Unti Stand-alone Teen Novel

“I miss you,” I said quietly. “I know I saw you a few hours ago but I already miss you. I want to see your face. I want to feel your arms around me,” I said, and closed my eyes. “You feel so strong and you make me feel safe and I just—I think you’re amazing,” I whispered. “You’re so wonderful that sometimes I honestly can’t believe you’re real.”

“I don’t want space,” he said. “I’ve never wanted less space.”

I didn’t know what to say. My heart was hurting.

“Do you?” he said, and his voice was suddenly strained again. “Do you really want space from me? Honestly?”

“Of course not,” I whispered.

He was quiet for a second or two. And when he next spoke, his words were soft. So sweet. He said,

“Is it because I kissed you?” he said, and his voice was strained. “Was that—should I not have done that?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. This conversation was already doing things to my nerves. “Ocean,” I said, “the kiss was amazing.” I could hear him breathing. I could hear the way his breathing changed as I spoke. “The kiss was perfect,” I said. “Kind of blew my mind.”

Ocean’s message was at once simple and heartbreaking.

:(

I don’t know why it was the sad-face emoticon that finally broke through my defenses. Maybe because it seemed so human. So real.

I picked up my phone because I was weak and I missed him and because I’d been lying there, thinking about him for hours already; my brain had succumbed long before he’d texted me.

I collapsed into it, into him, and he parted my lips and I loved it, I loved how he felt, how he tasted sweet and warm and I felt delirious, I was pressed against the passenger door and my hands were in his hair and I wasn’t thinking about anything, I was thinking about nothing, nothing but this, but the impossibility of this when he broke away, gasping for air

“Please don’t do this,” he said. “Please don’t walk away from me because you’re worried about the opinions of racists and assholes. Walk away from me because you hate me,” he said. “Tell me you think I’m stupid and ugly and I swear this would hurt less.”

I don’t want to be like everyone else I know. I want to choose how to live my own life, okay? I want to choose who to be with.”

“Because,” I said, “because I always say that. I always say that I don’t care what other people think. I say it doesn’t bother me, that I don’t give a shit about the opinions of assholes but it’s not true,” I said, and my eyes stung as I said it. “It’s not true, because it hurts every time, and that means I still care.

I wanted to catalog the moment, capture it in words and pictures. I wanted to remember this. I wanted to remember him.

“Is it just me? Am I imagining this?”

The sound of his voice broke my heart. I had no idea how Ocean could be this brave. I had no idea how he could make himself this vulnerable. There were no games with him. There were no confusing, meandering statements with him. He just put himself out there, his heart exposed directly to the elements, and wow, I respected him for it.