Chapter 30: Chapter Twenty-Nine

I've worked really hard on this chapter and tried to make it as emotional as possible. It's my aim to make you shed a few tears! So please listen to a sad song or something to get yourself in the mood, lol. I'm excited and nervous for you to read this, because you've all been waiting for so long :-) Enjoy!

Thanks to SoCallMeDiedre for the banner :-)

----------------------------------

There’s a party on New Year’s Eve.

A family party, in which most of the adults drink a little too much champagne and end up like a bunch of giggly teenagers. I’m one of the few not in the party mood. The whole day I’ve been psyching myself up to get Connor alone, but each time the opportunity arises, I chicken out. I’m a sack of nerves the entire evening, barely able to crack a smile even when Uncle Joe starts telling his awful jokes. I jump every time a firework explodes in the distance. And every time Julie slings an arm around my shoulder, asking me what’s wrong, I wriggle away and mutter something about not feeling well.

It’s only a mild comfort to see Connor’s looking just as dispirited as me. A couple of times our gazes catch, but each time I look away quickly, my mind transforming into a flurry of anxiousness. I don’t know how to act. Distant and aloof? Encouraging? The more I ponder on the thought, my confusion only increases.

However, about an hour before midnight – when the adults are engaged in a drunken game of charades – I notice Connor slipping out onto the back deck, and realize it’s now or never.

My heart’s beating a million times a minute as I down the last of my drink and slip out the door. I try my best to be discreet, but it’s not like it’s necessary: everyone else is too busy laughing at Julie’s ridiculous enactment of Titanic to even notice I’m no longer in the room.

I’m assaulted by the cold air as soon as I step out, causing goose bumps to break out over my exposed skin. Eyes fixated on the lake stretching out past the cabin, Connor’s leaning on the railing. He doesn’t notice me until the door clicks shut; slowly, he lifts his head. A flicker of unreadable emotion is visible in his eyes before he redirects his attention away.

I swallow hard. “Hey.”

I allow myself a few tentative steps forward, the creaking of the wooden panels seeming practically deafening amidst the silence. When he doesn’t tell me to leave – or take a swing at me – my confidence grows and I continue moving until I’m standing right beside him, my arms pressed up to the cool railing.

There’s a brief moment of hesitation before he responds with a quiet, “Hi.”

It occurs to me that all I’d been planning to say has completely vacated my mind. In my current state of jitteriness, it’s a wonder I’m able to remember my own name. What had I wanted to say? I’m practically crippled by nerves; thinking straight is not all that possible right now. The two of us lapse into silence whilst I try desperately to conjure up something to say.

However, Connor jumps in before I get the chance. “What are you doing out here?” His tone isn’t cold or harsh, like I’m used to. Instead it’s softer, prompting an answer to a genuine question.

“Um...” I swallow again. “I think... I think we need to talk.”

He looks at me, studying my expression closely. “About what?”

I shake my head, breaking our eye contact and looking back towards the lake. It’s already difficult enough to force the words out, without the scrutiny of those chocolate irises making it even harder. “I think you know what,” I sigh. “About everything. Us.”

I notice he falls silent after this, suddenly caught up in the sight of the swaying trees on the distant side of the lake. “I thought you were avoiding me,” he says eventually.

“I was. But I realized... well, we have to talk about this. Otherwise we’re never going to get anywhere.”

I’m answered by another wave of silence. Suddenly, a strange feeling of nostalgia swells inside me. Standing here, so close to Connor I’m able to feel the warmth emanating from him, I realize just how far away we are. Worlds apart. The memory of our unbreakable childhood friendship seems a lifetime away, yet suddenly I yearn for it. All these years, I’ve coped without him, plastering on a brave face until his memory began to fade for real.  For a moment I’m eight years old again, hiding away in my room, crying my eyes out as the extent of our separation begins to sink in. Then, as quickly as I snapped into it, I’m here again, struck by a longing that’s heavier than anything I’ve felt in years.

“Connor,” I say, “what happened to us?”

He shakes his head slowly, refusing to meet my gaze.

“I just... I need to know what I’ve done to make you hate me so much.”

I study his face, my gaze sweeping over every little detail. The way his dark brown hair falls choppily over his forehead, the faint freckles over his nose that are only visible close up, his small pink lips that always looked impossibly soft.

Suddenly, I’m seeing the eight-year-old boy from years ago. The one I adored. The one I couldn’t imagine being without. My head is swimming; all I can remember is the sincerity of his expression as he stood at our fake altar, vowing to love me dearly for the rest of my life.

I’m choking out the words before I can stop myself. “I miss my best friend.”

He still doesn’t react, instead looking back at me with an expression I can’t analyze, no matter how hard I try. I feel tears welling in my eyes, threatening to spill over, but I blink them back. An aching sensation is spreading through my body and for the first time in years, I want nothing more than to have my best friend back.

“Please,” I say, “talk to me. Tell me what I did to hurt you.”

The pause following my words seems to stretch out forever. He inhales deeply, then runs a hand through his already messy hair. His frown is concentrated, as if picking out his words as carefully as possible. “The day I left for New York,” he answers eventually, his voice quiet, “was the worst day of my life.”

“Mine too,” I breathe.

“I spent so long,” he continues, “working out how I could possibly say goodbye to you. You were the most important person in the world to me, and I almost burst into tears every time I thought about leaving. And on moving day, all I wanted was to tell you how much you meant to me… how much I loved you... yet you didn’t even come to see me.”

I swallow, memories of that painful day coming flooding back. How I’d stayed holed up in my room, desperately clinging onto the hope that if I didn’t acknowledge the truth, if I somehow darted around it, everything would be okay.

“I couldn’t,” I say, tears still pricking my eyes. “It was too much to handle.”

“I thought you didn’t care about me. I thought our friendship meant nothing to you. We were only eight, but… you broke my heart, Georgie.”

A stab of guilt that’s worse than anything I’ve ever felt before attacks me. As his gaze meets mine, the pain increases tenfold. His eyes are glazed by such raw emotion; instantly, I’m filled with regret. Why couldn’t I have faced my fears and said goodbye? Obviously, it would’ve been painful, but any sort of closure surely would’ve been better than what we’ve been left with now. Whilst locked away from the reality of Connor’s departure, I hadn’t even stopped to think about how it would hurt him.

Setting off for New York without so much as a word from his best friend.

The best friend he loved.

“I desperately tried to convince myself it was just a misunderstanding,” he says, shaking his head. “I thought… maybe you didn’t feel well. Maybe you overslept. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed possible. It had to be just a misunderstanding. So as soon as we moved in, I wrote you a letter.”

The word sends my heart lurching, triggering another set of flashbacks. It’d lay forgotten in my mind for years now, but the mention of Connor’s letters proves the memory is still as vivid as ever.

“For a week I waited desperately for a reply. Nothing. So I wrote you another, telling myself it’d just got lost in the mail and that was the only reason you didn’t write back. But what happened? Still no reply. Letter after letter I sent you, hoping that you were missing me enough to write back just once…”

I tune out of his story as it all comes rushing back to me. A couple of days after he’d left, I’d come home from school – red-eyed and struggling to adjust to school life alone – to a letter presented to me by a smiling Mom. It was Connor’s; I could recognize his wobbly handwriting a mile off. It was almost two pages long, the print getting messier and more frantic as the lines wore on, detailing how much he missed me and how everything in New York was so different. I must’ve gone over it at least a hundred times, each repeat a harder punch in the gut when I realized I would never see this boy again. I had wanted to reply – even planned out in my head how I could pour my heart out onto the page – but each time I tried, my fingers trembling with concentration as they curled around the pencil, no words would come. I’d end up sobbing, teardrops staining the paper until it was as fragile as tissue.

Eventually, Mom caught onto how upset the letters were making me. Despite my protests, she stopped letting me read them. At first I’d been angry, adamant she was only making things worse, but it took a surprisingly short time to get used to being without my other half. A girl called Ava had transferred to our class, and it didn’t take long for us to become friends. I still thought about him, but with each day a piece of his memory faded, until he became nothing more than a hazy event of the past.

“I…” I want to speak, to justify my awful actions of years ago, but the words seem to be stuck in my throat. “I couldn’t…”

The temperature outside seems to have plummeted, although I’m not sure if it’s my imagination. A frosty breeze nips at my exposed skin and I regret not picking up a thicker sweater. It doesn’t help that a chill courses through my body every time I catch sight of Connor’s solemn expression.

“I was a wreck,” he says, and I find myself wondering whether I’m imagining the shininess of his eyes. “An absolute wreck. I didn’t fit in at my new school. I was the weird kid, the sappy one pining after a girl they were convinced I’d made up. Couldn’t have made a better target.”

It takes me a while to notice that a tear has escaped my eye and is trickling down my left cheek. My whole body feels numb; I don’t think I’m capable of moving a muscle, let alone attempting to form a response to anything Connor’s saying. All this time I’d only considered my feelings about the separation... never once had I stopped to think how he might be feeling, forced into a strange city, miles away from all familiarity.

I can’t believe I’ve been so selfish.

“By the time I got to middle school, I was tired of it. I was sick of being the weird one. Most days I’d come home in tears about the things they’d said to me. Asking why my imaginary girlfriend hadn’t written back. Laughing even harder if I started to cry. Tripping me up in the playground like it was some kind of sport. By then, I’d pretty much given up all hope on you. I made up my mind that I was going to change but... to do that, I had to forget you completely. I convinced myself you meant nothing to me, that I hated you, and... what do you know? It worked.”

He takes a deep breath, it appearing as a white mist in the frosty air. “I was finally accepted. People actually liked me. For the first time, I could walk through the hallway without kids yelling insults. And I was done with you.”

“I...” My throat seems to have completely dried up, but I force myself to swallow. “I had no idea.”

“No. You didn’t,” he says slowly. “Of course, everything was okay for a while. I started high school, I was free from the bullying, I was actually kind of popular... but even that couldn’t distract me from the fact my parents were arguing almost every night.” A sad smile crosses his face, even though there’s nothing remotely funny about the situation. “I suppose I should’ve expected it. There was no way two people that unhappy could stay together. Still… that didn’t make it any easier when Mom found out he was sleeping with his secretary.”

I can’t help but let my jaw fall open a little; this, I haven’t heard before. “He was?” I ask. “Connor, I... I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he counters, his face devoid of expression. Despite this, there’s no denying the thickness of his voice, not to mention the wetness of his eyes. I can tell he’s working incredibly hard to hold his emotions back. “I’m kind of disappointed I didn’t see what an asshole he was before. Of course, when my mom told me we were moving back to Indiana... everything just kind of fell apart. And on top of it all, I knew I was going to have to see you again. You… the girl who broke my heart.”

Another tear escapes my eye and rolls down my cheek. I’m completely dumbstruck by everything that Connor’s been through. I didn’t even think about his parents’ divorce, how he must have felt being uprooted for the second time, how maybe his jerkish exterior might have been a mask for something deeper.

“I made up my mind I hated you. You’d crushed me, you’d made me a target and I was determined not to let it happen again. All I wanted was to let you know how it felt. But then I saw you. And...” His voice is even thicker now, weighed down by a hefty weight of emotion. He closes his eyes, his head tipping back so it’s angled towards the sky, like he’s trying to force the tears back. Then, he draws a deep breath. “And I knew... no matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise... I was still hopelessly in love with you. The little girl I married in my back garden. It was still you.”

It’s then that his mask crumbles; the tears spill over, trickling down his cheeks. “Pretending that I hated you was harder than I ever imagined. But it was the only way to avoid getting hurt again.”

I try to swallow over the lump in my throat, but it refuses to shift. Seeing Connor in this state is breaking my heart, filling me with regret of all my actions over the past years. My lips part aimlessly, but I don’t have the faintest idea what I’m going to say. What is there to say? Any words spoken now will be eight years too late, and nothing can change that.

“I’m so sorry,” I choke out, my own tears failing to subside. “Honestly, I didn’t… it wasn’t that I didn’t care about you. You were the most important thing in my life. I loved you, Connor... I just – I didn’t know how on earth I could ever manage to say goodbye.”

His gaze shifts to my face, blinking at me under damp lashes.

“I swear,” I breathe. “You meant everything to me. You moving away… it was just too much to take. I could barely bring myself to accept it and... you have to know that I’m so sorry I hurt you. That was the last thing I wanted. Honestly.”

He stares back at me for what feels like an eternity. The whole time, his eyes study my expression closely, but I don’t catch any hint of doubt in them. They’re rimmed with red,  glistening with tears and, when my gaze flickers downward, I notice the slight quivering of his bottom lip.

“I’m sorry too,” Connor says eventually. “All this time, I was trying to act like I hated you... but every time we talked I just found myself falling that little bit harder. I couldn’t help it. I love you, Georgie... I always have.”

It feels like the world has frozen. Even time itself doesn’t seem to be passing as I stare hopelessly back at Connor. Half of me is unconvinced this is actually happening; for all I know, this could be an odd dream my nervous brain has created. My cheeks are damp, my eyes are sore, and stopping my tears is nothing short of impossible. It’s as if all the emotions of the past eight years, the ones that had been bottled up securely inside, have suddenly been released. It’s such a bizarre rush, I’m not sure exactly what I’m feeling. Yet as my gaze sweeps over his face, the face that still holds all the features of the boy I fell in love with, there’s one thing that’s as clear as newly polished crystal.

I still love Connor.

Brandon, my stupid older brother who’d been halfway across the country, had been right. Even through the drama of the past few months, even when I was stuck in the mindset that Connor despised me, I had known it. It might have been deep down, buried somewhere in my subconscious, but for the past eight years, it had always been there. I’d scraped the surface during our kiss in the store closet, uncovered another fraction at the dance, but now...

I’m sure of it.

I take a deep breath, wiping a tear away with the back of my hand. “I...” I pause, doing my best to summon the courage. “I love you too.”

He reaches out and pulls me closer, wrapping his arms around me. I mimic his actions, gripping the back of his shirt in a hug that makes me feel happier than I have in years. I’m pretty sure my sobbing is ruining the front of his top, but he doesn’t seem concerned. Judging by the slight snuffling sound from above me, the hug is having exactly the same effect on him. Caught up in his strong hold, I can only imagine he’s thinking one thing: he doesn’t want to let go.

Things are finally falling into place.

I’m not sure exactly how long we stay like that, but both of us are equally reluctant to break apart. It seems stupid, but enveloped in Connor’s arms like this, it’s almost like we’re kids again. Everything seems simpler; there are no complications; the only thing that matters is the two of us are together, and I know it’ll stay that way. After a couple of minutes, I feel him shift slightly, and soon his fingers are stroking the top of my head in an action that’s surprisingly reassuring.

“Hey,” he says softly, the ghost of a smile appearing on his lips, “you don’t need to cry anymore.”

“I’ve missed you,” I whisper, extracting one arm to wipe away the last of the tears from my face. I know for a fact that I’m not an attractive crier, and am probably sporting a blotchy face and matching puffy eyes, but it barely registers with me. All that matters is that Connor and I are finally okay; for the first time in months, I feel settled. Filled with the feeling that everything might just turn out okay.

“I’ve missed you too.” His hand finds mine and he gives it a comforting squeeze. “I finally have my best friend back.”

Whatever reply I might’ve had is interrupted by noise from inside of the cabin. At first it’s indistinguishable, sounding more like a round of tipsy laughter more than anything, but then it hits me. The voices are chanting; they’re counting down, which means there’s less than ten seconds until midnight.

A whole new year, and a chance for a fresh start.

Eerily apt, when you think about it.

I take one last look up at Connor, whose lips curl upwards slightly, before our quiet voices join in win the rowdy shouts from the other room. “Five... four... three... two... one...”

As the countdown reaches its end, everything explodes – literally. Almost immediately, a shower of fireworks blow up the sky, dancing across it in brilliant shades of red, blue and green. They must have been set off by one of the other lake houses in the area, but the deck has a perfect view. I stare up at them, entranced, my gaze barely able to keep up with the trail of colors illuminating every inch of the sky. Voices from the living room travel out to us, each piece of laughter and jolly “Happy New Year!” intermingling into one pleasant buzz.

Fireworks still exploding above us, I turn my attention back to Connor. He stares back at me, our gazes boring into one another for a moment with an almost unfamiliar intensity. It seems right to do only one thing – that much, my beloved romance novels have taught me – and soon enough, we’re both leaning in toward each other.

It’s short and sweet, but that doesn’t stop the kiss from leaving my lips tingling or my heart pounding when we pull back. My arms are snaked behind Connor’s back, linking behind his neck, and his gentle grip on my waist feels like the most natural thing in the world. With our faces in such close proximity, the brightness of Connor’s chocolate brown eyes strikes me. I’d noticed them before, but for the first time, the meaning they hold isn’t lost in translation.

A smile stretches across his lips, and he reaches up to brush a strand of hair away from my face. “Happy New Year,” he says softly.

“You too,” I reply.

Still keeping my eyes locked on his face, I pull back slightly, cross my palms and hold them out. His eyes skim downward for a second, but it only takes him seconds to recognize my action. Immediately he takes hold of them, a grin materializing on his face.

Our special best friend handshake. We didn’t forget.

-------------------------------------------

So what do you think? Let me know if you had tears in your eyes... I want to know if I accomplished my goal, haha. All you Team Connors got what you wanted, right? Sorry Team Nathans... it just wasn't meant to be :( And I haven't forgotten about Nathan, don't worry :-)

Thank you so much for all your support! Until next time <3

I just realised the last line makes it seem like this is the end... IT'S NOT. There are a couple more chapters to go. Sorry if I confused anyone.