She Gets the Girl

“I love you too, Alex Blackwood,” she says, and it’s all the things I never knew an “I love you” could be, meeting me exactly as I am, without a single condition.
It’s coming home instead of running away.
Her hands unlock behind my neck, sliding down in between us. “Well, I guess I got the girl after all,” she says.
“See? I told you my plan would work.”
“Shut up.” She laughs and reaches out to grab the collar of my T-shirt, tugging me into another kiss.
And for once I actually do.

It was always you, Alex

And with those words, the barriers I’ve put up to shield myself from the world are finally knocked down. The boxes where I’ve locked my feelings away completely disintegrate. Until it’s just Molly and me and that force that’s been pulling me toward her since the very beginning. But neither of us is fighting it anymore.

Did you ever think we’d date?”
I open my mouth, struggling to find the right thing to say. All that comes out, though, is a single word. The truth. “Yes.”
“Do you still?” she asks, rubbing salt in the wound.
I shake my head, pulling my eyes away from hers. “You like Cora.”

“I asked what points you thought Shakespeare was making about romance.”

“Well,” I say, grabbing Molly’s book off her desk and flicking to act 1, scene 5. “ ‘How now? Even so quickly may one catch the plague?’ ” I read, repeating the character Olivia’s comparison to love being a literal illness.

“Romance, love… It’s like the plague,” I say with a shrug, returning the smug energy he gave me a moment ago. “If you’re feeling as dramatic as Olivia is, at least.”

I close the book and slide it back onto Molly’s desk. “Then
again, she just met the person she’s talking about, so dramatic is kind of her thing.” I cross my arms over my chest and lean back in my chair. “So, I guess you could say Shakespeare’s making two points. Love is suffering, probably because you fall in love with someone you hardly know. And plenty of people are in love with love and not the actual person.”

Molly snorts. “Maybe you’re projecting,” she says, tapping her fingers on the cover of the book. I wonder if she even realizes she’s speaking to the whole class. “I mean, it works out in the end, though, doesn’t it? For all the characters. Olivia, Viola, Sebastian, Duke Orsino. Everyone rides off into the sunset, completely content with their happily ever after, in whatever shape it takes. No one is suffering. The love they felt was enough, when it was felt for the right person.”

“Well, I guess I got the girl after all,”

“Like I’m so in love with you, Molly Parker.”

All of it.

Leading me here.

Leading me… to her.

Some things have to fall apart because they don’t belong together, but some things belong so much they could never break.”

.
She hopes so. She wants me there in the stands.