The Crush

I pulled away as he eased out of me, then turned to him, going down to my elbows in front of him. A subservient bow, my head almost to the floor. "I wish I would have gone to you Lane. I wish you would have come to me, just once. You were the reason I didn't date in high-school, I kept waiting for you. I should have realized you were too shy and you might be intimidated by all of my new friends. They were all girls so I didn't think of it like you were. I avoided guy friends so you wouldn't think I was interested in anyone else. It was only you I wanted. Only you I dreamed of. I adored you so much but I thought you had no interest in the skinny little girl you left behind. Then when you left... I finally really gave up."

"I find all of that hard to believe, Hannah. I never saw you look at men, not once. And I watched you a lot."

"I never saw you watching me. I never saw you looking at me when I looked at you. Like in Halsey's class. I sat one row over and two seats behind you... I watched you constantly. You never turned around that I saw. I also watched you every time you came in the library sixth hour, looking at car magazines."

"You rarely looked away from the kids you were checking out books to."

"When I wasn't busy, I was watching you."

"So you are trying to tell me that it was coincidence that as much as I watched you, I never once saw you looking at me? I find that hard to swallow. I think you are trying to bullshit me."

"Lane... Go out to my garage. One the bottom shelf on the far left, the pink tote. It is full of yearbooks, things I kept. Under everything, Are four diaries bound together. Open any one of them, one for each year of high-school."

He stood up and pulled me up, dragging me out to the garage. He shoved me towards the tote. I opened it and dug right to where I knew they were. I untied the ribbon around them, then opened the one from freshman year in the middle and started reading.

"He wore that t-shirt today with no sleeves. It is still my favorite, seeing the muscles on his arms. Stacey says he is too skinny, but she has never looked closer. He is skinny, but it's all hard muscle. I tell her the term is wiry and she makes fun of me. She tries to say I am out of his league, but he doesn't know I am alive any more. That makes him out of my league. I am just some silly high-school girl to him now and he has moved on to bigger and better things than the girl..."

He snatched the diary from me and started reading it as if he thought I was making it up. I opened the next one, near the beginning.

"I saw him this morning, getting off his bike. When he did, he noticed his shoes were coming apart, then went straight to the auto shop. When I saw him in English, I noticed he had duck taped them. Shelly was making fun of him at lunch and it upset me. I asked her if she knew how much shoes in his size cost and how they had to be special ordered. Then I asked her if she knew what it meant when a boy had big feet. Stacey hardly let me hear the end of that, asking me if I was really thinking about how big his penis was. I told her that if she was going to make fun of me then I never wanted to hear about Adam again and how good he was in bed. I didn't have the real thing,all I had was my imagination..."

He jerked that diary from me as well, looking over it. I opened the next, near the back.

"It's almost time for prom. David asked me and I said no, then Brian asked me. I told him no too, but I wonder if I should just say yes. I know he will never ask me. Even if he was the type to go to prom, he wouldn't go. He can't afford it any more than I can. Wouldn't it be cool though, if he asked me to come over and watch a movie instead? I haven't been to his house in so long, I wonder if it's the same? Is his room the same? I can't imagine it any different than I remember. I still imagine laying back in that bed and him squeezing in next to me. I want to feel him lay on the couch behind me and hold me close while we watch a movie. Maybe I should ask him if he has seen the new horror movie that just came out on tape? I know he hasn't, but if I ask maybe he will ask if I want to see it with him? Prom could never compete with a night in his arms..."

He took that one as well, flipping through it, his cheeks pink. I opened the next one.

"We had an assembly today. I pretended not to see him as I sat right in front of him. I had told myself I was going to lean back accidentally against his legs, but I never built up the courage. I was going to turn around to say hi, but I was right there and he never said anything. I don't even know if he realized it was me. I was just some silly girl giggling with my friends through an assembly about the dangers of drug use. I'm afraid he sees me as some annoying little brat like he probably did when we were younger. He pretended back then not to know how much I liked him. He was only being polite because there was no one else to hang out with and I was always there. Maybe his mom told him he had to take me out fishing and hiking so our moms could get high and drink. He was always just babysitting some lovestruck little brat."

He yanked the diary away and stared down at me, his face red and his eyes burning. "I remember that day," he said hoarsely. "How good you smelled. How you didn't even see me there. How badly I wanted to touch your long hair, feel it in my fingers. Your profile every time you looked at your friends. You were so flushed that day and I never knew why."

"Now you know."

He dropped the diaries back into the box, then turned and went back into the house. I stood and hesitated, looking at the garage door opener and the garage door. I bit my lip, then went back into the house. He was laying on the couch, his hands on his head, looking lost. His eyes went to me, then he looked away quickly, sitting up. "Go to bed," he demanded, getting up. My heart sank. Was he going to hurt me now? After everything?

I went back to the bedroom and he followed me. He shoved everything on the bed into the bag, then pushed me to the bed. I climbed in the blankets stiffly. He picked up the remote and turned the TV on, then turned off the light and got into bed next to me. He pulled me tight against him, wrapping a massive arm around me. He scrolled through movies and picked a scary one, then tossed the remote to the side and put both arms around me. He laid there holding me with the scary movie on. I knew neither of us were watching it, it was a statement. I rolled to face him halfway through and looked up at him. He looked back down at me, his face passive.

I should not have come here," he finally said.

"Maybe you have some peace of mind now," I said softly. That didn't mean was going to forgive him for everything he had done. For ruining my memories of him.

He turned the TV off, turning the room pitch black. He held me close in one arm, his other arm moving, doing something. I felt a sting as he pushed a needle into me, then a burn.

"Sleep Hannah," he said softly.

I woke to brightness that made me wince. I felt like I had the worst hangover in the world. What time was it? I sat up and looked around. My room was empty, all traces of him gone. I stumbled to the kitchen and got a water and tylenol, then looked around some more. The pink tote was closed and back on the shelf, my coffee table was put to rights. It was as if he had never been there. All I had was an aching body, and a sore asshole and pussy.

No. When I went back to the kitchen, there was a small card with a typed name and address.

Justin Summerland

1108 E 84th Terr

I looked down at it for a moment, then went to get dressed. My keys were back on the hook and my phone was in my jacket pocket. I hurried to the address and knocked, pounding hard.

The boy that opened the door in his boxers looked like he was hungover. "What? We don't need god here," he scowled and started to close the door.

I slapped my hand on the door. "Are you Justin?"

"No, he's upstairs with his bitch, who the fuck are you?"

"Her mother," I spat, shoving the door open and going up the stairs.

"Oh shit! Justin! JUSTIN!"

A door opened as I reached the top and I punched the kid in the nose, then shoved him back as I went in the room.

Sophie was in the bed, no clothes. "Mom!" she squealed, sitting up and grabbing at the sheets.

"You have two minutes to get dressed and get down in the car and YOU!" I shouted, turning to Justin. "You are going to jail. She is fourteen."

"The fuck she is, Lilly, you said you were seventeen!"

"Her name isn't Lilly either, cops are on their way. I would get dressed and call a lawyer now if I were you. Sophie! Move your ass!"

"Mom! You can't do this! Please, I love him!"

"The cops are on their way. You better start moving. NOW Sophie!"

She started crying as she got dressed and I pulled her out of the room before she got her shoes on. I called the cops at the car and sat and waited for them while Sophie tried to beg me not to and tell me she was in love.

Justin was arrested and I took Sophie in for a rape kit and to have her tested for everything. The kid had looked like a scuzzbag and I was sick with fear. She cried through it all, but I hardened my heart. "You have been lying to me! Sneaking out, skipping school, having sex! What else? Test her for drugs too," I demanded of the nurse. "You will not be seeing the light of day any time soon young lady."

I had to leave the room as she started crying again and pleading. I sat in the waiting room, trying to calm myself and get my head under control. The news snagged my attention hard.

"This just breaking, a major ambassador from the middle east was allegedly assassinated this morning. This is coming just after he announced their agreeing to join the UN and peace talk agreements. Some are saying this was allegedly a strategic hit from the pro war factions of any number of governments, including the United States. There is no suspect in custody at this time. We will bring you more coverage of this as it unfolds."

I stood, half staggering. I didn't know how I knew, but I knew. That was Lane. That was why he had been here and why he had come to me. I knew suddenly that he never meant to leave me alive. I knew the only reason he did was because of how things had played out and because he had showed me how easy it was for him to find out everything he wanted to about my life so easily.

I went back to Sophie's room and sat down to wait. My head was still spinning. When I finally got home with my daughter, she ran to her room and locked the door, still crying. I went to my room and blinked. The bed was made and there was a single sprig of lilacs on the pillow. My favorite flower. That was all.

A year passed and I never told a soul what happened that night, or my suspicions. Sophie hadn't even remembered him after me catching her the next morning. I had her in counseling and she was doing so much better. I had also started working from home. I never mentioned him and she had never asked.

I still thought about him and wondered what he was doing. If he was traveling and killing people... torturing them... Had I really turned him into that?

I was coming home from the grocery store on a Friday after one of her volleyball games and were were laughing about a movie we had picked up from redbox to watch. She was making fun of me for choosing a B rated sci fi movie. I went to change into pajama pants and a t-shirt and froze. My bed was made. I never made my bed. There was another sprig of lilacs on the pillow. I realized then, that it was a year to the day.

The next year, it happened again and the following year as well.

Those years passed quietly and Sophie settled down. The day after she left for college and I returned home from driving her to her dorm, I walked in to Lane sitting on my couch. He was still huge, but he had let his hair grow a bit.

I stayed in the doorway, watching him warily.

"Come in Hannah," he said quietly, standing and moving back to give me space. I closed the door, but stayed next to it, holding my keys.

"What are you doing back here?" I asked softly.

"I am going to take you to Vegas. We are going to get married."

I laughed hysterically, panic filling me. "What?!? I don't think so, there is..."

"Hush," he said with a sad smile. He didn't move closer and he put his hands in his pockets to make himself even less threatening. "I am here as the kid you knew once. We are going to Vegas. I waited till your kid was gone. I don't want to wait anymore."

"You can't be serious? Lane, I know what you did!"

"I knew you would figure it out. It was a job. Like any other. If it wasn't me, it would have been someone else. It paid well. I don't work for them anymore. I retired. To get married. Go pack."

"Lane, you don't think that after everything..."

"Hannah, I have been watching you. You aren't too awful upset about what happened. I left cameras everywhere. I watched you, at night especially with your vibrator, whispering my name."

"You did what?" I demanded angrily, completely horrified and humiliated.

"No, it was good babe. Hot. I usually joined you, wherever I was. No more false or token protests. Go pack."

I stared at him for a long moment, then sighed. I went and packed.