Don't Hate the Player

by Shelby Elizabeth

Sometimes you have to learn how to amuse yourself, or you’ll forget how to find amusement later.

“How can you run so fast but be so clumsy?” “Running is different. It’s like my feet know where to go when I’m running. When I’m walking . . . not so much.”

“I don’t want to be rude.” “You’re rude to me all the time!” “To you. Not to your mom.”

I can’t contain my disgust. I get some people not wanting animals, but it takes a special kind of person to hate them. “What kind of person hates animals?”

“Maybe he just doesn’t know how to show you he cares.” Eli’s head snaps up, and there’s a dangerous flash in his normally expressionless eyes. “He has no problem showing how little he cares.”

“I used to wish I could scoop up some of the sunlight. Just reach out, grab a few drops, and save them for later.”

His bluntness is alternatively infuriating or incredible, with little range between. As I’m spending more time with him, though, I keep finding it more incredible—especially paired with the vinyl quality of his voice.

I glance at Jack and meet his eyes, catching him studying me, and wonder if he can tell how grateful I am to experience what a family should be.

I’ve never heard Eli laugh like he does at dinner tonight. It quickly becomes one of the best sounds I’ve ever heard.

That elfish tilt appears in his smile again, and I feel the corners of my mouth twitch. He’s just so innocent sometimes. It’s endearing. An alarm bell goes off inside my head. Endearing? Where did that word even come from?

Friends don’t think of friends as being endearing, do they? Or feel a rush of warmth whenever they smile, which in Jack’s case is all the time. He’s more than a sunshine child, really. He’s an embodiment of the sun, full stop.

I’m sure friends can think of each other as innocent and endearing, and feel whole whenever they’re around in a way they never have before, and wonder if their hair is as soft as it looks . . .

The sunshine child, born in the dead of winter. I don’t know if it’s more ironic or poetic.

I really listen to the song he plays. The impact is magnified when I let the sound wash over me. It swirls around us, weaving through the air and wrapping us more securely in this magical space, so effectively that I actually forget where I am, and what I had been doing before.

“It’s the scars you can’t see that hurt the most.”

The rain is pelting down so hard that each drop collides with the pavement and seems to shatter. It isn’t a rainbow. It’s a never-ending field of glittering diamonds.

So many people see the rain as serious and gloomy. Maybe if more people noticed things like this, they wouldn’t think the rain’s so bad.”

“But inside you’re like a teddy bear with a rip. Sometimes I just want to hug you to make it better.”

The first time I met Mrs. Benson, this kind of attention and affection hurt me as much as it healed. It doesn’t hurt anymore. Now it just feels like love.

Why am I always right beside you, Jack? it asks, and yearns to speak. Because you do need supervision sometimes, you’re so innocent. Because you make me feel good and whole. And the loudest answer: Because I hate spending time away from you.

Then she turns and wraps me in her tight embrace, and any worry about it rolls off my back. You can’t worry when you’re being held tightly in loving arms. Not effectively, anyway.

His cheeks turn a different shade of pink as he smiles, and my heart does a kind of flip when I realize that secondary blush might have been for me.

Play what you want. What you need. Let it out, instead of bottling it up.

“You don’t need permission to feel, Eli. You can feel any way you want, about anyone. You can feel multiple ways about a person, all at the same time.”

All because of the annoying, endearing, sunshine elf who’s stolen my heart, and the fact that against all odds, he gave me his.

“You are one of the kindest people I’ve ever met, Elliot James,” he whispers. “Thank you.”

I know when I started hating you. What I can’t tell is when I started loving you, too. And when that hate vanished.”

It’s your personality. You’re so warm and vibrant, full of energy. I can’t help but feel better when I’m around you. You’re my sun.”