My Only by Sophia Duane Read Free Book Online

something in this moment, made me feel just a little bit more confident. It wasn’t that I thought she might’ve liked me or wanted me to be her boyfriend or anything like that. It was that she was treating me like an equal—like a friend .
    She deserved better than a short answer. She deserved more energy than I gave to Aaron, or anyone else for that matter. I had to be real, because while we were only talking about a subject in high school, I felt like we were real y talking about something else. Something deeper.
    “How can we move forward, how can we have a future, without understanding our past? Understanding where we’ve been and how we got there is extremely important. It isn’t just about dates and dead guys. It’s about people coming together and doing great things, horrible things, things that changed the course of al humans. The past can guide us. It can teach us. If you forget about it, you’re real y just stumbling around blind, bound to make the bad decisions of those before you.”
    Olivia sat silent for a moment, her head was cocked to one side. She was nibbling on her lower lip as her eyes were fixed on some spot above my head. Final y, she looked at me with those beautiful brown eyes. “What if I already understand the past, but have no flipping clue about the future?”
    “No one real y knows about the future,” I said.
    “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s cal ed the present.” Her voice, while confident, sounded sad.
    I’d heard it before, but never spoken with such quiet conviction. “I like that.”
    “Me, too.” Olivia hopped up and stretched. “I respect how you feel about history, but it’s over and done with. The world is the way it is because it is the way it is. Studying how we got here won’t change it. Even studying the past can’t help clarify the future, so until the future gets here, today is al we have.”
    Olivia tugged on her shoes then reached out, her index finger extended, and poked me on the shoulder. “I’l be back with my notebook.” And with that, she was gone.
    I heard her go down the stairs. I got up and went to the window. She skipped out into the street, her hair flowing behind her. When she got to the bottom of the steps of her house, she slowed down, then she disappeared behind the door.
    That’s when my head started to spin. I couldn’t believe she’d just been in my room. She’d spoken to me like I mattered. She was smart, and pretty, and total y nice. Olivia had been in my house and was coming back for me, not Aaron! Sure, it was because she needed help with History, but stil . There’d been times in the past when girls like her—pretty girls—talked to me. It was because of academics as wel , but this was different.
    Even if we’d only mainly talked about history, I felt like something meaningful had been exchanged.
    From the window, I saw her come back out, items in hand. It was then I realized that it was rude for me to be up here in my room and not waiting downstairs. Now she’d have to stand outside with books in her hands until I got down there to open the door.
    I scratched behind my ear and made my feet move. I was out of my room and to the top of the stairs when I saw her coming up them. She hadn’t waited. I hadn’t heard the doorbel , which meant that she’d just opened the door and come right on in. Did she do that at other people’s houses?
    I just stood there watching her, wondering who the hel she was and why I found her so fascinating. She was different, that was for sure. Different from me, obviously, but different from anyone I’d ever known. Casey had been my friend since kindergarten and had been coming over to my house since he was five. He’d never just walked in. He knocked. Every time.
    But not Olivia. She walked in like she was meant to be here.
    The thought both soothed me and wound me up. I liked that she was here. It felt like I was at the edge of the stairs,