Can we just talk?

I wiggled out of my wedges and slipped on flip-flops before grabbing my bag to head back out of my house.

I was home for a little while, sitting on my childhood bed and texting Moose, before I agreed to meet him at a park near my house. I walked down the street, looking at how all the houses on my block had changed and remembering how many high school nights I spent on these streets. I stood outside of the park for a few minutes before Moose arrived on a bicycle.

“You know, you can still get a DWI on one of those,” I said with a pointed look.

“Calm down, nerd,” he replied as he swung one leg over and off of the bicycle. “It would’ve taken me thirty minutes to walk here. Besides, it’s just back roads to your house and I’m barely even drunk anymore.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t believe that.”

“Which part?”

“That you’re not drunk anymore.”

Moose walked with the bike closer to me and soon, we were just walking down the street together. “I swear, I stopped drinking a couple hours ago. Why? Do I seem drunk to you?”

I let out a sigh. “Not in demeanor, but you never want to ‘talk’ about anything unless you’re hammered, so…”

“That’s so not true,” he quickly refuted.

“It so is true,” I responded. “Think about it. Have we ever discussed anything serious over the years before having a few drinks.”

Moose looked down at his feet. “Okay, you’re making it sound much worse than it is.”

“I’m not trying to make it sound like anything.”

“Fuck, Caroline,” Moose said as he looked over in my direction with the slightest curl at the corner of his mouth. “You know it’s not like that. It’s not that I’m only interested in talking to you when I’m drunk. It’s just, I don’t know, always been hard for me to talk about this stuff. Especially with you. You keep pretending like you don’t get that.”

For once, I actually didn’t have a response to Moose. He was kind of right. I knew how hard it was for him to communicate with me about what he was thinking or feeling, so why did I simply pretend like there was nothing going on?

“Maybe,” I began as I nervously bit my bottom lip. “Maybe I could’ve tried to help you open up a bit more. I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” Moose said as he stood up a little straighter as we walked. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. It’s my issue. I’ve always been like this.”

We walked in silence for a few seconds. “Well,” I began after thinking about it for a moment. “I’ve always tried to avoid confrontation, so I guess between the two of us, nothing is ever going to get addressed.”

He laughed. “Yeah.”

We were silent again for a few moments as we walked up and down different streets in my neighborhood.

“Hey,” I began as I placed a hand on Moose’s forearm and stopped walking. “I actually forgot why I was mad at you in the first place. We haven’t discussed that you had a girlfriend when we hooked up over the summer!”

Moose’s face and neck began turning red and I could practically see the tension forming in his neck. “Oh, yeah. Well, it wasn’t that serious yet and I mean, that’s no excuse. My behavior that night was totally inexcusable and disgusting. I’m sorry things went as far as they did and I’m glad you suggested stopping it when you did. I thought you stopped me because you knew about her.”

“I wouldn’t have even let you kiss me if I knew about her,” I asserted.

“Let me kiss you?” Moose asked with a smirk. “Uh, you went to kiss me.”

“Oh, please,” I responded with an eye roll. “First of all, you totally kissed me. And second of all, that is so not the point.”

Moose laughed before a saddened look took over his face again. “I know. And you’re right. Caroline, you have no idea, I have thought about that night over and over again and how I could’ve done things differently to not be such an ass. But,” Moose took a deep sigh before continuing. “No matter how many times I go over it, I don’t regret that we kissed. Jacky and I broke up a couple months later and I mean, we had a good relationship and everything, but I barely think about her. You know who I do think about? You.”

We both stopped in our tracks. For the second time during the conversation, I was speechless. Moose was finally opening up and I couldn’t help but quickly wonder how my life would’ve or could’ve been different if he had just done this years ago. Could things possibly change now?

Regardless of what could be, the fact still remained that I lived across the country.

“I think about you a lot, too,” I responded. It wasn’t a total lie, but I left out that the past few months, I only thought about how disrespectful he had been towards me. “I mean, we’re not even friends like we used to be.”

“Well, whose fault is that, Miss California?”

I laughed. “No, but I mean before that. We never really hung out just the two of us like we used to and we couldn’t really have a conversation without there being tension.”

“Fair enough,” Moose responded. “How about this? Let’s work on our friendship. I promise to talk to you more and not make things weird if you promise to try and not kiss me again.”

I laughed and playfully rolled my eyes. “Okay, I’ll try.”

“Okay, we have a deal,” Moose said before turning towards me and pausing. “But before that, I need to do one more thing.”

Then, Moose leaned down and gave me a deep, passionate kiss. I damned myself when my knees weaken.