My Wish for You (22 page)

“Shwood I go
aftwer her?”

“Yes Brian, you
should go after her. But beware of the cookie in your mouth. It will probably
bring you misfortune and problems,” I snickered. He looked at the mess that was
left on the table.

“Don’t worry. I’ll
get it cleaned up.”

“Hey, I got to
go meet up with Chad; do you mind?”

“No, don’t worry
about it. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“For sure.”

Sarah and I
picked up and organized all of the money, properties and game pieces, putting
them into their proper places…it didn’t take that long. By the time we were
finished, there was no sign of all the cookie crumbs and the soda cans that
were left behind.

“Man, I can’t
believe Alisha got that upset,” I said, opening the cabinet that the game went
into and sliding it into place.

“Seriously,”
Sarah agreed, “But it sure was funny.”

“It really was.”

“I think I’m
gonna go watch a movie or something. Care to join?”

“Yeah, sure. I’m
gonna go see if my phone is done charging first, and then I’ll be down. I don’t
care what we watch.”

“Alrighty.”

I jogged
upstairs and made my way into my room. I headed over to my bedside table where
I left my phone and checked it to see if Sean had sent me anything. I frowned
at the blank screen. Nothing. I sat it back down on the table and was almost
out the door.

“Hey Sam!”
Cassie called out to me. I jumped about a foot when she called my name,
startling me.

“Man Cassie. You
scared me.”

She laughed. “Sorry.”

“Yeah. What’s
up?”

“I’m sorry for
the way I’ve been acting.”

My jaw dropped.

“I’ve been
really rude to you. And I’m
really
sorry.”

“…Thanks.” She
seemed sincere enough.

“You’re welcome.”

I turned and
started to walk out to the hall, shaking my head, still perplexed that she had
just apologized to me.

“Oh and Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Sean wanted me
to tell you to meet him at the dock.”

“Oh. Okay? Now?”

“Yeah,” she
smiled.

I headed
downstairs and told Sarah that I would meet up with her in a little while and
made my way to the trail that lead down to the dock, wondering why he wanted to
meet at sunset when there was no visible sun. Maybe it would start raining and
we would have some wonderfully romantic kiss on the dock, like in
The
Notebook
. Feeling giddy to be seeing him, I smiled. Today had felt so long
without him.

“She?” I heard Sean
say as I got close. There were still some trees in my line of vision. I
wondered who he was talking to. “What ‘she’ are you talking about?”

“Sean?” I called
out, rounding the last bit of trees into the open area around the dock. I
stopped in my tracks to see that someone else was getting my award-winning
kiss.

Tasha had her
hands on the sides of Sean’s face. Her eyes were closed and Sean had his hands
on her arms. My stomach dropped and I felt like I was going to be sick. My
knees felt weak as everything started spinning. I must have gasped or
something, because at the same time they both looked over at me. Sean quickly
pushed Tasha away from him.

“Sean, you told
me
she
wasn’t going to be around anymore. You said you were done with
her
.”

The “what she are
you talking about?” statement ran through my head and fell into place, making
sense. My body iced over. I glared at Tasha and she smirked at me, knowing she
had won.

“Sam, it’s not
what it looks like. I swear.”

“Whatever Sean,”
I bit off. “Save it.”

I turned on my
heel and started to storm off. His footsteps followed me. I clenched my jaw as
I tried to not cry.

“Sammy,” he
called out. “Wait!”

Hearing him call
me Sammy triggered something inside me and I turned around to face him, angry.

“Sammy, please,
it wasn’t how it looked!”

I slapped him
across the face, turned back around, and started to walk off, and he grabbed my
arm.

“Sammy, stop.”

“Stop calling me
that,” I warned through my gritted teeth as I yanked my arm from his grip.

“Sam, she came
on to me,” he rushed out. “She told me that she had some of my things. She was
going to give them back to me. And then she just…she kissed me. Sam, please.
You have to believe me.”

“I don’t
have
to do anything Sean,” I disagreed. “You know Sean, I thought you were
different. I thought that you actually cared about me. I thought that you
wanted to be with me and that we would be such a great couple. That we were
going to go off to college together and everything was going to be great. But
you don’t care at all. You just manipulated me to fill a void in your life for
the summer while she was off with other guys. So, save your stories, Sean, for
someone who will actually believe them. I’m done.”

I turned around
and headed towards the woods once more.

“Sam,
please
,
don’t!” His voice broke and I heard him start to follow me again. I glanced
back at him, pain stabbing through my heart.

“Don’t what,
Sean?” My voiced wavered. “Don’t go? Or don’t leave you alone? Because you’re
afraid of that, aren’t you? That’s why you have me as a backup. So the second
she leaves you, you know I’m here, waiting. Well, Sean, not anymore. I’m done
being in love with you and waiting for you to realize that you love me too and
that I’m actually here. I’m done. So, Sean, please…quit following me and just
let me go.”

My anger had
steamed down and I just felt empty staring at him. Broken. Everything around us
was quiet. I could see the tears lining his eyes. I looked away and made my way
to the woods. I was almost to the edge of the trees when his voice reached me.

“You’re gonna
get lost if you go into the woods Sammy.” He tried to reason with me one last
time. Hesitating, I considered the possibility of getting lost in the woods.
What was my alternative, though? Sticking around and chatting with Sean? Not
going to happen.

“I’m already
lost,” I murmured loud enough for him to hear before giving over to the tears
and running into the woods.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I really hated
to admit it, but Sean was right.

I had run until
I couldn’t run anymore. Sobbing, I ran until the pain was overbearing. I ran
until the recurring thunder was nearby and it was roaring every few minutes.
When I couldn’t run anymore, I found a rock flat enough to sit on and put my
head between my knees, feeling sick to my stomach. Without a doubt, I should
have realized it would come to this, that he would go back to her. They had
been together for so long. It wouldn’t be as easy as just saying, “We’re done.”

My tears finally
ran dry and I wasn’t so nauseous. Sitting up, I realized it was a lot later
than I had thought. The sun must have already set, since it was growing darker
by the minute. With trees surrounding my view, I couldn’t see the horizon
anywhere. I started to walk, but soon became aware that I had no idea where I
was going. Everything looked so similar.

I didn’t have my
phone, so I couldn’t even call anyone if I had reception. The thunder roared
again and I had to admit that I was lost. Panic arose in my chest as I
remembered when I got lost all those years ago and how no one found me for two
days. My heart started racing and I felt like I was hyperventilating. If I hadn’t
known any better, I would have sworn that I was thirteen again.

The thunder
crackled again and I felt a drop of water on my arm, then another. I looked up
to the sky and felt another drop on my face.

“Oh. You have
got
to be kidding me!” I yelled to the sky.

I started
walking again in search of some kind of shelter. I wouldn’t wander around
aimlessly all night again, hopeless. As the rain got heavier and the night
started to settle, I came across a campsite. Visibility was low, but it looked
like every other campsite around…nothing stood out. I couldn’t figure out which
site it was. Either way, I decided to camp out there for the night, hoping that
in the morning I would be able to figure out which site it was, or find a trail
leading out of it to civilization.

There was a fire
pit with log seats and a big grass area with a picnic table. It looked a lot
like the site that Sean had brought me to…it could have been the same one. I
quickly pushed that thought from my mind as I tried to keep my sanity.

I headed for the
table and sat down gingerly under one of the sides, sheltering myself from the
rain that had pretty much already soaked me. I appreciated the benefit of being
small, as I fit perfectly under the table. Bringing my knees to my chest and
resting my head on my knees, I regretted not eating dinner. My stomach was
growling and I was shivering. I closed my eyes, which were sore from crying,
and chanted to myself. “It’s alright. In the morning, you’ll wake up and there
will be a trail leading home. And you won’t be lost anymore. It’s okay. It’s
okay. It’s okay.”

***

Crack. Boom.

I sat up
straight, hitting my head on the table as the thunder woke me. A few short
seconds after, lightening sparked, illuminating the empty campsite. My heart
began to slow. While the rain was still steady, it had stopped pouring so hard.
Laying my head back down on my knees and rubbing the spot I’d hit, I tried to relax
enough to sleep again.

“Sam.”

I jerked my head
up, almost hitting it again. Did someone really just call my name? Or was I
imagining it? I listened for something. When I didn’t hear anything, I told
myself it was just the wind and rested my head again.

“Sam!”

Someone
was
calling my name. A light was starting to peek through the trees and I lifted my
head slowly. Squinting, I couldn’t make out the figure behind it as it came
into the clearing. I watched as the light searched all over the campsite. While
trying to call out to the figure, I discovered my voice was gone from shock.
Finally, the light landed on the spot where I was huddled, blinding me. I
squinted into it, trying to see.

“Oh, Samantha,”
he paused. “I found her,” he informed someone waiting on another walkie talkie.
He walked over to me, crouching down, putting his hand out for me to take. “Come
on, Sammy. Let’s get you out of the rain.”

I could barely
see Sean’s face, but I had a feeling it was showing some kind of pity. I hated
that he was seeing me weak like this. I made no move for his hand, no move to
leave. I wasn’t looking for him to save me.

“You aren’t too
happy about me finding you, are you?”

I thought about
it. “No, not particularly.”

“And I’m going
to guess you don’t want to go with me.”

“Nope, not
really,” I admitted.

He seemed to
consider that for a minute before reaching into his pocket and pulling
something out. He sat his flashlight down and cracked it, setting a blue light
aglow.

“Alright, I’ll
go, but take this.” He handed the blue glow stick to me, picked up his
flashlight, and started to walk away. I looked down at the glow stick; it was
like the one he had tied to the trees on my birthday, so I wouldn’t get lost.
As something clicked in my head, I called out to stop him.

“Sean!”

“Yeah Sam?” He
sounded weary.

His voice was
closer than I thought it should be. When I looked up, the flashlight was still
in the campsite, but it was on the ground. I looked up from it to where it
should have been and saw another glow stick being lit up.

“What are you
doing?” I asked him confused.

“I’m tying glow
sticks to the trees in case you change your mind and want to get out.”

My heart
thudded.

“Why?”

“I think that is
slightly obvious, Sam.”

“I mean why did
you come out here?” I rephrased.

“With the storm,
the rangers are short staffed and wouldn’t put out all staff until you were
missing for twenty four hours. I wasn’t going to sit around while two rangers
looked for you when I knew you’d be scared.”

There was
silence between us as the thunder rumbled again. He picked up his flashlight
and moved closer.

“Whether or not
you believe it Samantha, I care about you. It’s true. I’ve had feelings for you
since we were kids, and I’ve been in love with you since the summer before high
school. But then we were in two different worlds, and I got so caught up in
high school and Tasha and being popular that I forgot about you, and how
amazing you are. I forgot how much I loved being around you. And then I
graduated and went to college, and realized that I wasn’t in love with Tasha,
and I didn’t know if I ever really had been. And now, here I am.”

I crawled out
from under my table. The rain was pouring again. I walked, glow stick in hand,
until I was only a few inches from him.

“And here you
are,” I repeated.

“I am so sorry
Sammy. I swear to you, she kissed me. I don’t have any feelings for her
anymore. I don’t want anything to do with her ever again. I won’t ever forget
you again, I promise.”

I put my fingers
on his lips so he would stop talking. Beaming, I slid my hand to his neck and
tugged him gently. He leaned in willingly and I stretched up on my toes to kiss
his lips. He seemed perplexed about my sudden belief in his words, but he
kissed me back. Quite frankly, I was perplexed too. But hearing him say he
loved me washed away any doubts.

When I pulled
away from the kiss, he was reluctant to let me go.

“You believe me?”

“I trust you,” I
told him, kissing him again softly. “Say it again,” I told him, barely louder
than a whisper.

“I’m sorry,” he
repeated.

“No, not that.”
I moved my hand to his cheek, stroking it softly.