So Much Love

His hands fell between his spread legs, dropping aimlessly down. His fingers spread out, as if trying to reach for the floor but knowing they wouldn’t quite make it. Elbows pressed against his knees as he leaned forward, his neck craning. A lock of chocolate brown hair fell into his face and he reached up, pushing it away quickly. He laughed a little, pushing his glasses up his nose as she wandered down the hallway.

She wore form fitting, dark, tight jeans that barely hovered over her flattops. She wore a tank top that dipped quite fantastically, but any view was hidden by a plain white tee shirt that was beneath the pink tank. Her flattops matched her shirt perfectly, just plain black that was very similar to the color of her jeans.

Not even noticing him sitting on the bench, she flounced her way to her locker. Brown hair with natural blond highlights bounced over her shoulders, straightened, obviously, but still holding the curl that was originally so flamboyant. He smiled as the little pink bow that was clipped into her hair shifted as she turned to her locker.

His friend slid onto the bench beside him as he watched her pull books out of her locker, laughing happily as she dropped one of her books. She swooped down to pick it up, her bracelets jangling so loudly he could hear them. His friend put his hand on his knee: he looked up, raising an eyebrow at his friend. He was perturbed, for he had interrupted his almost stalker-like trance. “You’re head over heels for her,” his friend whispered to him, as if the words were poisoned and if he uttered them in a voice louder, he’d be acknowledging he was the same way over a girl.

Silent until she giggled her way to her next class and as other people came streaming past his vision, he turned his friend. “Oh, I swear, I know, I believe it.” He laughed, the memory of her laughter infuriatingly contagious, even when it wasn’t in reality but a mere echo inside his head. “I can’t stop hearing all the singing: my soul has never had this feeling!”

He proceeded to pull his hands up from their dangling encounter with the ground, only to hug himself and tip back and forth as he did so. He buried his face into his enclosed arms, grinning as he imagined her arms wrapping around his body. He laughed again, hair falling over one soulful brown eye. “And it feels, like, so, so good!”

Bewildered green eyes shone at him, a frown creasing the face with the small pinpricks of freckles making him look as if he were an Irish teddy bear. “My God, Wyatt, you really love her.”

Wyatt merely laughed again, getting up and skipping to his locker on a high. Just seeing her before class was enough to have him floating on Cloud Nine for the rest of the day, if not the rest of the week, if not the rest of the year. She was always so happy, even when she was frowning she had some sort of smile begging to be released onto her beautiful face.

Their friends groups were interlaced, so he got to spend more time around her than he probably should have. A few of the girls were friends with a few of his friends, thus bringing the two groups together. He got to hear her complaints as if he were a close friend. Her pouting voice an illusion of anger that was shattered by her laughter only a second later. It made him laugh as well, hearing her whine over a bad grade but then shout, “oh, well!” and start giggling.

“And it feels like gold!” he shouted as he thrust open his locker door and did a strange twirling movement, where his head dipped into the locker, smacking against a book. But he was so overcome with emotion that he hardly noticed the pain. He tugged out the books he needed, and a notebook, not really caring where he thrust the books he had already used for the day into the locker.

After Wyatt was done his small seizure of hyperactive dancing, his friend, Damien, fell into step alongside him. “You know, if you like her that much without even knowing her, maybe you should talk to her.”

Wyatt’s shoulders shifted uncomfortably, his body visibly deflating a bit. “I have talked to her,” he said, defiantly, recalling the one time he had talked to her. She had dropped one of the books she always had her nose pressed into—a big, bulky book with two people holding an apple on the cover—and he had picked it up.

He had mumbled, “you dropped your book,” but it had sounded more like, “youdrawpedbook.” Her face had glittered with happiness, tan skin pulling away for a broad smile as she held the book tightly in her hands.

“Thank you!” she gushed to him, her pony tail swinging. “I’ve read this book too many times, but I’m still kinda disappointed I lost my page. Oh, well!” She smiled, waved to him, and danced away. He had stared after her, mouth open, watching as her form drifted out of sight.

So, maybe he did need to try talking to her. “What if she doesn’t like me?” He frowned, it causing his cute features to turn almost depressed. “I’d rather her just not know my name. I mean, if it turns out she thinks I’m some sort of obnoxious freak…”

Damien rolled his eyes, nudging his best friend as they reached their classroom. “Dude. You literally squeal when you see her. There is no way, if you love her that much, she can’t like you at least halfway as much back.”

Frowning again, he entered the class, which unfortunately he did not share with her. He sighed and wrote her name all over his notes, hardly paying attention, thinking about how much happier he’d be if she was sitting next to him. He smiled as he heard her laughter in his head again, and smiled even broader as he saw an image of her laughing to accommodate the noise.



Later that day, Damien and Wyatt were walking home. Long strides were their friends normally, but on that particular day they decided to walk slowly. Of course Wyatt had fed his almost frightening desire to see her as many times as humanly possible throughout the day, had melted at the sound of her voice and had nearly imploded with carefree passion when ever she laughed. Damien had played the roll of good friend and had dragged him away before he made a fool of himself: he had looked and sounded like a vegetable for most of the day, eyes glossy when ever she was around and hooked on her.

“You piece of lard, come on, let’s go,” he had grunted during their lunch period. Wyatt’s head was held in his head, not breathing as she chatting animatedly to her friends. She laughed, sitting diagonal from where he sat, as one of her friends tried to shove a chocolate muffin into the others mouth.

“Is he dying?” one of their friends, Alek, asked as he dug into his food, trench coat flapping around.

Damien grimaced. “No, but I wish he was.”

“She’s so pretty,” Wyatt said, staring at her as Damien marched him out of the cafeteria.

Now, after he had grilled his friend for being so inconsiderate about the embarrassment he had caused him, he was slyly but surely asking his friend what it was like to be that thoroughly in love with someone.

He sighed happily. “Well, hat needs a beat, like awake needs asleep? Like a pen needs a page, to rewrite you need a mistake…it’s honestly as if I can’t freaking function without seeing her.” He smiled, one side of his lip cricking up with the movement. “My stomach flips when I see her face, if I can manage to brush against her, it’s like an electric current zaps between us. Like white needs black—I need her. I don’t even have to talk to her, just seeing her makes my brain turn to mush.”

“I’ve noticed that,” Damien muttered under his breath before smiling. “That sounds kind of nice. I really do think that if you would just be yourself and not loose your cool, you’d find out that she likes you halfway as much as you like her.”

Wyatt shook his head disbelievingly. “Why would she like me that much? I’m just a stupid guy, normal, painfully bland, everything that every other guy is. What’s so special about me? I can draw?” He snorted. “She deserves someone about ten thousand times better than I am. And I love her enough I just want her to be happy...”



”Come on, Hayden, just tell him!” Isabella squealed. “Are you serious, he stuttered when he picked up your book? Ohmigawd, that’s just too adorable for words.”

Hayden smiled, hugging her pillow to her chest as she looked down at her homework despairingly, trying to morph it into him. “I can’t tell him, you know?” she said in a soft voice, looking up and letting a genuine scowl taint her face. “What if he doesn’t like me as much as I like him? He’s so amazing, so wonderful. And what am I? Just a dumb girly girl who can’t even get control of her hormones enough to stop the whole, ‘crying one minute, laughing the next’ thing. He deserves so much better than me…”



“Ouch! If you’re going to blindfold me, be a little bit nicer to my hair, okay?” He grumbled, slapping the hands behind his head away. He couldn’t see through the thick white cloth that now hid his eyes from seeing anything but the difference between light and dark—at best.

It was a girl’s voice that laughed at him. He wasn’t sure why a few of Hayden’s friends had showed up at his house, but they had. They were laughing, thrusting their hips this way and that while whispering behind their hands. “We’re taking you somewhere special, lover boy,” one of them said in a sing song voice. “We hear you’ve got a crush the size of Jupiter on one of our best friends, and we’re gonna teach you a lesson!”

“Who? And who would give you that idea?” he mocked, trying to hide his curiosity. How had they found out he liked one of their friends, and more importantly, did they honestly know which one it was?

One of them came down and pressed their lips to his ear. “A little bird told us,” they giggled. “At lunch. Every day of the week, when we see the two of you stealing glances at each other just as the other isn’t looking any more.”

“Sabotage!” one of them hissed in a furious yet sarcastic whisper. “A guy, liking one of our friends without us knowing immediately? Preposterous. Girls are the mighty secret-finder-outers, we know all.” He could just hear the widening of her eyes and the way her fingers moved. A few of them laughed, but the ones that didn’t were the ones that were tugging at his arms and forcing him up.

“He looks acceptable.” The grimace in her voice was tangible, and he stuck his tongue out at her distaste.

“You’re just jealous you can’t look this good!” he huffed.

They all laughed insanely as they half dragged him out the door. He grumbled and whined as they walked him away from his home, heading to a place he knew not. Two people flanked him, one on either side, and the other three wandered around them. They all talked, one or two on their cell phones. He couldn’t decipher who they were talking to, but it seemed as if they were all highly amused at what they were doing. With every “I’m suing you guys for kidnapping me” they all laughed so hard they started to choke. “It’s not kidnap! I told your mom!” one of them shouted, which earned more laughter. A real life “your mom” joke, he realized, rolling his eyes behind the fabric.

“Step up,” one of them said and he stepped up on a curb. He tilted his head to the side, now honestly curious as to where they were. The girls were now unnaturally silent, which frightened him. What were they going to do to him?

After a few silent moments, one of them half sang, half said, “Celebrate, infatuate, lock us up yeah incarcerate oh!” causing a rousing chorus of giggles to erupt. This caused the other girls to start saying random things such as that, before he recognized that they were singing to pass the time.

“You got so much love in you, you got so much love in you, I'm amazed that I'm talking to you, you look like the songs oh, oh, oh, oh! Yeah, oh, c'mon, yeah…!” He was befuddled at the song. “What the hell are you guys singing?” he muttered, which just brought on another repeat of the song.

It stopped, thankfully, once he heard the tinkling of a door opening. Almost immediately a cold draft brushed against him and goosebumps appeared where the hands that had gripped him previously had fallen away. They were now on his shoulders, gently pushing him forward, using just the right amount of force to let him know he had no choice but to move forward.

His teeth gnashed together at the sound of Damien’s voice. “Isabella, over here! We’ve been chatting it up with Hayden; I think she’s getting kind of bored.” At the mention of Hayden’s name his back stiffened and he had the irresistible urge to turn and bolt out the front door. But the hands only squeezed tighter onto his shoulders and he knew he wasn’t allowed to budge, not for anything in the world.

They directed him for a while until they demanded, “sit.” He did, awkwardly, nearly falling on his butt as he did so. But he managed it, placing his hands on the table in front of him. His fingers began to drum against it, anxious to be able to see again.

Isabella’s voice rang out to him. “Now, you two. If we remove your blindfolds, do you swear not to leave?”

“Why’d you do this to me!?” Hayden squeaked at her friend. “I, I told you no when you asked!” she wailed.

“Why’d you do this to me, Day?” Wyatt pleaded with his best friend. “Can I please leave?”

A hand came and bonked him in the head. “Don’t say that around her!” It was Alek. “Dude, you’ve got the girl of your dreams in front of you and you’re talking about leaving? Don’t hurt her feelings!” He directed his voice to Hayden. “And I had to let Izzy do this, I was really starting to get sick about both of you guys ranting over how much you loved each other but neither making a move.”

“I told you, he doesn’t like me like that,” Hayden mumbled under her breath.

“Yes he does,” Damien said. An elbow nudged into his side. “Don’t you like her, Wyatt?”

His cheeks flushed. “Maybe? Just get this damn blindfold off.”

Quickly after he said that, hands worked at the knot of the blindfold on the back of his head. Almost too soon, it fell away and he was staring at Hayden. She was dressed in a gray shirt, one that hugged her form, and her hair was straightened and covering one of her eyes in an accidentally-on-purpose way.

She raised a hand and said meekly, “hi.”

The others, which he now saw Damien, Alek, and their friend Maxx standing behind her. “We’ll leave the two lovebirds alone,” Damien said, scooting to a table across the way.

Fighting to keep the scowl off his face, he waved back. “I’m going to shove their faces in cow shit when we get home.”

She giggled nervously, picking up a fork and twiddling with it. “It’s my fault,” she admitted. “I told them I wanted to take you out but I wasn’t sure how to ask you. So, I don’t know, I guess they decided to do it for me?” Her voice was begging for forgiveness.

“You look like the songs I’ve heard all my life coming true,” he blurted without thinking. He froze, watching her reaction and was relieved as the two abashed pink circles appeared on her cheeks and a smile spread across her face.

“I’m amazed I’m talking to you,” she said shyly. “I’ve wanted to talk to you for such a long time. I see you sitting on the bench every morning and want to come over and talk to you, but I’m just so embarrassed.”

He looked up from his plate, where his eyes had been fixed, and let a big, dopey smile spread across his dark features. “Are you serious?” he asked, laughing. “I’m late to my first period class every day because I’m sitting there, watching you get your books. I’ve been trying to get the courage to talk to you…”

They both laughed, finding solace in the fact that they both had been secretly desiring to talk to one another, but had both been too embarrassed to do so. Wyatt let his face break out into a wide grin as he reached across the table and snatched her hands up. He stared at them for a moment, enjoying the feeling, loving the jolt of life that fired through him.

“Now that we have confessions out of the way, would you mind if I confessed one more thing by acting rather than speaking?”

Her eyes went wide as he leaned across the table slightly. “What’s that?” she asked, staring at his face, or more thoroughly explained, his lips.

Feeling an explanation would be futile, he merely closed the gap between them and let his lips touch against hers, eyes sliding closed as his heart soared away to a world unknown.