Take Me Now by Faith Sullivan Read Free Book Online

play the field. Who can blame him? As long as he comes back to me in the end, I don’t care what he does now.
    Someone bumps my chair trying to squeeze through the crowded dining room so I move closer to the table before taking a nervous sip of my iced tea. I’m starting to look conspicuous as everyone laughs and chats around me. Where is he? Is he really going to stand me up? He’s embarrassed me on plenty of occasions. This wouldn’t be the first time.
    I think back to the mean things he used to do in school. There was one girl. Her name was Ali. We weren’t speaking to each other and Will was well aware of our squabble. So at recess, he took a jump rope and began to play with the girls. It was unusual behavior when all the other boys were tossing a football around but I didn’t question it. It was hard to fathom he had an ulterior motive. He swung the rope in a circle and we jumped over it when it came our way. When Ali joined the group, he increased the force and raised his arm, causing the rope to wrap around her legs. She tripped and fell to the ground, scraping her knees in the process. As she started to cry, Will shot me a look of triumph like he did it because that’s what I wanted. Somewhere inside of me I felt pleased that he would do something like that for me even though I knew it was wrong. But I also felt scared by what he was capable of. That devotion mixed with cruelty was something my conscience was screaming at me to get away from at all costs. When it came to Will, I’d only experience pleasure when it was accompanied by pain.
    Yet I continued to seek his approval. Something was pulling me to him. I was caught in his orbit and there was no possibility of setting myself free. He trained me to believe I was nothing without him. I’d never be enough for him, but he always made me feel that I was so close to being what he was looking for. I thought I just needed to take that extra step in order to convince him that he was right about me all along. He could have been the boyfriend I’d always dreamed of if only I were a little more attractive, a little more outgoing, a little more desirable.
    He strung me along through middle school. After our first kiss at Johnny’s party, he started being really nice to me. When nominations were held for the editor of the school newspaper, he raised his hand and called out my name. When we were sitting on the classroom floor to watch a video, he saved a spot right in front and waved me over to join him. When we had a dance in the gymnasium, he actually took my hand and swayed with me during a slow song.
    I thought we had made a major breakthrough but I was mistaken. The next year we entered high school and everything changed. He started chasing older girls and I looked like a mere child in comparison. I couldn’t compete. I never caught him with another girl but I heard about his escapades from everyone else. It was devastating especially since we were never officially going out so he never had to officially break up with me. Whatever we had was undefined. I thought that’s what made it special but apparently not to him. It was just an easy escape clause for him to take.
    Sure, he’d run up to me in the hall and ask to borrow a pen, always giving me that sexy wink like I actually meant something to him. And I’d fall for it and be on cloud nine until he broke my heart again. But even if he didn’t claim me as his own, he didn’t want anyone else having me either.
    In Spanish class during our senior year, there was a boy, Jeremy, who would always talk to me. Will was seated directly across from us and he didn’t like it, not one bit. He played it off like it was nothing, but I knew sooner or later he’d go in for the kill. It got to the point where Will had buddied up to Jeremy so much that he ended up talking more to Will than he did to me. One day, Will decided he was going to show me Jeremy’s true colors so he started to rag on Melissa, a girl with a