Katie’s POV

Chapter 50 – An Unexpected Twist

I was sitting in the chair in Lucas’s music room, watching him play his piano. I’d watched him play tons of times over the last six months and I was still just as fascinated now as I had been during the first time. There was never any hesitancy in his playing and there were rarely any hurried or missed notes. We’d done this so often that I had gotten to the point where I could tell if he was rushing, moving too slow, or even skipping notes. Sometimes, he’d mess up on purpose just to see if I was still paying attention.

Lucas finished the piece he was playing and looked over at me. “How was it?”

“Perfect. Although, you did slightly rush it when you started the middle section.”

“Yeah, I’m trying not to, but I’m getting sort of bored with this piece.”

“So leave it alone for awhile. You’ve got plenty of time between now and June to pick it back up again,” I told him. Lucas’s dad had signed him up for a competition during the first week of June.

Lucas nodded his head and looked back down at his piano keys. He started tapping random notes, just enjoying the way they sounded in the small room. He held one note down longer than the others and smiled at the way it reverberated through his room.

While I sat there watching him, I tried to come up with a question I hadn’t yet asked over the past six months. It was a little game we had started to play in the last few weeks. But it was really hard to come up with questions since we’d gotten so close and there wasn’t much we didn’t already know about the other.

Lucas and I had made a list together, writing down all the things we wanted to change about my “bad” behaviors. We’d even managed to cross a few of them off, like letting Kelly in and saying “thank you”. Heck, I was even participating in the wedding now. My dad and Kelly had asked Lucas and me to stand with them and take care of their rings, and much to everyone’s amazement, I had agreed. But that never would have happened if it hadn’t been for Lucas.

I was even getting closer to everyone else in our group, too. I ended up spending the entire Christmas holiday with everyone, and I had even gone to the Sweetheart dance last month without making a fuss about it. Although, to be perfectly honest, there was no way I would have passed on that dance. We were all dancing near each other when Shawn suddenly blurted out to Lily that he loved her. We had all stood staring at them, wondering how Lily would react. We sort of expected her to ignore it or yell at him for it. We were not prepared for her to jump into his arms and attempt to kiss his face off—but it did make for one damn funny sight. Lucas still hadn’t stopped teasing Shawn about it yet.

“What are you thinking about so hard, Dawson?” Lucas asked, waking me from my thoughts. He was leaning on the edge of his piano, showing off that cheesy grin of his.

“You.”

“What about me? You aren’t plotting against me again are you?”

“Nope. I was trying to come up with a new question for you.”

“Any luck with that?”

“Yes, actually,” I replied, having just thought of a really great question. “Your middle name, Harvey. What is it?”

He shook his head from side to side very slowly and his face held the most serious expression—well, except for when he got upset about the newspaper thing back before Christmas. “Pick another question.”

“What’s Shawn’s middle name?” I asked, already knowing just how I was going to get my information from him.

“Francis.”

“No,” I gasped.

“Yes,” he chuckled, nodding his head.

“Did your mother not like him when he was a baby?”

“My mother picked religious middle names for all three of us. Sadie got lucky with ‘Michele’ as her middle name.”

“Gift from God,” I said, remembering when Sadie had explained her name to me years ago.

“Exactly. Shawn got ‘Francis’, after Saint Francis who was considered a gentle giant. Shawn was a big baby.”

“And you?”

“None of your business.”

“It’s totally my business, Harvey. I am the best friend.”

He turned his face away, staring down at his piano keys. “No.”

I moved over to the bench, sitting right next to him and resting my head on his shoulder. “Please, Lucas. Please tell me,” I pleaded.

“Katherine,” he sighed.

“Come on! You know mine. It’s only fair that I know yours too. Please.”

He sighed heavily and muttered something under his breath before replying to my pleading. “Katie, I would just like to point out how much I’m trusting you at this moment, because no one outside of my family knows this.”

“I promise it will remain a secret.”

“I’m named after a saint that died fighting in the Roman arena for his beliefs. My mother hoped naming me after this saint would give me the same strength of conviction that he had.”

“Judging by your abnormal confidence level, I’d say it worked,” I joked, trying to get him to relax. It must be one hell of a middle name if he was this worked up about it.

He sighed heavily once again and I nearly missed it when he spoke. “It’s Ignatius.”

I sounded out his name in my head—Lucas Ignatius Abbott. “I like it. I can see why you don’t want everyone knowing that, but I still like it.”

“I think I deserve a favor for the release of my middle name.”

I sat up and looked at him. “What do you have in mind?”

He took my hand into his and locked our fingers together, which usually meant something big was coming my way. “I want you to promise that you will apply to the literary colleges in New York.”

Okay, “big” might be too weak of an adjective for what was currently going on. Lucas had been dropping little hints here and there about me going off to New York with him for college, but this was the first time he was openly discussing it with me.

“I really want you to come with me. If there was a school out here that could do what Juilliard can for me, I would stay and go there instead, but there isn’t. Please say you’ll honor this favor.” I couldn’t tell which part of him was doing the most pleading, his mouth or his blue eyes.

“Why do you want me to come?” I asked.

“Because you’re my best friend and I can’t see myself spending four years without you around.”

“You’re going to meet so many people when you get there.”

“Great. You can meet them all with me, and tell me who’s honest and who’s full of crap.”

“Lucas, even if I could somehow manage the grades and test scores, how could I ever afford a college in New York?”

“Scholarships, student loans, a job. There’s tons of ways, Dawson. We can figure them all out together,” he said.

“And when you get too busy with all your musical friends to hang out with me?” I asked.

“As if I would ever leave you behind like that! You know I wouldn’t, so tell me what you’re really afraid of.”

I dropped my eyes and bit my lip, knowing he wasn’t going to end the conversation without an answer, but not knowing what to say either.

“Dawson, what’s bothering you? If you don’t want to come with me, you can just say it. It’s okay.”

“I do want to go,” I admitted. “I just don’t think I can. I don’t think I’ll get in anywhere.”

“Then, let’s take it one step at a time. Promise that you’ll apply to the colleges. We’ll do some preliminary research in the meantime, and once we know for sure that you’ve been accepted somewhere, we’ll make the final plans.”

“You know we aren’t going to be applying until senior year, right?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So why are you using the favor you have right now for this? Why not another time? We both know I’ll end up owing you again.”

“Because I really want you to come with me, Dawson. There’s so much to do in New York, places to go and things to see. And you’re the only person I know who will appreciate them as much as me.”

“Again, that’s only until you make new friends at your school,” I pointed out.

“Yes, because some guy there to study violin will want to go Ellis Island with me to see the Wall of Honor,” he said sarcastically.

“He might.”

“And you can guarantee he’ll be completely in awe when he finds his family’s last name on the wall? Will he want to stick around and view every inch of the museum?”

“Don’t know. He might end up being Native American and not have any immigrants in his family history.”

“Put the humor away and talk to me.”

“Fine. You want to talk, here it is. If—and I do mean a very huge if, my friend—if I go along with this favor, and by some miracle, am capable of ending up in New York with you, if you ditch me when we get there, I will beat the snot out of you and never forgive you.”

“I can promise you completely, without a single shred of doubt, that I will never, under any circumstances, ditch you. People don’t ditch their best friends, at least not the smart ones, and I do consider myself to be smart where you’re concerned.”

We stared at each for a long time, both of us trying to read the other without actually talking or asking questions, as if our non-verbal conversations did more for us than the spoken ones. For all I knew, they just might. I knew a lot of what Lucas knew about me had come from his extremely, annoyingly, correct guesses.

So there I was, staring at my best friend who wanted me to go to New York with him, to continue our strange little friendship. I already knew I wanted to go. So there was really only one question for me to ask myself…Was I willing to do everything it took to go with him? My brain was screaming that I was being completely unsafe and setting myself up to fall, but my heart reminded me that even if the worst happened, he would still be the best friend I’d ever had. And that little annoying voice, the one that was getting louder all the time, was letting me know how stupid I was to think for a second that Lucas would really ditch me.

I’d had enough of my own internal monologue, so I took a deep breath and gave Lucas my answer. “Okay, Harvey. I’ll go along with your favor. I promise to apply to colleges in New York next year.”

“Excellent,” he said, his cheesy grin filling his face. “I was thinking Sarah Lawrence might be perfect for you.”

“Lucas, while I love that you are so excited, I really want to change the subject, okay? I’m tired and cranky, and I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“You still miss your walls sometimes, huh?” he asked, pulling me against his side.

“Sometimes. I hate feeling…”

“Vulnerable?”

“Yeah, that.”

“I’m right here with you, Katie. You know I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

“But you can’t be everywhere with me and I have to be able to defend myself.”

“You have to stop thinking that you need to defend yourself around your friends and family. They all love you, Katie. They just want to be able to show you that through words and hugs. They want to get to enjoy the unguarded you that I do.”

“No, they don’t. They just think they do.”

Lucas put his fingers under my chin and lifted my face up to his. “You’re wrong, Katherine, and somewhere inside that head of yours, you know it. You know that I understand why you have walls and why you think you need them, but if you don’t need them for me, you definitely don’t need them against Sadie, Shawn, Kelly, or any of the other people who care for you.”

“But it’s different,” I argued.

“Why do you think it’s different?”

I moved so that I was looking at him again. “You don’t push. You don’t expect things from me. And you don’t turn every little thing into some huge production. And you don’t have some idea in your head of what I should be like. Sadie, Lily, and even Alison to some extent…They all want me to be girly like them and dress up, go shopping, discuss boys. Sadie always wants to celebrate something or make sure everyone knows about something that went on. Kelly and my dad have it in their heads that I’m going to wake up any day now, accept her whole-heartedly, and the three of us will be a perfect little family. And everyone, even Shawn, as soon as I show the slightest bit of improvement with something, they want to see more of it, like it’s just sitting there for me to give and I’m purposefully not doing it.”

“Calm down, Dawson,” Lucas said softly, rubbing his hand up and down my back.

My breathing was short and raspy, on its way to becoming a hyperventilation episode. I closed my eyes and focused on his hand moving up and down the middle of my back. I really hated when I got like this, but I just couldn’t stand the thought of things changing for the worse…of going back to the way it used to be before Lucas came along. “Talk about something. Anything,” I begged.

“I’ll tell you something that happened at school after Christmas break. I was mad about it at first, but now I think it’s sort of funny and very sad. Cody pulled me aside to talk to me. He told me to stop playing with Ellie and Lindsey. It seems they told him I ignore them at school and then call them at night to apologize. I let him know nothing like that has ever happened and he was aggravated at being fooled. I tried to explain just how delusional those two girls are and how they won’t leave me alone, but I don’t think he really cared. I also told him he should take a look in the mirror and really see what he’s been doing with his life. He told me he could do that when he’s too old to live.”

I snorted, easily able to picture Cody saying something like that.

“Oh, and he called me ‘Buddha Junior’.”

“What?” I chuckled.

“Yeah, he didn’t appreciate my reflective attitude, I guess.”

I took in a long, deep breath, feeling almost normal again—well, as normal as I ever got.

“Do you think you can handle it if I reply to your earlier rant?” he asked.

“Only one way to find out. But if you don’t mind too much, can you keep rubbing my back? It helps to focus on that,” I replied.

“I know, Dawson. Are you ready?”

I took one more deep breath and then nodded for him to go ahead.

“I don’t push because I’ve spent enough time around you to read you clearly and know when you are really at your limit. I don’t expect anything from you because you don’t expect anything from me. We’re just two friends hanging out together. If you happen to deal with some big issue, or institute a change within yourself, then I’m proud and happy for you, but if you don’t, then you don’t. I know you’ll get around to it when you can. I don’t like attention anymore than you do, so I never see a need to create any. I agree there are certain things everyone would like to see more of; like you spending time with just the girls, or smiling, or even just joining into conversations. But that all adds up to just one thing—they care and they want you to enjoy your friendship with them as much as they do.”

“I do enjoy it, I just don’t want more of it right now.” I moved so that my head was on Lucas’s shoulder. “When I’m completely okay around you, then maybe I can do the same for each of them.”

“I’m not going to lie, I do enjoy having you all to myself, but I also want what’s best for you. And that truly is letting all the people who care for you get to show it without you shrinking away from them.”

“There’s no point if they’re going to leave,” I muttered.

“Then it’s a good thing none of them are leaving, isn’t it?”

“You don’t know that for sure, Lucas.”

“Okay, allow me to rephrase. None of them are leaving permanently. They might move for college, but that’s not leaving. It’s just relocating. It’s not like they will stop talking to you, loving you, or wanting you around just because they go off to college.”

“It could happen that way,” I persisted.

“So when you come to New York with me and Sadie stays out here to go to school with Caleb, you’re telling me that you will leave her, never speak to her again, or never see her again?” he questioned.

“No, of course not, but that’s different.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s Sadie and she’s supposed to be loved by everyone.”

“And you’re just above it all?”

“Try below,” I mumbled, hoping he wouldn’t hear me.

“And there lies the root of the problem,” he sighed. “You are as deserving and worthy of being loved as any of us, Katie. You are a good person and you truly make the people around you happy to know you. Your mother had her own problems, none of which had anything to do with you. Your dad was telling you the truth, Katie. Your mom used you as an excuse, that’s all.” His hand brushed across my cheek, wiping away one of my traitor tears. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to upset you. I just don’t like seeing you beat yourself up, especially when you’re all wrong about how you view yourself.”

“It’s not you personally. The whole thing is upsetting, Lucas.”

“Is there anything I can do to prove to you that you’re not the reason she left?”

“Sure. Have her call me up and explain it.”

“No,” he growled. His vehement reply threw me off and I turned my wet face up toward his.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

“I told you, I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

“The only reason for you to say that is if you think she’ll tell me the same thing.”

“No, I think she’ll apologize, but she’ll still leave again.” Now that was a statement I could actually believe. I sniffled and Lucas wiped away the rest of my tears. He looked down at me for a long while before speaking again. “I keep telling you there’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said, brushing my hair away from my face for me.

“I’m not,” I said, much too quickly.

He only waited patiently to see what else I might have to say.

“Fine. I’m afraid. Happy?”

He shook his head. “Not at all.”

“Let’s change the subject. I’m just upset right now. I probably won’t feel so melodramatic about it tomorrow.”

“Don’t do that, Katie. Don’t discount your feelings like that. You have a right to feel however you do, and if someone doesn’t understand that, too bad for them.”

“Are you going to personally tell them that?” I asked, managing a small smile.

“Are you going to admit you enjoy having me around?” he replied.

“If I answer, you can’t give the cheesy grin, say ‘I told you so’, or do anything else to make a big deal out of it.”

“I will do my best, but I have no control over the grin.”

“Lucas, you are my best friend and I’m glad to have you around. Were you actually worried about someone not liking you?”

“Not someone. You. It’s kind of pointless to get all excited about you being my best friend if you don’t feel the same way about me.”

“Well, I do.”

“And now I know.”

“So are you looking forward to my last piano lesson tomorrow night? You can finally be rid of your most stubborn student.”

“As if,” he chuckled. “The wedding might be next weekend, but your piano lessons are indefinite.” His face turned serious and he just stared at me, looking as though he had something he wanted to say. He’d been doing that more and more often lately and it was really starting to get on my nerves.

“What are you thinking about, Harvey?” I asked.

“Your dreams.”

“You mean about the fact that you are now in them, keeping me from falling?”

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his blue eyes. “Yeah.”

My falling dream had always started off the same way; I would find myself standing on the edge of a large building—sometimes a cliff—with the wind whipping my wavy brown hair into my face. Then, the sky would become a dark gray with black clouds racing across it. It would start to rain, and I would try to step away from the edge, only to find that I couldn’t move in any direction. The building would start to crumble, the tiles breaking into a million tiny pieces, turning my white shoes black with the dust kicked up by the shattering. Once it all crumbled away, I would fall endlessly, never reaching the ground, unable to get rid of the sinking feeling in my stomach as I continued to plummet.

But in the past month and a half, my dream had changed. I would still stand on the ledge, watching it break apart, but before it could completely crumble away, I would hear a voice calling my name and then see a hand being held out to me. The moment I put my hand in the one being offered to me, I would find myself on the ground, wrapped up in Lucas’s arms, with the sun shining brightly on us. And then I would listen to him recite my haiku.

I was so excited about the change and when I had told Lucas about it, you would have sworn the boy had just won the lottery. As happy as my news had made him, it seemed to have made him equally sad for some reason. Every time I asked him about it, he just told me it was nothing to worry about. But nearly four weeks had gone by and he was still getting sad about something. It made him asking me to go to New York with him that much stranger for me. Why would he want me to go along with the way he kept getting sad around me?

“Lucas, what’s wrong?” I asked, hoping he would tell me this time. “And please, please don’t say nothing.”

He opened his mouth and I thought he was finally going to let me in, but then he closed it and shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Why not yet? Who are you protecting? Me or you? Because I’ll tell you right now, I don’t need you to protect me, Lucas Abbott. I need you to be honest with me.”

His jaw tensed as he looked at me and I wondered if I’d finally pushed him too far. He got up from the bench, grabbed my hand, and pulled me along behind him. “And just remember that you asked for this,” he mumbled, probably hoping I wouldn’t hear it.

He towed me into the living room and let go of me so that he could pick up his laptop. He turned it on and as he waited for it to load, he tapped his feet nervously on the floor. Whatever had him upset was obviously something big and important to him.

Music started playing from the laptop and I tilted my head, listening closely to the lyrics.

Wandering the streets, in a world underneath it all.
Nothing seems to be, nothing tastes as sweet
As what I can't have.
Like you and the way that you're twisting your hair
Round your finger.
Tonight I'm not afraid to tell you
What I feel about you.

I'm gonna muster every ounce of confidence I have
And cannon ball into the water.
I'm gonna muster every ounce of confidence I have.
For you, I will.
For you, I will …

No. No, no, no. I was dreaming. Yeah, that was it. I was having an extremely vivid dream. There was no way he was playing that song for the reason I was thinking. Things like this didn’t happen in real life. He’d just found an interesting song and he was showing it to me. Or it pertained to someone else and he had been moping around lately because he didn’t know how to tell me he wanted to ask some girl out.

This was bad. This was so bad! If this was what I thought it might be and it didn’t work out…I stood up and ran out the back door, not even caring that it was pouring raining. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have gone out of the front door since it would have put me closer to the street. Why hadn’t I taken my car today?

“Katie, please. It’s pouring,” Lucas said, catching up to me by the front of the garage. “Please come back inside and dry off. Sadie will be back and then I can drive you home.”

“No! I’m going home now.”

“Fine. Just let me call Sadie and tell her I’m taking you home so she doesn’t worry.”

“Don’t bother. I can walk.”

“You’re seriously going to try and walk home in the rain?”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“Katie, please.”

I stopped and whirled around on him, feeling angry at him for risking our friendship this way. “Why did you play that song, Lucas?” I screamed at him.

“I love you,” he said simply.

Three words I never, ever thought I would hear in regards to me, yet they were ringing in my ears in his voice. I was glad for the rain now, hoping it would hide the tears that were falling. I wanted so badly to believe him, to believe this was completely real, but even if it somehow might have been, it wasn’t right. Lucas had a future ahead of him and he deserved someone a lot better than me. He deserved someone a lot less complicated, without all of my damn trust issues.

“Why are you crying, Katie?” he asked, reaching out his hand and wiping it across my cheek.

“You shouldn’t have said that.”

He stepped closer to me, so we were only inches apart, both of us getting soaked to the bone in his front yard. “Why not? I meant it. I will mean it every single day for the rest of my life. And all I want to do is to be with you and…”

“And what, Lucas?” I asked, wishing I could go back in time and take back my stupid question.

He took my face into his hands and just stared at me, looking as though he was regarding some priceless treasure instead of his best friend. I wanted so much to pull way, but I also wanted to stay right where I was.

And then his lips were on mine. Lucas was always so careful when he touched me, barely there so that I could pull away if I needed to, but his kiss wasn’t anything like that. His lips were tightly pressed against mine and the only word I could think of to describe the feeling was “eager”. His lips were wet and warm and wonderful as they moved with mine. My head was screaming at me to stop this before we could hurt each other, but my heart pushed me forward, getting me to lean into the kiss and his body. And if the moment wasn’t surreal enough, I had a total movie moment where my toes curled up. I had to grab his shoulders just to keep myself standing, but I never once pulled away from his embrace.

Lucas was the one to break the kiss, gasping for air and resting his forehead against mine. “That’s what I’ve been wanting to do. You’re my best friend and I love you.”

“You can’t mean that,” I whispered, dropping my eyes from his.

He lifted my chin, forcing me to look at him. “I do mean that, Katie.” He leaned forward to kiss me again and as much as I wanted to let him, I couldn’t. He was never meant to be anything more than my best friend. I didn’t have a part in that particular scene of his life.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” I told him.

“Yes, I do.”

“You can’t,” I screamed, wishing for once that he wouldn’t argue.

“Why not?” he yelled back, closing the distance between us again. He lifted his arms as if he was going to hug me, but stopped himself.

I wanted so badly to just take a step forward and let his arms wrap around me, but it wasn’t right. I owed him more than that for everything he’d done for me since we’d met. “Because it’s not a romantic love like you think and when you realize it, you’ll leave and I don’t think…I know I couldn’t handle it if you left. It’s better if we’re just friends and then you can stay. We can still go to New York like you’ve been talking about. Please don’t do this, Lucas. Please don’t ruin things.”

“Why do you think I would leave you?” he asked, looking as if I had just stabbed him right in his heart.

I became angry with myself for hurting him, wishing there was some other way to do this, and I found myself yelling at him. “Because, Lucas! If my own mother, the woman who gave birth to me, didn’t want me, why should I think some silly teenage boy would?”

“I’m not some silly teenage boy, and you know it! And I’m also not the idiot your mother clearly is.”

“You’re a popular kid, professing his love for a nobody in the middle of a rainstorm. Are you sure you’re not an idiot?”

He cupped my chin in his hand, forcing me to pay attention to him. “You are not a nobody, Katherine Amico. And even if no one else on this Earth realizes you exist, I do. And to me, you are everything. You are the most beautiful, smart, entertaining, rude young woman I have ever met and I love you more than I can say. And it’s not a sisterly love, or a friend love, but the absolute real deal where every waking moment my thoughts are about you and how much I love you type of love.”

“Lucas—” My reply was cut off by his touch as his hands moved up to my shoulders and he lightly rubbed my arms in an attempt to comfort me. I was hurting him and yelling at him, but he was trying to comfort me—I was definitely not good enough to be with him in that way.

“You don’t have to say anything back right now,” he said, his voice so soft and tender. “I know you might need some time to think about how you feel. I just wanted you to know how much I care for you. I admit that when I met you, I was a complete jerk. But at the time, I didn’t believe there was a point in serious relationships. I didn’t think love mattered since I was more concerned with my music and my future. So going out with a few girls and playing the part of the playboy seemed okay to me. But when you and I became friends, I realized how stupid and shallow that was. And I’ve tried to be a better person ever since. And now that I know I love you, I only want to be with you and I can only picture a future with you. I love you, Katherine.”

I shivered from both the cold rain and his tender words, and Lucas pulled me completely into his arms, leading me back to the house. He took me upstairs and into his bathroom, turning on the light and shower for me.

“Take a hot shower so you don’t get sick. Drop your wet clothes right here next to the door. I’ll find you something to wear while I dry your clothes,” he told me.

I didn’t bother arguing, knowing it wouldn’t do any good. I wanted to pretend none of this had happened, but the fact that my knees were still shaking and my lips still tingled was making that impossible. I didn’t know if I loved Lucas or not, but I knew for damn sure that I felt something. I had always thought the saying about feeling a spark when you kissed was a movie myth, but I had been proven very wrong. I just wished I knew what it meant. I wished I could be sure Lucas really was romantically in love with me and not just confusing his feelings of protectiveness for love. I wished I knew what it was that I was feeling. Holy crap this was complicated!

I stayed in the shower for as long as I could stand, too much of a coward to go out there and face him. I had probably completely confused him with the way I had screamed at him and then kissed him back. Why had I done that? I shouldn’t have done that. Oh, but I had enjoyed doing that.

No! That was chaos and disappointment and the end of a really great friendship down that road. I was not going to take that path. The part of Lucas’s love was meant to be played by someone other than me. It had to be because…well, because…because I was me and I was not worth it.

I put on the clothes he had left for me, trying to ignore the way the smell of him made my heart hurt even worse. I tried to convince myself it was the idea of him leaving that was hurting me, nothing more and nothing less. But when I got to the kitchen and saw the way his sad blue eyes were watching his plate of food, I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. My heart was breaking because I had hurt my best friend—I just didn’t know how to fix it.

Sadie had come back while I was in the shower and she was sitting next to Lucas, talking about her latest story for our creative writing class. I sat down next to Sadie, wanting to give Lucas some space. I guess it must have been too much for him because he suddenly left the table, not even bothering to put away his untouched food.

As soon as I heard his door close, the tears started. Sadie obviously knew what had happened because she kept trying to reassure me that Lucas wasn’t mad at me and that he would definitely still be my friend, but she couldn’t possibly know those things. As soon as my clothes were dry, I changed into them and had Sadie drive me home.

I didn’t get any sleep that night, worrying over what school would be like in the morning. Would Lucas talk to me? Would he still sit next to me at the table? Would he come home with me after school? I was so tired and so worried that I kept breaking down at the most inopportune moments. It was just lucky for me that it was one of those rare mornings when my dad and Kelly had both left the house before it was time for me to get ready for school.

I finally calmed myself enough to gather my things and make it out to my car, but as soon as I sat behind the wheel, I started crying all over again. This was so unfair. I finally had a friend, someone who knew everything about me and didn’t care. And now I might lose him all because I didn’t know how I felt and I was too scared to find out.

I had no idea how long I had sat there crying before my car door opened. I looked up, expecting to see my dad or Sadie, but the person who knelt down next to me was Lucas. I literally fell against him and locked my arms around his neck, wanting to keep him there forever. If he couldn’t move, then our friendship wouldn’t end and I wouldn’t be alone again.

“Katie, what’s wrong?” he asked, rubbing my back in a useless attempt to calm me.

“Why are you here?” I sobbed.

“You weren’t at school. I had to come and check on you.”

“But why? You should hate me. I didn’t even say anything to you last night and you poured your heart out to me. That had to have hurt you.”

“I won’t lie to you. It did hurt. I had sort of hoped when I told you I loved you that you would say you felt the same way. But it’s okay if you don’t.”

“Why would that be okay?”

“Because I still have hope that you will feel that way one day.” He pulled away enough to look at my face. “And if you don’t, then you’ll still be my best friend. In the meantime, I would really like it if you rode to school with me. I was looking forward to sitting with my best friend at lunch and coming up with some plans for the weekend.”

“You mean that? You’ll still be my friend?” I asked, silently begging him to say “yes”.

“How many times must I tell you, Dawson? You are not getting rid of me,” he said, giving me his cheesy grin.

I hugged him tightly again, tears of relief flowing freely from my puffy eyes. He rubbed my back, telling me again and again that he wasn’t going anywhere without me, “not ever” he swore.

My tears slowly stopped and I wiped my face with the corner of my shirt. “Lucas, you’re really not mad at me?”

“Katie, I have no reason to be mad at you. Will you please believe me and come to school with me?”

I nodded my head and he smiled wide, helping me out of the car and grabbing my backpack. With my hand locked firmly in his, he brought me over to the Rover and helped me get in. Soon enough, we were on our way to school.

He pulled into his usual spot and I gasped, realizing I had just totally ruined something else for him. “Oh, god, Lucas!”

He parked the car and turned to look at me. “What? Did you forget something in the car?”

“No! Your attendance record! Lucas, it’s not perfect anymore. It’s all my fault.”

He chuckled as he took my hand into his. “Katie, it’s just a stupid record. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“But you said it was something you were proud of,” I said, feeling extremely confused.

“That was before I knew what was truly valuable in life.”

“So if not a perfect attendance record, what do you value?”

“Our friendship and you.”

Holy crap! He was completely serious! He really meant everything he had said last night. He loved me and I was somebody to him. How in the hell had this happened? “You really are serious. You’re not just playing around with me. You actually love me?” I asked, needing verification.

“Yes, Katie. I truly love you—every single thing about you.”

“I just couldn’t believe you last night. It just didn’t seem real.”

“What convinced you?”

“You gave up your part as the perfect Abbott to come and get me this morning. You would never do that unless you really believed you had an important reason to.”

“And now that you believe me, will you answer a question for me?”

I nodded and he smiled at me.

“Do you have any feelings for me, beyond friendship?” he asked.

“Is this your way of asking if you’re cute?” I chuckled nervously.

“I guess you could put it that way,” he shrugged.

I stared at him for a moment, looking for any sign that he was messing with me. “Why are you asking?”

“Well, I don’t want you to say you love me unless you mean it and I know it may take some time for you to figure out if you feel that way about me. But if you do like me as more than a friend, then I would love it if you would be my girlfriend.”

Holy crap! Girlfriend? To Lucas Abbott? To my best friend? I dropped my eyes, watching his thumb roam back and forth across my hand. I had thought not too long ago that Lucas thinking I was beautiful was the ultimate chaos—that had been very small potatoes compared to this moment. I was scared, that was for damn sure. I doubted I had ever been this scared in my entire life, but the fear wasn’t the strongest thing I was feeling…There was one emotion that was ruling out the fear, making it seem miniscule in comparison. That emotion was my desire to say “yes” to him. I had no idea where it came from or that I was even capable of feeling such a thing, yet it was there and it was overpowering in its intensity.

“You don’t have to, Katie,” Lucas said softly, pulling me away from my thoughts. “I’ll be more than satisfied with just being your best friend. And no matter what, you’re still coming to New York with me.”

I looked up at him, my eyebrows lifting slightly. Had I really just heard him say that?

“Yes, Katie. I’m serious and I promise,” he said, answering my unspoken question.

“I don’t understand something, Lucas.”

“What?”

“Well, you’re an Abbott and you can be whatever you want to anyone you want. So, why are you choosing me out of all the other girls in this school?”

He held both of my hands in his and locked his blue eyes with my hazel ones. He was silently pleading with me to believe him, to trust him. “Because you’re the one that captured my heart, Katherine. You’re the one that I love. Not to mention that you are one amazingly fantastical best friend.”

“And that part won’t change, no matter what?” I asked, doing my own pleading. “You absolutely swear and promise on everything?”

There was no hesitation from him and his voice rang with confidence and honesty. “Katie, I promise you that we will always be best friends. I won’t let anything change that.”

I smiled, feeling a little awkward since this was so strange and new. “Lucas, I think I’d like to try being your girlfriend.”

He smiled and leaned forward, pressing his lips to mine as his arms encircled me. By some miracle, I was being held by Lucas’s arms, with his lips sweetly moving against my own. He loved me. Me! He was in love with me and he wanted me to be his girlfriend. And I was completely and utterly terrified and elated at the same time. He swore we would be friends, no matter what, but…I begged whatever force was out there in the world to not let this be a mistake, or a dream, or anything else that would completely crush me. I knew I wasn’t supposed to have this life, to feel this way, but that didn’t stop me from wanting it with everything in me.

Lucas finally pulled away, allowing us both to breathe. He smiled his cheesy grin, rubbing my cheeks with the pads of this thumbs. “I’ve waited a long time to say this, so bear with me if you hear it a lot. I love you, Katie.”

“I’m sorry I can’t say it back, but you’re welcome to say it as much as you like. It’s the least I can do,” I said, feeling incredibly shy suddenly. Talk about your uncharted waters!

“Don’t be sorry. I would rather wait forever to hear it once, knowing you mean it, than to hear it a thousand times a day, knowing it was all a lie.”

“Note to self. Lucas in love equals corny,” I chuckled, needing a bit of humor to help me come to terms with this momentous change in my life.

“Corny, huh?” he asked, leaning closer.

My breath caught in my throat as I watched his lips inch even closer. “Completely,” I finally managed.

He chuckled and pressed his lips to mine for the briefest of moments.

My nerves attacked at that point, filling my mind with thousands of questions about what changes might be coming because of this decision. “Um…what exactly does being a girlfriend entail?” I asked, choosing that as the most important question for the moment.

He laughed, hugging me tighter and kissing my temple. “Only you.”

“Don’t laugh. I’m serious, Lucas,” I fussed, pulling away to see his face.

“I’m sorry. I thought you were kidding around,” he said, putting his hand against my neck.

“Well, I’m not.”

“Sorry. Forgive your best friend?”

“As long as he doesn’t laugh at me anymore,” I sighed.

“I promise I won’t laugh. Now to answer your question…It means I don’t want to spend my free time with anyone but you, but that was sort of already going on.” He paused, smiling at me. “I guess the only difference will be that I’ll be telling you how much I love you, and kissing you now, with your permission, of course.”

“Do I have to wear dresses now?” I asked, feeling my nose scrunch up in disgust.

His lips twitched and I knew he wanted to smile. “Only to dances, and we never have to ask each other again, it’s always implied.”

“Good, because asking you to the Sweetheart dance was really nerve-wracking,” I said, feeling myself finally relax. “I don’t need that particular high school ritual ever again.”

Lucas couldn’t hold back any longer and he chuckled at me, shaking his head. I smiled, letting him know he was forgiven.

“Hey, this doesn’t mean that I have to be nice and not tease you, right?” I asked. “Because I’m not sure I would be capable of that.”

“No, Katie. Our relationship and the way we interact with each other won’t be changing. You are as free to tease me today as you were yesterday. I love you just the way you are and I’m not looking to change you.”

“Technically. You do want to change those pesky bad behaviors of mine that run people off.”

“You don’t run people off, you just try to push them away,” he corrected.

“We see how well that worked with you. I threaten you with an army and the next thing I know, you’re all in love with me.”

“I was wondering when the sarcasm would show up.”

“Oh, but this is the good kind of sarcasm that I actually meant to use, not the mean one that lashes out for no reason.”

“Is that so?” he asked, his lips twitching again.

“Well, yeah. The army comment was a defining moment in our fledgling friendship. As I recall, you were impressed and called it the most intelligent insult you had ever received.”

“And the streak continued the more I hung out with you.”

“What’s your top three insults?”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. My curiosity has been awoken and I must have this information.”

“Okay, so the army not being able to get you near my ‘germy’ lips is one. The second one would have to be when you told me a butterfly had a bigger heart and more compassion that I possessed.”

“Ouch. That was really rough. Sorry about that,” I said.

“Don’t be,” he chuckled. “It was true at the time.”

“Good point. And the third?”

“The third is when you told me a child in the fifth month of gestation could pick better songs than me.”

“Oh, I must have been really mad at you that day!” I laughed.

“You weren’t feeling very appreciative of my attempts to get you to give Bluegrass a try,” he replied, smiling.

“And can I just interrupt to point out that you don’t like Bluegrass yourself, but felt the need to spend the afternoon trying to make me like it?”

“You just did.”

“Oh, well then.” I did my best not to laugh, finding it easier than expected once he leaned in close to me.

“Katie, can I kiss you again?” he asked, his voice low as he licked his lips.

I couldn’t do anything but nod my head and continue to stare. The anticipation was excruciating as he slowly closed the distance between us. I could tell he was worried about scaring me and it made my heart soar. He really, truly loved me and cared for me. I had no idea how this had happened, but it was definitely amazing and wonderful.

Lucas pulled away after a minute, resting his forehead against mine. “You know, I hadn’t meant to blurt out that I loved you that way last night.”

“No, I didn’t know. Did you have some big plan, Lucas?”

He glanced quickly at me, actually managing to appear a bit shy. “Well, yeah. I had actually planned to take you to the beach and tell you there, knowing how that’s one of your favorite places.”

“And did you think the sand would somehow soften the impact of your words?” I teased, smiling at him.

“I don’t think I thought it out that far. I was sort of consumed with how to phrase it without causing you to run. Our friendship, it’s not like anyone else’s in the world, Dawson. And it means so much to the both of us. I was worried you would automatically assume any change between us would mess that up. That’s why I was so worried about telling you.”

“And I proved you were right to worry, going so far as to try to walk home in the rain,” I chuckled, needing a bit of humor. “You sure know how to pick ‘em, huh Harvey?”

“I love you,” was his only reply, seconds before he started to kiss me again.

I wished I could say that to him, but I knew I couldn’t mean it right now. So many people our age threw around the word “love” without having any real concept of the meaning behind the word. They never thought twice about saying “I love you” to someone, or even spent time contemplating if it was true or not. They just said it, like it was no big deal. But I knew it was a huge deal and that I would say it when I knew with everything in me that it was how I felt. Lucas deserved nothing less. Someday, hopefully soon, I would tell him and I would mean it…and maybe, just maybe, on that day, I would actually be worthy of what he was offering me.

Lucas had once made the joke that I was the love of his life. While I would never be a true Juliet, all girly and easy to love, I would be whatever he needed most…a friendly ear to listen to his thoughts and dreams, a hand to hold for reassurance and comfort, a smile to make his day better, or a hug to give comfort. It would be hard and some of it might feel damn near impossible to pull of, but it would be worth it…He was worth it. One way or another, I was going to stick around and find out what it was like to play—no, live—the part of the girl loved by the great guy.

THE END

---

The second story of Katie and Lucas is up and is called "Love Realized"

The third story is "Courageous Love"

Thanks for Reading!!