hook for everything.”

His shoulders shudder when he barks out a rusty laugh. “Yeah? I’m off the hook for watching a girl half my age? Watching her like I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Watching her like I had this… this compulsion. This need to look at her. To look at her pale skin and her gorgeous as fuck smile.”

I dig my nails in his hot flesh as I’m overcome with a swell of emotions. “Y-you think my smile is gorgeous?”

He looks at me like I’m crazy. “Fuck yeah, it’s gorgeous. Every night, you’d climb up to your roof and you’d just open your arms like you were soaking in the moon and you’d smile and Jesus Christ, I’d lose my mind. And I’d tell myself over and over I wouldn’t do it, that I wouldn’t go out but I did anyway. I’d still go out there and watch you while pretending to work on my roses. I’d still wander around the house, chasing after your strawberry smell like a disgusting creep.”

So years later, I get my answer.

I get the answer for the question I always wanted to ask him: What’s keeping you up, Mr. Edwards?

Turns out, it was me.

I was keeping him up. My smile was keeping him up.

My hands snake up to his drenched hair. “Is t-that why you were never there? At the house? I mean, I’d make sure you weren’t but sometimes you’d just run away. Disappear.”

“Yeah. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear to be in the same room as you and not…”

“Not what?”

“Not go to you. Not touch you.”

“But it’s okay now, isn’t it? I’m eighteen. It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to suffer like this.”

I swear his flesh turns up in temperature. “You don’t get it, do you? It’s not about the fact that my son doesn’t want you anymore or that you’re fucking eighteen now. It’s about the fact that whatever they said was true.”

“What?”

His eyes are glowing now, brimming with everything he’s been feeling and thinking for the past years. Everything that’s torturing him, giving him pain, and I can’t see that.