7. Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Silas

"Are you sure it's all right? I don't want to take time away from your family if you have plans," I say. She mentioned her father has dementia but never elaborated, and it's pretty clear her sister still hates my guts. I don't want to give her more reasons than she already has to hate me forever.

"Yeah, it's fine," Ella says, spinning her coffee cup on the table.

We ended up back in the same corner booth, only this time, she'd patted the seat for me to sit beside her rather than across from her. "As long as I get back before dinner, it should be fine. Abbie will need help by then. Besides, I want to hear more about your trip."

The way her voice wavers on that last word has me thinking she really doesn't, or at least she suspects there is more to it than there really is. It's time to be an adult, be a man and lay out the full truth. It might be hard for her to hear, and it might be moving too fast—something Lev's girlfriend, Emma, reminded me again not to do—but I can't stand the truth being so blurry with Ella. Everything needs to be crystal clear moving forward. If there is a forward for us.

"So, you probably believe not telling you had something to do with you, and I guess in a lot of ways it did, but what it came down to was a stupid kid who didn't know how to tell you. We'd spent every minute together all summer, and it was the best time of my life. I didn't know how to tell you that you'd made me feel seen and like I wasn't only one of the Thomas brothers. I was of value apart from them, and I didn't need to compete with them for your attention. The thing is, I'd already agreed to the mission trip months earlier, so when it came time to take leaving seriously, I realized I couldn't."

I take a sip of coffee to calm my jittery nerves, but caffeine is probably not a good choice for that. Ella takes the pause to ask, "You couldn't…what? You went, so that's not it."

I shook my head. "No, I wanted to go. It was important. I learned a lot, and met a lot of really great people. The thing I couldn't do was say goodbye to you. How do you say goodbye to someone who means so much to you? How do you say goodbye to the only time in your life that you finally felt okay?"

She frowns. "You pull her aside and say hey, I signed up for this thing and I have to go away for a while, but it has nothing to do with you so please don't spend the next year of your life second guessing every relationship you've ever had, looking for the thing you did wrong."

Oh. Ouch. If I'd had a brain in my head back then, I would have realized leaving without an explanation might make her believe it had to do with her. That she wasn't worth the effort or the time. The same way everyone treated her back then. The quiet, shy girl who no one paid much attention to.

"Ella, I'm sorry. That's not how I meant for it to be. I guess part of me thought you'd be a little mad about it, then get over me in a couple of days. I didn't think I mattered that much to you, I guess." I sit back and can't stop my leg from bouncing with nervous energy.

"You thought I'd get over you that fast?" she asks, brow furrowed. "I'd lost my mother and best friend in a horrible accident, and you were the first person who didn't treat me with kid gloves or label me as broken and unable to be repaired. How could you not matter to me?"

"I didn't—"

"No, stop," she says. "If you thought I could get over you so fast, then clearly you felt the same way about me. I get it, we were young. It's okay that we didn't have an epic high school love story, but at the very least you were my friend. I thought…" She fades again.

She ducks her head and shrugs a little, then commences with peeling the order sticker off of her cup, probably rethinking everything all over again. When she doesn't finish her thought, I take the opportunity to argue my side again. Although, my side seems dumber by the second.

"You don't understand, Ella. It wasn't like I was saying goodbye to just a friend. Not like I was telling my family I was going on this trip and not coming back. I was a kid who had made a commitment to something he didn't quite understand, but he knew he had to do it. I was pulled to do it, Ella, in a way I can't really explain, but leaving you wasn't easy. It was harder than leaving anyone else, even leaving my twin."

She inhales sharply and turns a little in the seat to face me. I expect watery eyes and a little red nose, a sweet face hardly keeping in her emotions. But it's not what I get. I get fire and flame and gritted teeth.

Oh, she's mad.

"I don't understand how that can be, Silas. I thought we'd become really great friends by the end of summer, and I would have understood. I might have even visited you, but you didn't even give me a chance to show you what a good friend I was willing to be, let alone a girlfriend."

I scratch the back of my neck, scared to death of the next part, but it has to be said. Without that part, everything else about the way I left is so superficial it's stupid. "Ella, the reason I couldn't…You don't understand…This is hard."

"Spit it out! You didn't want to disappoint me or have to explain your life choices to someone you'd only known a couple of months. I get it. You thought I had expectations since we were dating. You thought I'd try to keep you here or hold you back. You thought I would be a clingy teenage girlfriend."

"Ella, no that's—"

She puts her hands up and scoots all the way into the corner in a useless attempt to escape the conversation. If that's what she really thinks my reasoning was, she's crazy.

Her eyes flame again. "I didn't expect anything from you except the truth and your friendship, like I said. It's not my fault you assumed things about me that were inaccurate. You could have sent an email or something, for crying out loud." Her voice is well above proper inside voice, and Rose lifts her head from restocking the front display. With a little sigh of worry, she turns on her heel and heads to the back with Mom and Aunt Tress. Ella groans and puts her elbows on the table before resting her face in her hands. "I would never have tried to ruin your trip for you, Silas. I would never have been the clingy high school girlfriend who kept you from fulfilling your dreams."

I huff, growing frustrated. "Ella, stop it. That's not why. Please, let me finish." She's so defensive, and I get it, but I still haven't told her the reason. She glares at me and turns, looking out the window. Even mad at me, she's beautiful. It's now or never. Mad at me or not, she needs the full truth or we'll keep dancing around this problem.

"I need you to listen for a second, listen and hear me, okay?"

Her jaw flexes but she doesn't say anything.

"I wrote down a hundred different ways to tell you, some of them even included asking you to come with me, but at the end of the day I couldn't do that. It was selfish, and maybe what I did was equally as selfish in the end, but it was the only way for me to walk away and not back out of a commitment that was more important than anything else I'd ever done in my life."

Her eyelashes flutter as she slowly turns her head to look at me. "You thought about asking me to go? I don't understand. Why?"

I huff again. "Ella, I loved you. I was crazy in love with you, and it scared me so bad I didn't know what to do. So I ran away, but you have to realize it wasn't anything you did or didn't do. It had everything to do with not knowing who I was or where I was headed, and me not wanting to drag you into something that might not be right for you. I didn't want to ruin you, this perfectly amazing person who stole my heart in a single night. I couldn't figure out how to tell you back then. We were eighteen, and it was crazy. The whole summer was—"

"Silas," Ella whispers, raising her hand to palm my cheek. She silences me with one touch, one gaze, one heartfelt word…my name…on her precious lips. So soft and sweet, filled with forgiveness I never thought possible. I take a breath and finally relax when she palms my other cheek and brushes under my eyes with her thumbs. It's such a tender touch that feels more like home than I've experienced in years.

"Silas?"

"Yes?" I ask, heart on pause, desperate for her next words to be I forgive you.

"Remember that last evening we spent together? Our last date, when we were eating ice cream under the stars, making up stories about what our futures might look like?" I nod, so she releases my face and scoots a little closer, her hands on her lap now. "I chickened out that night. I wanted to tell you how I felt about you but the timing was wrong, so I decided I'd think about it and tell you the next day once I was completely sure."

"The next day, I left," I say.

"Yeah, you did."

"What had you planned to tell me?" My whole body screams that I had been a complete idiot, that things might have worked out if I'd told her the truth, admitted my feelings and tried something long distance. I'm so worked up, I can hardly breathe, so I wait, staring at her.

"I was going to tell you that I loved you, and I didn't want our relationship to end when summer did. I wanted to try to make it work while we were in college." Tears fill her eyes and she lowers her head. "I loved you, Silas. I would have gone with you and loved every second of it if you had asked me…"

Little drops dot the booth seat, her tears that never had to fall. The ones back then and the ones now, none of them had to fall because it could have been different. If only I hadn't been a foolish kid.

I move forward and pull her against me, tucking her head under my chin so I can hold her close to me. So she can hear how my heart beats wilder for her, only her, and probably forever for her. Everything about her still feels right, still warms that place in my heart no one else understands. Maybe I'm not the smartest person. I can't focus and I always mess up, but I loved her then, and if the way my heart thuds against my ribs is any indication, I still do.

"I'm sorry, Ella. I wish I could go back and change it all. I wish I had asked you. I would have taken you, and none of this would have happened."

She shakes her head against my chest and sniffles. "You weren't completely wrong in what you said, Silas. We were so young, and we'd hardly had time to experience life. We both made mistakes."

"Mine were pretty big. Now that you know the truth, I would understand if you don't want to spend time with me anymore." I hold my breath, desperate for a different result.

"I admit the truth hurts, but at least it makes sense now. I'm not mad, not anymore, but we can't go back to the way things were like nothing went wrong. We're both in college, there are a lot of trust issues, and I'm not ready for a serious relationship."

She's not mad. She doesn't hate me. Still, I can't stop the pain that cuts through me. I did this to myself, and now I have to suffer the consequences even longer. She didn't say she doesn't want to see me again, so I put out an offer. "I don't expect anything from you that you're not ready to give. Can we be friends?" It stings coming out of my mouth. I want everything with her, but Lev's girlfriend is right. There is zero chance I'll get it if I try to force it on Ella. I'll keep my promise. See how things go. Build trust. Stop messing up at every opportunity. Be the man I should have been three years ago.

She wiggles free. "Yeah, we can be friends. We can start there and see how it goes. I'd like that."

"Yeah?" I ask, afraid to hold out too much hope that see how things go means she still has those feelings for me, and this friendship thing is just the beginning.

"Silas, I have a lot to sort through, but yes. I missed you more than I realized. I thought I'd gotten over you, but I never did. I need to process things, spend some time with you and rebuild the trust between us. We definitely need to talk about the future and what you plan to do with school before I can be comfortable with anything more."

"I get that. I understand."

She releases a soft sigh of relief and smiles. It's small but genuine.

"Now, what else do you want to do today before I take you back home? Surely there is something we can do? Wanna grab a donut and take a walk?"

She giggles. "Your mother is going to be mad at us for stealing all of her baked goods."

"Nah, she loves you more than she loves me, remember?" It's probably true. The moment Mom heard that Ella was my tutor, she started planning a third wedding, never mind the fact that only one of her sons is engaged. Lev and I have no choice in the matter, though. Mom has decided it's Emma and Ella for us, and she'll pray about it until she's blue in the face or gets what she wants.

Ella smiles and bites her lip, chewing it like she always does. "I guess it can't hurt. You know what my favorites are."

I nudge her shoulder and wink as I slide out of the booth to grab us a snack. Behind me, she giggles again. I'll never get sick of that sound, and I vow then that I will do whatever it takes to show her that. Ella Marshall is my end game as sure as the sun rises, and if I have to bend over backward until my head hits the floor, I'd prove it to her.

I close my eyes and pray that God will direct me, help me the way he helped Lev fix the broken pieces with his girlfriend, and keep me from making a complete fool of myself again.