Sophie Kessler
They sat together by the lake.
Anyone would have thought they were siblings, with dark hair and dark eyes and the comfortable atmosphere around them. He held a guitar, his arm draped casually over the side, and he plucked at the strings as they talked.
She loved the sound of the guitar. She always had liked it, but it was like one day she had woken up with a new passion for it. She had been hanging out with him more, and his friends, and ever since then she had been surrounded by the beautiful twang of the instrument. She wanted desperately to strum it, to be able to create the music that he did, but she was so scared of dropping it. He had taught her a few chords, but she had been so nervous that she never got used to it.
He didn’t fully understand her, and she knew that she didn’t understand herself either. He put down the guitar as the talk turned serious, towards past loves and his family dynamics. The ache in her chest was still there, after all this time, and she wondered if he could feel it. The stories she held back, the worry she felt about getting close to him and relationships themselves. They both had their problems, but they knew they could get through them together. There was nothing that said this out loud — there was something about how the anxiety in her vanished, which almost never happened. Something about how his eyes seemed to clear when they met her’s.
She felt like she should have told him the whole story. There were so many important details, about who she used to be and who she was now. She should have told him why she was so hesitant. She should have told him how relaxed she was with him, and how she could have told him if she felt like she needed to. She decided she would wait, though — maybe that was the right decision, maybe not, but it was the one she made. She felt deep down that he should know, but he still doesn’t.
She waited until next time.
She really should have told him then.