Chapter 356: Journal Entry Thirty of Growing-2

Obviously, I dumped my bag on the couch and followed him. He was in there, coolly pouring a glass of water for me. He just passed me the glass and looked straight at me, expectantly, while he drank from the bottle. Holding the glass – so lamely – I asked him, "What?" Because that's the only word that I could even think of forming. Marco raised his eyebrows at me, finished the bottle of water and said, "Oh, I knew." I'm really glad I hadn't taken any water into my mouth because I would have definitely spat it out at him. Again, the extent of my eloquence was, "What?" Marco had the audacity to laugh. "I don't know why you're referring to one of my girlfriend's best friends as 'remember Aurora', as if I don't hear about her approximately fourteen times a week from my current roommate." Then, he grinned very annoyingly and added, "I'm sure I'm going to start hearing about her even more from my ex-roommate." I had never hated my best friend and ex-roommate more than in that very moment. At that point, I drank the entire glass in one gulp and glared at him and asked, "What the hell do you mean 'oh I knew'?" Marco shrugged like it was nothing and said, "Oh, I totally knew. I mean, I had no idea when it actually started, but I assumed you didn't let her go back to Andrusia without telling her how you feel." That statement required me to sit down, which I did, at one of the stools at the kitchen counter. "Marco, what the hell? How do you know about – about my feelings for her?" Then, the bastard smirked. "You're my best friend," he told me, scrolling through his phone, "And have been for the last eight years." He put his phone down on the counter, slid it over to me and turned saying, "I have so many leftovers to finish before Isa gets back because I promised her I would." I took the phone and looked at the picture that he had pulled up. I was looking at a picture of me. Well, me and Aura. Which made me miss her so much. It was taken at Jenna's wedding. I asked her to dance at the end of the day, when so many people had gone home and everything was quietening down. I'm holding her, one arm around her waist, one hand holding hers. She's laughing and I'm just staring at her. I look at her, eyes scrunched up, head thrown back, hand gripping my suit, and I can pretty much hear her laugh. Marco's hand materializes out of nowhere and he swipes his finger across the screen. There's another picture of me and Aura, still at Jenna's wedding, still dancing, but this time, she's looking up at me with those eyes of hers, lips parted, and I'm smiling down at her as the fairy lights that Juliet had picked out twinkle around us. I'm sure I know exactly which moment that was. It was the moment that I told her, "I would like to buy you dinner. One of very many." I don't think I'll ever live to regret those words. I might live to regret not murdering Marco sooner – oh God, I think Aura is rubbing off on me with all the murder – because he coughed and it sounded a lot like the word 'whipped'. When I narrowed my eyes at him. "The only the other person in the world you look at like that is me," he had the gall to say while winking at me. Then, Marco sat down next to me and told me a lot while he swiped through a whole album of pictures, he had taken of me and some of both Aura and I. There were pictures of just me smiling into the distance and I just know I was looking at Aura. There were pictures of us standing in the corner of the room at the rehearsal dinner, laughing over something. "You look at her like she's heaven on earth. You did since the damn moment you walked into your dining room and saw her. You should have seen your face. God, do I look like that over Isa? Because if so, wow. I watched you that whole entire dinner, just to figure out if I was seeing things, but dude. You kept looking over at her. You're always looking at her. When you're in a room with her, it's like she's the ocean and you're a stream, flowing in and out of everything, finding any way just to get to her. I got to watch that for two months, and Eli, I have never seen you that way. You have always been the one to feel the deepest, but I have never seen that from you. I knew that you wouldn't let her go without a fight and I knew from Isa that she wasn't with anyone. That look on your face the moment you saw her at your house, though, that was the best. It's like after years inside a bunker, you were finally seeing the sun. Dude, you are so intensely whipped. But I'm happy for you, because she seems so great. Also, do the two of you have something with M&Ms, because you start smiling like a jackass whenever you seen a pack of M&Ms and if it's not her, you need to be lobotomized. Also, you talk about her – a lot. Way more than a brother would talk about his sister's friend. You think you're slick, my man, but I've known you long enough. You are so smitten, she only has to look at you and you would move mountains for her, I know." I blew out a long breath and I confessed to Marco. "I am so devastatingly in love with her." To which he said, "Good. Have you told her?" I had to smile and tell him, "I told her, but not the way that I intended to." He consoled me by saying, "I think the best things that happen to us happen in ways that we don't intend them to happen. I didn't intend on falling for the girl who had an agreement with me and you didn't intend on falling for one of your sister's best friends. How did she take it, by the way?" "Lots of jokes at our expense," I told him and Marco told me that he expected nothing less from Jenna. Then, he said something that absolutely killed me, which was, "Long distance, huh? Must be torture for you." That's when I groaned, let my forehead hit the countertop and then, Marco and I drowned our respective sorrows in leftovers and stories about our respective lady loves