“But Chloe, I really do love you! I don’t even know when it started… but I do. Just give me one more chance. Let’s forget
everything that happened before and try again.”
My hands rested at my sides, still and unshaken.
I didn’t look back.
Simon’s voice rang out behind me, raw with desperation.
1/3
“Chloe, Noah is never going to marry you! No matter how long you wait, it’ll be for nothing!!
I came to an abrupt stop.
The motion–sensor light flickered off, then back on again.
A quiet laugh slipped from my lips.
“Who says love always means being together?”
The bright overhead light burned down, piercing through my body, illuminating something deep inside me.
I knew then that there would never be anyone else.
+15 BONUS
The day I left, Noah drove me to the airport.
He kept his hands on the wheel, I sat silently in the passenger seat, and neither of us spoke.
A light drizzle fell outside the window.
When we were kids, we used to share a single battered umbrella.
Noah always tilted it toward me, letting half his body get drenched in the rain.
Once,
he caught a terrible cold because of it, burning up with a fever for days.
I sobbed uncontrollably, sitting by his bedside, terrified he wouldn’t wake up.
In the end, it was my crying that pulled him out of his sleep.
With a groggy, irritated sigh, he poked my forehead with his finger and mumbled weakly, “You crybaby. You got snot all over my
hand. If someone walked in, they’d think I was dying or something.”
I had gasped in horror and quickly knocked on the wooden nightstand three times, as if trying to ward off bad luck.
“Don’t talk nonsense!”
Noah laughed then.
He stared at me, his expression unusually serious.
“You cry too much. What are you going to do without me? So, Chloe, when we grow up, I’ll marry you.”
I nodded eagerly, linking my pinky with his.
“Pinky promise–cross my heart, a hundred years, no take–backs! We made a deal! When we grow up, Noah Wells has to marry Chloe Sanders!”
Before I knew it, tears slipped down my cheeks.
2/30/20
I hurried to wipe them away, not wanting Noah to see.
But when I turned, I found his eyes just as red.
His hands were clenched around the steering wheel, his whole body trembling slightly.
And it broke me.
