stay with me

first part

"Stay with me." He says it quietly, his light blue eyes holding my gaze. We're only a foot apart, but it feels like miles. The air seems to have stopped moving, waiting for me to say something. Instead, I stare outside through the glass doors, watching everyone celebrate the last day of school. I was on my way to join them, to jump around and make people sign my yearbook, but he caught me before I could escape. He knows that I can't refuse him in person. A hint of the note I wrote him peeks out of his cargo pants. I can just barely see my short restricted handwriting. "Mags, stay with me." He says it again, those f*****g words. I hate them, I hate them so freaking much. It instantly makes me want to disown the note, insist it was a stupid joke, it's not my handwriting. But it is, and the note's real. Stupid stupid Maggie. "Mags." He repeats himself. The look he's giving me is weighing me down, keeping me here. The words he's speaking seem to bounce around in my head, stretching in strange places and enunciating to make it seem like something that he didn't mean. While his words have me confused, his eyes have me frozen. His eyes are sort of brilliant ocean blue with a deeper navy surrounding his iris. I couldn't tell you the times that I just stared into his eyes. Blue eyes are my one true weakness.

 

After what feels like a century, I remember to breathe and breakaway from his eye contact. I stare at his clothing, memorizing it because of a lack of anything  else that I can do. He's wearing that half-destroyed AC/DC shirt that I've always suspected was his dad's, and his brother's cargo pants, where my note is snugly sleeping, forgotten for the moment. His boots are scuffed up worse than I remember. A slice of memory nudges my brain. It's full of promises. A promise of fuzzy feelings, longing glances, and giggles. But underneath the good, is an overwhelming feeling of bad. Heartbreak. In spite of it, or maybe it's because of it, I want to let it slip in. It's an overwhelming urge to watch it selfishly, devour it like a piece of candy. Bits of it fall in. Just a whisper of it. His voice. God, that sweet voice of his. His scent, always vaguely smelling like wood chips and valve oil. His effortless way of just letting me cling to him, while I lost everything. I close my eyes momentarily, and savor the rushing quiet. That fantastic memory settles around and on me, the way a wool blanket smothers you and makes you acknowledge it's presence.

 

Freshman year, one of the first days. One of my friends had walked up to me to chat, with another boy trailing right behind. Later, he would tell me he didn't have the courage to walk towards me. He claimed that I was too intimidating. At five-three, I'm hardly a force to be reckoned with, but I guess living in a house full of boys, you have to be tough. But I'm not at all tough. Just exceptionally cruel, which can easily be confused with toughness. Another side effect from only having one sister. Immediately, my throat closes at the mention of Caroline. I shove that memory out. Remember him, Maggie, not her. The butterflies in my stomach are the most vivid part of the memory. I had automatically found him handsome, blue eyes have the most amazing tendency to do that to me. He was (is) a rocker boy, a wannabe at the least. He can't play a note to save his life, despite his working at a music shop, but plays the part exceptionally well. After two dates we had made it official. So far, he's a part of my best and worst memories. He can make me laugh, that's I hung on for as long as I did. A year and a half.