11A/N: Hey guys! This is a pretty short chapter. There should be more in the next chapter. I want to get this completed quickly so you all won't have to wait another year. :)
CHAPTER 13
I woke up the next morning with Anzio's necklace still in my hand and my eyes sticky and heavy from so many tears. I felt so alone and so fragile at that moment. I wanted to go and find people to comfort me but I knew there was no one. I knew that everyone had gone far away and my calling them would only be a burden, especially at this hour. So, I stayed there for a few minutes, lying in my bed waiting for something, anything to happen. And then I heard a soft knock on my door. I wanted to answer but I didn't feel like opening my mouth. I already knew who it was.
"Logan, you awake?" I heard Anzio say softly.
"No," I groaned turning over. I heard him chuckle and I almost smiled. I then heard him slowly turning the knob and opening the door.
"You can stop pretending to be asleep now," he said grabbing the chair from my desk and sitting in front of me. I pretended to snore. He laughed. "Logan?"
"What," I said tiredly keeping my eyes closed.
"Good morning," he said.
"Hi," I replied opening my eyes toward the ceiling.
"What's up?"
I smiled, "The ceiling, you?"
"The sky," he replied.
"Is it blue?" I asked finally looking at him.
"Not yet but it will be in two hours," he said. I said ok and we sat there in silence. He stared at me and I stared back. He then tilted his head to the side and squinted. His eyes slowly changed to surprise then to shock and lastly to confusion. He quickly looked at me and from the look in his eyes I knew what he was about to ask. I slowly sat up in my bed and held out the necklace to him and nodded once. He reached for it hesitantly as if he didn't believe that what he was seeing was real. He held it in his hands for a moment, softly rubbing the silver and the jewel in the center and took a look inside.
"You kept the necklace," he asked holding it like a prize.
"Yeah," I choked. He scooted closer.
"Why," he asked. "If you hate me so much?"
"Anzi-" he cut me off.
"No," he glared. "No excuses. No beating around the bush. The truth. Now."
I sighed heavily and pulled my knees to my chest. "I don't hate you. I just hate what you did to me."
"What did I do to you," he asked.
"You don't know," I exclaimed. He shook his head. "How can you not know after all of these years? After so many years of yelling and screaming at each other for the craziest things, you don't know what caused us to lash out at each other?"
He began to nod his head but stopped, "I lashed out at you after you told me how much you hated my guts. That was my reason for lashing out at you. What was yours?"
I sighed as he folded his arms, awaiting my answer. I positioned my eyes to a random spot on the floor as I thought back to the day I decided to hate Anzio. I hated thinking or talking about that day and I wished we hadn't hit this topic in the first place. It would've been better to just go on hating him, right? As these thoughts ran through my head I clenched the necklace inside of my hand and began to speak.
"I remember the day you gave me this necklace. We were fooling around in your grandparents vineyard, throwing grapes at each other. Just shamelessly wasting their good crop. When we got tired of attacking each other with grapes, we lied down in the grass, laughing hysterically. You pointed at the clouds in the sky and asked 'Logos, tell me, what do you see in those clouds?' and I said I saw a duck attacking a toucan," I smiled at that and Anzio chuckled. "Do you remember what you told me?"
Anzio nodded and I could tell that he was reciting every word in his head. "You told me," I continued. "to 'look closely and you'll see that in the clouds is an image of us.' I thought it was really cheesy but I ended up seeing the same thing. Afterwards you gave me this," I said gently holding up the necklace. "and told me that no matter what . . . we'd still be friends. We'd still be together. You told me how much you liked me but you couldn't say anything more about that because your parents told you that you were too young for love. That you wouldn't be able to understand and that you would take it for granted. But you wanted to prove them wrong so you gave me this promise and clasped it around my neck.'
"So about a week goes by and the whole time I'm thinking of a way to say thank you. And finally I came up with something and I decided to give it to you a few days before your birthday."
"But you never did," Anzio pointed out. "Why not?"
"Because, on the day I decided to give it to you I walked in on you and Selena Marcon sitting on the couch talking about me."
I saw myself standing in his parents' home watching them talk. Selena Marcon was Anzio and I's best friend. She was like our support system, the bond that held us together and if she wanted to she could tear us all apart. Smiling, I waited at the door to the living room and listened to their conversation.
"Logan is a great friend you know? How are we able to live through school years without her," Anzio said in Italian smiling.
"It's easy. We go back to school," Selena laughed and Anzio laughed with her.
"But I always miss her when she's gone," Anzio said quietly.
"We call her all the time and even talk to her on the webcam. So it's not like you don't get to see her. And besides haven't we taken trips to her town in America anyway? So we see her all the time. You can't miss her that much," she laughed.
"No, you don't understand," he said in English. "I like having her around."
"Yeah but," she paused. "You have another best friend that happens to be a girl."
"I know that," he said "It's just that…when she's gone it feels like a major part of the trio is lost."
"Anzio," she smiled coyly and moved closer. "You have me. I'm right here where you can see and touch me."
Anzio's eyes widened in shock at her words and even I was shocked. Selena never said anything like that and didn't she have a boyfriend in the first place? Selena than lightly stroked his hair. "I wouldn't worry about Logan so much. She has a life in America. She's not here all the time. She's only here when her parents say so. But I'm always here. I'm always there when you need someone to lean on. So why worry about her when there is someone just as beautiful sitting right here in front of you?"
"What are you trying to say," he asked.
"I like you Anzio. I always have," she replied. "I always wondered why you would chase after someone who lived so far away. She's bound to go to college in America and marry an American boy and have American babies. Knowing you, you love Italy. And you said so yourself that you couldn't bring yourself to leave this country. So I never understood that."
"I've always wondered that too," he laughed. "Selena I –" she placed a finger over his mouth.
"Forget about Logan, Anzio. She's barely here," she said. He tried to speak but she stopped him with a kiss. Instead of pulling away and slapping her back to her senses like I hoped, he kissed her back. At that moment my heart began to hurt vigorously and I clutched the necklace he gave me.
"After that I just took off and vowed to hate you," I finished. "I thought you really cared about me, you know? I thought – I thought you loved me."
"I did and I still do," Anzio said quietly.
"Then why did you kiss her," I asked.
"I –" he trailed off and I sighed.
"You don't even know," I shook my head and ran my fingers through my hair. We sat there silently for a moment and then I spoke. "What happened after you and Selena . . ."
"I told her that if I had to I would move to America to be with you or ask you to live in Italy. I told her that I loved you and only had eyes for you and if she couldn't respect that than what was the point of our friendship," he answered. "I regret kissing her and I hate that you had to see it but everything I said about you before and after I kissed Selena was true."
"You did a horrible job of showing me that truth," I mumbled under my breath.
"You never gave me a chance," he responded. "You told me you hated me before you could see how much I cared. You never even told me you saw that. If you had told me we probably wouldn't be where we are now."
"I don't know Anzio," I said shaking my head. "I still need proof that you actually cared, especially after all of the hearts you've broken . . . I need proof. Not words. Proof."
"Alright," Anzio said quietly. He then got up and left the room. When he finally shut the door a wave of relief hit me. It wasn't total relief but it was enough to let me breathe. However, I had a feeling that something was coming. I was unsure of what it was or how things would turn out but whatever it was I had a feeling it would change me.
A/N: Please review and thanks for reading!