Hopeless

you?”
    His expression drops with that question, and he releases my hand from his. “Can you be a little less vague?” He falls back into his chair and folds his arms over his chest.
    I shrug. “Sure. What happened to us and why are you acting like it never happened?”
    His elbow is resting on the table and he looks down at his arm. He slowly traces each letter of his tattoo with his fingers, deep in thought. I know silence isn’t considered a sound, but right now the silence between us is the loudest sound in the world. He pulls his arm off the table and looks up at me.
    “I didn’t want to let you down, Sky. I’ve let everyone down in my life that’s ever loved me, and after that day at lunch I knew I let you down, too. So…I left you before you could start loving me. Otherwise, any effort to try not to disappoint you would be hopeless.”
    His words are full of apology and sadness and regret, but he still can’t just say them. He overreacted and jealousy got the best of him, but if he would have just said those two words we would have been spared an entire month of emotional agony. I’m shaking my head, because I just don’t get it. I don’t understand why he couldn’t just say I’m sorry .
    “Why couldn’t you just say it, Holder? Why couldn’t you just apologize?”
    He leans forward across the table and takes my hand, looking me hard in the eyes. “I’m not apologizing to you…because I don’t want you to forgive me.”
    The sadness in his eyes must mirror mine and I don’t want him seeing it. I don’t want him seeing me sad, so I squeeze my eyes shut. He lets go of my hand and I hear him walk around the table until his arms are around me and he’s picking me up. He sets me down on the bar so that we’re at eye level and he brushes the hair from my face and makes me open my eyes again. His eyebrows are pulled together and the pain on his face is raw and real and heartbreaking.
    “Babe, I screwed up. I’ve screwed up more than once with you, I know that. But believe me, what happened at lunch that day wasn’t jealousy or anger or anything that should ever scare you. I wish I could tell you what happened, but I can’t. Someday I will, but I can’t right now and I need you to accept that. Please. And I’m not apologizing to you, because I don’t want you to forget what happened and you should never forgive me for it. Ever. Never make excuses for me, Sky.”
    He leans in and kisses me briefly, then pulls back and continues. “I told myself to just stay away from you and let you be mad at me, because I do have so many issues that I’m not ready to share with you yet. And I tried so hard to stay away, but I can’t. I’m not strong enough to keep denying whatever this is we could have. And yesterday in the lunchroom when you were hugging Breckin and laughing with him? It felt so good to see you happy, Sky. But I wanted so bad to be the one who was making you laugh like that. It was tearing me up inside that you were thinking that I didn’t care about us, or that spending that weekend with you wasn’t the best weekend I’ve ever had in my life. Because I do care and it was the best. It was the best fucking weekend in the history of all weekends.”
    My heart is beating wildly, almost as fast as the words are pouring out of him. He releases his firm hold on my face and strokes his hands over my hair, dropping them to the nape of my neck. He keeps them there and calms himself with a deep breath, then continues.
    “It’s killing me, baby,” he says, his voice much more calm and quiet. “It’s killing me because I don’t want you to go another day without knowing how I feel about you. And I’m not ready to tell you I’m in love with you, because I’m not. Not yet. But whatever this is I’m feeling—it’s so much more than just like . It’s so much more. And for the past few weeks I’ve been trying to figure it out. I’ve been trying to figure out why there isn’t some other word to describe it. I want to tell you exactly how I feel but there isn’t a single goddamned word in the entire dictionary that can describe this point between liking you and loving you, but I need that word. I need it because I need you to hear me say it.”
    He pulls my face to his and he kisses me. They’re short kisses, mostly pecks, but he kisses me over and over, pulling back between each kiss, waiting for me to respond.
    “Say something,” he pleads.
    I’m looking into his terrified