The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily

embarrassed that I’d let it happen. And I didn’t tell this to Langston because I was worried

There’d been no room in my toy-soldier heart for Lily, but she’d forced herself in anyway. And she’d brought Christmas with her.

Acknowledging how you really feel, who you really are. Opening up your soul to another person. There’s nothing scarier.

Are you going to be someone who takes charge of her feelings and her actions, even if the outcome might hurt, or someone who lets herself be unhappy simply because she won’t ask for what she wants?”

“First of all, it’s not fair to expect Dash to be psychic about what you really want from him. Second, and this is just a broader piece of advice for you about anyone you might date, but any male who automatically knows how to tick off all the items on your female wish-fulfillment list is too good to be true. It’s not natural to their species, and you should find it highly suspicious if he does. Third, if you feel so strongly about him, I think it’s your responsibility to be honest with him about it and not wait for him to tell you something he has no idea you’re waiting to hear.”

“I can’t talk to him about it!”
“But why not? He’s your boyfriend. I don’t understand.”
It took a moment to finally admit the real truth. “Because then he’ll just see what a clingy, insecure mess I am.”
“I’d hardly call you that.”
“That’s what I feel like! I used to feel sorry for girls who went all stupid when they got boyfriends. Now I’ve become one of those girls! One who needs him to tell her he loves her because she’s so neurotic she has to hear it from him to feel, like, validated in her feelings for him. I hate that!” I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I’d never confided in my mom like this before.

I didn’t know who I was anymore.

I wasn’t missing.
I was lost.

I thought, That’s the problem. I love. Dash cares. It hurt.

Langston went on. “It’s the paradox, isn’t it? The people you know the most, the people you love the most—you’re also going to feel the parts of them you don’t know the most. I can tell you the cereal Benny eats, the pair of socks that’s his favorite, the part of a movie—any movie—that will make him cry. The way he knots a tie. The nicknames he has for each of his cousins. The third-worst heartbreak he ever had. And the seventh. And the tenth, which shouldn’t even count. But there are times when he will fall into this deep incomprehensibility, when he will like something or need something or not need something that I can’t believe he’d like or need or not need, and I will be frightened that I have gotten every single thing about him wrong, including us.”
“Then what do you do?” I asked. I really, really wanted to know. There wasn’t anyone else to tell me. None of my friends had reached that point. And my parents had reached that point, then fell from it hard.
“I wait,” Langston said. “I remind myself that I don’t need to know everything, that there will always be essential rooms within us that will be unknown. I loosen my idea of him, and he becomes recognizable again.”