Make Me Hate You

by Kandi Steiner

I just wanted to know that someone wanted me in this world.

I didn’t know that the first time I felt truly wanted, and truly loved, was all a lie. But I found out quickly.

It was searing hot. It was icy cold.

I had to trust Tyler Wagner not to let me fall. And he didn’t.

“Okay?” he added, with his arms outstretched. “Because I miss you. Because I have missed you, ever since the day you left. Because it kills me to be around you and not touch you, laugh with you, to not be engulfed with everything that you are.”

“Maybe, at the core of every human being, there’s a dark, hidden world. Maybe it’s not what we do for a living or our hobbies or our background or our family that makes us who we are, but rather what exists in that dark little world that no one sees. And we can’t ever show it to anyone — not to our best friend or our family or our significant other — because we know in our gut that if anyone ever saw what truly existed there, they’d run. They’d run and curse us and scream at us to stay far, far away.”

His arms trembled as I wrapped my hands around them, holding onto him, begging him not to pull away as much as I begged him to put distance between us because I knew we should — and I knew I couldn’t be the one to do it.

I saw what once was, what maybe could have been, and more than anything, what never was.

“I would have run to you,” he said softly over the rain, his lips touching mine as he did. “I would have pulled you into me. And I would have never let you go.”

“You are my weakness, Jaz,” he husked. “You always have been.”

“I didn’t really realize it, not then. I couldn’t wrap my head around everything you were going through because I just had no idea of what it was like. But when you left,”

Now that we knew what we did, now that we’d cleared the air, now that I knew he wanted me back then just as much as I’d wanted him — it wasn’t the same. I couldn’t be just friends with him. And I couldn’t be more. Which meant we only had one option of what we could be. Nothing.

“It’s you who brings me pain. It’s you who is killing me. It’s you, and us,” I added, motioning between us. “It’s this thing that never was, but always is, that never will be and will never not be.”

“I have tried to forget you, Tyler. For seven long years, I ran from you, and from that day, and from all those years we had together. I thought I’d grown. I thought I’d left you behind. I thought I’d succeeded in forgetting you, in giving the fantasy of us up.” I choked on a sob, covering my mouth with one hand as my eyes blurred again. “But all it took was one trip. One time coming back here — to this place, to you — and it’s so painfully clear that I wasn’t even close.”

“Please, just make me hate you.”

He was claiming me. Like I’d ever had a prayer of being anyone else’s but his.

But I didn’t want to move, to lose that time in space where Tyler was mine, and I was his, and we were wrapped up in each other under the covers with the waves lapping at the shore outside our window.

“I love you so much it kills me. But you and I… we had our chance, and we didn’t take it. For whatever reason, it was never in the cards for us to be together. Okay?”

How could we ever be together? How could we ever be apart?

“I don’t know much about that kind of love myself,” I admitted. “At least, not yet. But I think when you find a love like that, it’s effortless. Everything comes easy, as if loving that person is as natural as breathing, and just as necessary to live.”

Still, I left him there. And he let me go.

“I always have, and I always will. I’ve tried to forget you, and I know now that there is no amount of time or distance I can put between us that will ever allow me to. I am yours,”

“Whether you claim me or not, I am yours.”

“If you feel anything for me, Tyler,” I whispered, searching his eyes. “If you love me, too — don’t let me get on this plane.”

“I came to get my girl.”

“I couldn’t stop you from getting on that plane, but I’m here to put you on another one, instead. I can’t let you go this time. I can’t make you hate me, just like you could never make me hate you, because the truth is we have belonged to each other since we were teenagers, and I think if anything, the last seven years and especially the last month have shown us that nothing will ever change that. Not time, not distance, not trying to love other people. This,” he said, motioning between us. “This isn’t effortless love, but it is real love — and I refuse to let it slip through my fingers again.”

“I’m saying that you are spectacular, Jasmine Olsen, and that I love you with everything that I am.”