Did I Mention I Need You? (The DIMILY Trilogy Book 2) (6 page)

My stomach churns, and I can only hope that it’s out of hunger and not guilt. Reaching for my water, I take another long sip and buy myself some more time to collect my thoughts, to think of something to say. After a moment, I think of Tyler’s words back at the Seventy-seventh Street subway station. I place my glass back on the table and look at him, curious. “Who gave you strict orders to look after me? My mom?”

Tyler sighs at my change of subject before folding his arms across his chest, his posture still straight. He offers me the smallest of shrugs as he drops his eyes to the table. “Yeah. Your mom, my mom . . .” He glances back up. “And Dean.”

“Oh,” I say flatly. It’s not surprising. It’s such a Dean thing to do. Frowning, I stare at my glass and run my fingers around the rim, not quite sure what to think. “What did he say to you?”

“He said that I have to make your trip worth it. You know, since you chose this over him.” Tyler shrugs again, and I can feel the tension growing around us. Or perhaps it’s only me who can notice it, because I’m the guilty one. I’m the one who’s gazing at Tyler in the middle of an Italian restaurant in New York City while my boyfriend is on the other side of the country, most likely still mad at my departure. “He’ll be pissed off if you don’t even have a good time.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that I’ll guarantee it,” Tyler says, and he smiles again, wide and sincere.

Silence ensues. It’s mostly because I have no idea how to navigate the whole Dean situation, but partly because I’m desperate for Tyler to look uneasy. He looks too comfortable talking about Dean and I, like it doesn’t bother him anymore, which is only more evidence that he’s over me. Totally and completely over me.

My heart sinks, and I decide right then that I’m just going to go for it; I’m just going to blurt it out and ask. I just need to man up and get it over with, otherwise I’ll spend my entire vacation wondering “What if?” I just need him to tell me straight up. I think hearing him admit it will kill me inside, but hopefully it’ll help me to get over him too. I have to.

I swallow down the lump in my throat and take a deep breath, trying my best to keep calm, but Tyler still notices how panicked I must suddenly appear, because his smile slowly fades away.

“Are you okay?”

I force my eyes to find his, and when I finally do, I part my lips to speak. My voice is nothing more than a quavering whisper when I dare myself to ask, “Does it bother you?”

Tyler’s eyebrows immediately furrow. “What?”

“Dean,” I say. The group of people on the table next to us erupts with laughter, and both my and Tyler’s attention is grasped for a split second before Tyler’s eyes return to study me. I press a hand to my temple and lower my voice even more. “Does it bother you that I’m still with him?”

“Eden.” There’s no trace of a smile left. Now his lips are a bold line, his eyes sharply narrowed. “What are you doing?”

“I’m just wondering,” I splutter quickly, and I’m so nervous that I can’t even look at him, so I press my hand over my eyes and tilt my head down toward the table. “It still bothered you a year ago, before you left. I just want to know if it still does now.”

“Eden,” he says again, his voice coarse, firm. He pauses for a long moment. I’m too scared to move my hand away. Eventually I hear him slowly exhale, and his words are even slower. “Are you asking me if I still . . . you know?”

“I’m trying to,” I whisper.

“We’re not talking about this here,” he says abruptly, loudly. Loud enough for me to lift my head and remove my hand from over my eyes. His jaw is clenched, the muscle twitching.

My voice rises to match his, and I keep on pushing. “Are you over me?”

“Eden.”

“Have you met anyone else? Are you single?” I’m so frustrated and terrified all at the same time that it ends up fueling some sort of adrenaline, and within a matter of seconds I’m brave enough to look him straight in the eye, and he must be even braver to stare back. “When did you get over me? I just need to know, so please just tell me.”

“Eden,” he says, more forcefully this time. “Please stop talking.”

“So that’s it?” I shake my head in disbelief, my temper quickly rising. All of this has been going on for far too long. I need to know whether I’m wasting my time. I need to know whether he and I are a lost cause. “You’re not going to give me an answer? You’re just going to leave me to go insane over this?”

“No,” he says, and his voice is much calmer than mine, despite how hard his features have grown. He has definitely grown up. Two years ago, he would have lost his temper by now and he would have been muttering and cursing and glaring at me. Instead, I’m the one who’s losing it. “I’m just not going to answer you here.”

“Then where?”

“When we get back to the apartment,” he answers, and he narrows his eyes into smaller slits as he fixes me with a firm look, as though to tell me to give up for now, which I do, but only because our waitress is arriving with our food.

She must think I’m rude, for I’m too busy glaring across the table at Tyler to even thank her when she places the dish in front of me, and I barely even blink. Once she disappears again, Tyler leans forward to grab his cutlery, and within a matter of seconds his smile has returned.

“There’s something I still need to show you,” he murmurs, swiftly twirling pasta around his fork, his eyes on his plate.

“What?”

He pauses and tilts his head up, a small smirk on the corner of his lips. “It’s a surprise,” he says. “But here’s a hint: It has an amazing view, and we’ll talk about all of this there.”

Tyler remains nonchalant for the rest of the evening, acting so casual that it’s almost as though he doesn’t care that I desperately need an answer to where we stand with each other. He muses on irrelevant things during dinner, tells some jokes on the walk back through Times Square, and even attempts to cheer me up while we’re on the subway by relentlessly wiggling his eyebrows at me until I eventually crack a smile. It’s fake, of course, and the second I turn away from him I wipe it from my face.

“So where’s this place with the amazing view? Empire State Building? Statue of Liberty?” I fold my arms across my chest and watch him, awaiting an answer.

But he only grips the railing even tighter and shrugs, and I swear he looks as though he’s about to laugh. I’ll bet he was being sarcastic back at the restaurant. I’ll bet he’s going to show me the ugliest spot in the city, the perfect place to shred my heart to pieces. “Not exactly,” he finally says. “C’mon, our stop is next.”

We linger by the doors for a few seconds, the train vibrating and the noise drilling into my ears. I’m starting to understand why the majority of the people around us have earphones in. But it’s bearable for the few minutes that we’re on here, and when the train screeches to a halt at the next station, Tyler promptly reaches for my wrist and yanks me onto the platform.

I immediately recognize the station. It’s the Seventy-seventh Street one, which means that we’re not venturing anywhere other than Tyler’s apartment, it seems. This becomes even more obvious when we head out of the station and back the way we came from earlier. Tyler keeps on talking the entire time, but I’ve tuned out by now. I’m kicking at the sidewalk with my Chucks as I walk, slowly starting to feel sick the longer Tyler drags all of this out. I’m switching so fast between being frustrated and being nervous. One minute I’m mad at him for not getting this over with back at the restaurant, the next I’m wondering why I even brought it up in the first place.

We pass his car (and the truck and the Civic) and just as we’re about to head inside the apartment building, I come to a halt on the sidewalk. I tilt my head back and squint up at the building, which is taller than those surrounding it.

Tyler lingers by the entrance as he swings open the door, leaning back and pressing his weight against it as he folds his arms across his chest. “What’s up?”

I drop my eyes to his. “You said a nice view, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” I think he knows what I’m about to ask next, because his mouth is forming another one of those smiles of his.

It’s cooler now and the breeze has picked up only slightly, but it’s enough to blow my hair across my face, so I tuck some strands behind my ears and ask, “Is it the roof?”

Tyler doesn’t even reply to begin with. Only locks his eyes on mine as his smile grows into a grin. Eventually, he murmurs, “Maybe.”

I’ll bet the view from up there really is beautiful, but honestly, I want to tell him to just forget it. There’s no need to take me all the way up there to simply say the words I’m expecting him to say. It’s like he wants to be cruel.

“It’s not much,” he says as I follow him inside and toward the elevator. He pushes the button for the twentieth floor, the final one. “I mean, there are some chairs and some plants, but it’s mostly just concrete. It’s cool, though. You know, to go up there.”

I stuff my hands into the pockets of my jacket and stare at the floor of the elevator, biting the inside of my cheek as I try to think about how much the next few minutes are going to hurt. I think I might cry when he admits it, but I’m praying I’ll be able to hold up, at least until I get away from him. I’m worried that I’ll look pathetic, but even more worried that this talk we’re about to have will only make the rest of our summer together awkward.

The elevator door pings open, and this time Tyler doesn’t stand back to let me out first. Instead, he clears his throat and makes his way into the lobby. He’s trying to act casual, but I can tell he wants us to hurry up. Some guy squeezes past us, heading in the opposite direction, but we keep on walking until Tyler comes to a stop by the very last door on the left, one that looks different from the rest. It’s because it’s not an apartment but simply a door opening up to a flight of metallic stairs.

“Just up here,” he calls over his shoulder as he makes his way up, three steps at a time.

It’s dimly lit, but it’s only one flight of stairs, and when I reach the top Tyler is waiting for me by the fire exit. He offers me a closed smile before shoving the door open. We step out onto the rooftop, and it’s twilight by now, so at first all I can see are the tops of some of the other taller buildings in the area. As Tyler already told me, there are some wooden deckchairs dotted around, complemented by some matching tables, and some pots of plants that appear to have dried out in the heat.

Just as I’m glancing around, Tyler moves his body behind mine, and out of nowhere I feel his firm hands grasp my waist. My breath catches in my throat the second I feel his touch, and I lock my eyes on the tip of a building a few blocks away as I try not to focus on the fact that I can feel him breathing on the back of my neck. His lips creep closer to my ear, suddenly murmuring, “Come check this out,” in a husky tone. It’s enough to send a shiver surging down my spine. With his hands still on my waist, he directs my body toward the edge of the roof.

And the moment my eyes fall to the sight below, I totally forget the reason we’re up here in the first place. I forget that Tyler’s hands are on my body. I forget that he’s about to tell me that he’s over me. Because all I can think about at that second, all I can process, is how gorgeous the view really is.

I think it might be that the sky is a deepening blue splintered with streaks of pink, and I think it might be that everything below and around us now glows, but I can only imagine all of this appearing more stunning now, at night, than it would during daylight. The headlights from the traffic and the illumination from the street lights make everything look orange, and the fluorescent lighting emitting from windows of office buildings creates a map of scattered flecks of light. The further into the distance I look, the more it all becomes just an abundance of buildings, like they’re all piled on top of each other, lights shining through. I’m quickly realizing why it’s known as the city that never sleeps. Now the city seems even more alive than it did only hours ago.

I don’t sense Tyler letting go of me until he’s standing by my side. He leans forward, folding his arms on the wall and letting out a breath. “I like it up here,” he says quietly. He doesn’t have to raise his voice. The city might seem even louder at night down there, but up here it just sounds like faint background noise.

I want to tell him that I like it too, but I’m still marveling at the city surrounding us, too stunned to attempt to speak. It’s almost terrifying how huge it all is and how insignificant we seem in comparison. How many other people are standing on rooftops around the city right now? How many other people believe, at this exact moment, that the city is theirs?

A gentle breeze whistles between us and my hair sways around my face. I lift my hand and press a finger to my lips, and slowly I shift my gaze from the city to Tyler. His eyes are carefully studying the skyline, but he must notice that my attention is now on him, because the muscle in his jaw tightens. Exhaling, he lowers his head and stares at the top of the wall for a moment.

“I guess you want to have that talk,” he murmurs.

Part of me still wants to, but the other would rather do anything else. Up here is too perfect for this, but I’ve already got myself into this situation, and Tyler might not give me another opportunity to get this over with. I’ve been waiting an entire year to find out. Why wait longer? Why do that to myself?

I take a deep breath and swallow back the nerves. The adrenaline that built up back at the restaurant is long gone by now and I can only pray that it’ll take over again. Maybe that way it’ll block out how much this is about to hurt. I glance down at Third Avenue. “We’ve needed to talk about this for a while now.”

There’s a brief silence as Tyler shifts his footing. Then he unfolds his arms and interlinks his hands on the top of the wall instead. He stares at them. “Where do we start?”

“With you telling me that you’re over me,” I say, but despite how strong I’m trying to be, my voice still cracks on the final word. I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head at the ground, taking a step back from the wall, away from the edge. “Just admit it. It’s all I’m asking.”

It’s crazy how much things can change within a year. Before Tyler left last June, we still had something there, lingering in the atmosphere whenever we were around each other. We both knew it. We just never spoke about it. I’d already done what I’d believed to be the right thing. I’d already made it clear that none of this was ever going to work and that we were wasting our time, yet as the months went on it became apparent that getting over each other was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Whenever I dropped by Dad’s place and Tyler was there, it always felt like we were forcing ourselves to act innocent to our parents. We weren’t guilty, yet we always felt like we were. Even hanging out with Dean, Rachael, and Meghan would get hard. The five of us would be at the pier together and Tyler would glance between Pacific Park and me when no one was looking, and I always remembered the time he took me there, because it was our first and only date. None of our friends ever noticed Tyler’s smirks. But I always did. Sometimes he would stare at me in the hallways at school. Sometimes I’d stare back. Then he’d smile and turn away, and I’d reel my attention back to Dean, who was often by my side. I used to worry about Dean to begin with. I thought Tyler would hate me for it, for breaking things off and dating his best friend instead. But he never commented on it. Ever. Only narrowed his eyes at me whenever Dean and I were together.

But all of that was before he left. All of that was a year ago.

It’s all different now. I can tell. He’s more distant already, more casual about Dean and me. I don’t know why it’s hitting me so hard. It’s exactly what I expected. I mean, a year in New York City? I can’t possibly think of a better city to live in while trying to get over someone. How many new girls has he met over the months? How many new people has he surrounded himself with while doing events? Maybe he’s been dating. Maybe he’s already seeing someone.

And yet here I am, standing on this rooftop by his side, still hopelessly in love with him.

“I’m not going to tell you that I’m over you,” Tyler says eventually.

My eyes flicker open and I raise my head, studying his face as he continues to stare down at the avenue below. His jaw is still tightened, but he doesn’t look mad. Just serious. Straightening up, he stands back from the wall and turns to face me. And the second his vibrant eyes lock with mine, only one thing runs through my mind: hope.

“I’m not going to tell you that,” he says. “Because I’m not over you.”