He Knew I Loved Him

"If a woman my age came after you, could you handle it?" I'd rushed over to tell Elliot I liked him, and walked in just in time to hear a beautiful woman ask him that.

He didn't shut her down the way he always did. He just gave her a challenging smile. "You can try." Then he gave her his number and took her card with the lipstick print on it.

So that was how fast a person could fall for someone. Fast enough that I never got the chance to say a word. I turned to go. The next second. Elliot's eyes met mine.

Chapter 1 Elliot got up and came toward me. "You're here. Why didn't you come over?" "…I'm not feeling great.

I want to head back." Elliot raised an eyebrow, a little surprised, then nodded. "Okay.

Let's go, then." I'd already decided not to say it out loud, this useless thing I felt for him.

But watching him like that, not caring, not asking what had happened or why, just following me out. I couldn't help myself. "That woman just now.

What did she want?" New messages kept popping up on his phone. Elliot typed back with a smile on his lips. "Hm? Pretty obvious, wasn't it?

She was hitting on me." Asking anything more would be crossing a line. It would make me look like I cared too much.

But I quietly took a deep breath anyway and forced my voice to sound normal. "So this time you didn't need me as a shield?" Elliot hated being hit on.

Back at school, when girls asked for his number, he always pushed me out in front. "My…" He paused, the corner of his mouth curling like it meant something. "…friend would mind.

Better not." I used to be quietly thrilled by that kind of special treatment. And the word he left unsaid set my heart hammering.

But this time there wasn't a trace of irritation in him. Just obvious interest. "She's interesting. Might as well give her a chance. Let her try." I held my breath.

Watching Elliot turn the lipstickprinted card over in his fingers. His fingertip drifted across that glaring red mark every so often. …Was it really only a chance?

I forced the question back down. Elliot and me. Childhood playmates who never quite added up to childhood sweethearts.

Out of all the kids on that street, he and I were the closest, the tightest.

When my parents got transferred for work and I had to leave, he cried harder than anyone, took it the hardest.

Little Elliot pinkyswore with me over and over, stubborn about it. "When we see each other again, you have to know me the second you look at me!" "And I'll know Tillie the second I see her!" He did it, too.

First day of college, the moment he looked up and spotted me in the crowd, his eyes lit up. "Matilda?" Elliot got famous almost the day he arrived, for his face and for his grades.

In our major and in other colleges across campus, more girls had crushes on him than anyone could count. But there was never another girl around him. Except me.

Elliot never ate breakfast himself, but on the mornings I had an early class he'd get to the dining hall ahead of me and have breakfast waiting.

He hated being out in the sun, but after I said I wanted to find an upperclassman to teach me tennis, he showed up at the courts without fail, feeding me balls, practicing with me.

One of the girls chasing him actually asked what I was to him.

Chapter 2 He answered without even thinking about it. "Outside of blood family, she's the most important girl in my life." Elliot played favorites so openly.

So openly that I started imagining things. Imagining, wrongly, that he liked me too. For a whole week. I avoided Elliot on purpose.

But finals were coming, and there was no getting out of the group project meeting. Before I left.

I stood in front of the mirror in my dorm room and made myself breathe, over and over. Telling myself to stop getting nervous over him. He had someone he was interested in now.

For all I knew, in the week we hadn't spoken, he'd already become that woman's boyfriend. And at the same time I couldn't stop thinking. So many people chased him.

He'd traded numbers with this woman, sure, but who knew? Maybe it was just a whim, and nothing had actually happened between them yet.

I was still the only one at his side, the special one. At least for now. Elliot came strolling in late. The second he came into view, I heard my own heartbeat again. Thud. Thud.

So loud. So obvious. I was too rattled to notice. The faintly sated look on Elliot's face. The small creases in his shirt. "Vance. Last night treat you right?

Was it hot?" It took his roommate opening his mouth, in that smug, sleazy way of his. That was when I noticed.

The smile at the corner of his mouth wasn't shaped the way it usually was. It was how he'd looked as a kid when he finally got the cotton candy he'd been thinking about for so long.

Satisfied. And a little too pleased with himself to hide it. Elliot huffed out a soft sound and said nothing. He didn't make the slightest move to deny it, either.

With all the guys hooting at him like they already knew, it hit me. "…I'm going to the restroom." I stood up fast. I couldn't spare a thought for the strange looks people gave me.

I walked quickly toward the bathroom. Afraid that one step later, one second later. The tears would come pouring out, out of my control, exactly the way they were now. "Matilda?

Tillie? Are you okay?" I don't know how long I'd been crying. Elliot's voice came suddenly from just outside the door.

I scrubbed my eyes dry in a hurry and tried to look like nothing had happened. The second I came out, Elliot grabbed my arm, anxious. "Are you sick again?

Or did you chug an iced coffee on an empty stomach again before I got here?" There was worry on his face, and some scolding in it too. "How many times have I told you.

The few days before your period, don't dump caffeine into an empty stomach.

You never listen." "If you still feel bad, want me to tell them and take you back?" Meeting his worried eyes. I almost lost hold of the tears again.

I dug my nails into my palm and forced down the crack in my voice. "Are you with that woman now?" Elliot, midlecture, stopped short.

Then he pressed his lips together and looked away. "Ah. Yeah. More or less." I'd had some vague sense of it from the moment I watched them trade numbers.

But hearing the answer out of his own mouth still felt like a hand closing hard around my heart. "Let's not talk about this." Maybe my face looked that bad.

Elliot frowned. "I'll take you back. Go rest in your dorm." "Don't worry about any of this. I'll do your part." Why? Chapter 3 He was with another woman now.

So why was he still this good to me? I managed to pull a smile together and shook my head. "No need.

I'm fine." Then, in a voice I made sound like a joke, I brushed off the hand he'd put out to steady me. "You're in a relationship now.

We should keep some distance." "Are you kidding me?" If anything, Elliot looked annoyed. "If being in a relationship means keeping distance from you, I'd rather not be in one." He bent down.

I could see myself reflected in his eyes, clear as anything. "You're Tillie." "I'm going to be with Tillie forever." When the group discussion hit a break. Elliot's phone rang.

He glanced at the screen, and the cool look on his face eased all at once. "Hello?" He picked up. I don't know what the other end said.

The corner of his mouth curled up, bit by bit. "You're coming here?" He lifted his eyes and swept them around the classmates sitting near us. He nodded. "Sure.

I'll wait for you." It wasn't long. The woman showed up, exactly as expected. She acted like she hadn't even registered that there were other people here.

In heels, she walked straight over to Elliot and sat down. "Waiting long?" Elliot looked up at her.

The smile in his eyes was bright enough to hurt. "Waiting for you doesn't count as long." She put out a fingertip and tipped his chin up, lightly.

She mouthed the words good boy at him and settled into the seat beside him. The whole thing was too much to look at.

I put my head down without meaning to and pretended to study the handouts. Not one word of them went in. At the edge of my vision. The two of them stayed pressed together. My ears.

My eyes. Suddenly none of it was under my control. I just listened, helplessly, to them whispering. Stole looks at the small, intimate things they did.

For the next several minutes they didn't make a sound. And still, somehow, I could feel it. Something charged drifting off them.

Right when I couldn't stand it and was about to look up and see what they were doing.

Elliot made a low sound, a strange little smile in it. "Stop teasing me." He caught her hand in his. Then, like he was playing with some interesting toy.

He worked her fingers apart, one by one, and laced them through his. "Tease me again and you're going to get it tonight." She leaned into him, and from the shape of her mouth she said something else.

But I couldn't hear anything by then. Just a buzzing in my ears. The best I could manage. Only this: holding the handouts up to block my own view.

I don't know how much more time passed. "So this is that best friend of yours?" I heard her ask. Elliot's voice came back lazy.

Like a lion that had just been stroked head to tail by the owner it loved. Sated in some way I couldn't name. "Yeah." She made a thoughtful sound.

Then something caught her interest and she asked him. "What if I introduced her to someone?" "No." Elliot didn't even think about it.

And then, like the one refusal wasn't enough, he added two more. "Bad idea. Don't like it." That made her laugh. "You're not her.

How are you turning it down for somebody else?" My fingers closed into a fist. Right. Why was he turning it down for me?

And somehow I found myself hoping. "None of them are good enough." Chapter 4 Elliot said it without a pause. She laughed again.

From the sound of it she smacked him. "You haven't even met them and you already know they're not good enough?" "I just know." Elliot nuzzled the top of her head, a little petulant about it. "Tillie is the best person in the world.

Nobody deserves her." "…" Her smile thinned out. "Then who does deserve her?" I held my breath, waiting for Elliot's answer.

Two seconds of silence, and then his voice came again. "Hm. I don't know." He shook his head, like he was shaking a problem he couldn't solve out of it. "Enough about her.

Pay some attention to me." And his mouth was against hers again, coaxing at her, the sound of it low and blurred.

I let my fingers loosen and looked at the little red halfmoons they'd left in my palm, and smiled, bitter. How strange. What had I been hoping for? Back in the dorm. I cried hard.

Like I could cry out everything I felt for Elliot. I knew it was time to let go of how I felt about him. He had a gorgeous girlfriend now. He'd kiss her, hold her.

Do things more intimate than that. He'd act spoiled with her, play the brat with her. He'd give her that smile he never showed anyone outside.

And none of it had anything to do with me anymore. I wouldn't be the special girl at his side. The more I cried, the clearer my head got. I told myself.

Go back to being Elliot's ordinary friend. Don't cross the line. I couldn't cross the line. The next day was the day we'd planned to go back and see the old neighborhood.

All morning. Elliot called and called. His name kept jumping on the screen. And I just waited, quietly, for it to go dark again.

Until Mom called too. "Did you and Elliot have a fight?" I cleared my throat and acted like everything was normal. "No." "No?

Then why aren't you picking up his calls?" I didn't answer. Mom seemed to figure something out.

She paused for two seconds and changed direction. "Fine, don't pick up." "But we said we'd go back together.

If you don't want to ride with Elliot, have Isaiah come get you." Isaiah was one of the first kids to move away. Which was exactly why he and Elliot had never been close.

I didn't have to worry about him asking about Elliot and me. When we got there. The first thing I saw was Elliot standing not far off. His face was awful.

Awful enough that I pressed my own mouth flat. And when he saw I'd stopped smiling, his face got worse. Elliot didn't so much as glance at Isaiah.

He came straight at me. "You wouldn't come with me because of Isaiah