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Jealous? I mouth, teasing. My heart skips a beat when he nods, his eyes flashing and a smokelike grin drifting across his mouth.
“Kissing you right here. I always loved being outside with you at night in the summer. You looked so beautiful that it made my heart ache.” His voice drops. “And so happy. I loved seeing you like that.”
“Fuck, the way I’ve wanted you,” he breathes against my mouth. “I don’t know how anyone can look at me and not see it.”
I curl over him, running my fingers through his hair, remembering how I wished for him on my birthday all those years ago. Remembering how it came true, and the bliss and mess that came after it. I know better than to wish for anything now, but it curls like smoke from a birthday candle anyway, still warm from the fire that burned it.
Instead of laughing, he gazes up at me. “You’re always taking care of other people. Who’s taking care of you?”
Gutted
All he could see was that he was building something stable for us to set our foundation on. But I never wanted the foundation. I just wanted him.
“Would you ever ask me to take care of you?” he asks quietly. “Right now, if you needed something, would you say it? Even if it’s just a cup of coffee or breakfast, I’ll do it for you.”
“I’ve never been good at stopping when it comes to you,” he whispers, his eyes moving over my face, a tiny pinch between his brows.
“The things you care about most are what you talk about least.” Her observation is quiet but hits hard. “And you never talk about him. Not before today, anyway.”
Sometimes you have to cut yourself open, Georgia, and you hold yourself so tightly.”
“You were shown that you weren’t allowed to need things that inconvenienced people, and you learned to make yourself smaller. But why can everyone else be messy and you can’t?”
Ouch
“I know you’re scared. I mean, fuck if that’s not the human experience,” she says quietly. “But you deserve to let yourself feel whatever you need to. You can be messy. A disaster, if you need to. The people who love you will accept every single piece of it, I promise you.”
Jamie lets out a honking laugh. “Remember how we’d watch movies that would make us cry afterward? Usually because you didn’t want me to cry alone?” “Little Women,” I sigh. “God, please,” she wails.
“I can’t say what I really want to,” Eli says hoarsely. “So right now I’m going to say thank you and hug you, because if I don’t get my hands on you in some way I’m going to fucking lose it.”
“Because I care about you.” It’s such a weak version of my actual feelings, only enough to release the barest pressure in my chest. “Because I wanted you to have a second chance so you can stop trying so hard to prove yourself. Because you’re good enough, even after you fall short.”
“Why are you staring at me?” “Because you’re very pretty,” I croaked out.
“It’s unreal,” he says quietly, “that I love watching you get dressed as much as I love watching you get naked. I used to sit at the office when I was working late and think about how you were probably putting on your pajamas and I was missing it, and fucking hating myself. I never thought I’d get to watch you do it again.”
“Don’t think I’m taking this moment for granted, Georgia, or any moment you’ve given me this week.”
Nothing I’ve cared about most has been tied up with a pretty bow before it was given away. It’s all been messy. It’s made me wish and need and crave. And it turns me into this—a girl in a broken dress, crying alone in a bathroom.
God, it feels good to be held up by him. And god, I want it for so much longer than this moment we’re in.
My attention drifts back to Adam, a lump growing in my throat. He’s watching me, hazel eyes wide, tall and handsome in his suit. But I can see the freckle-faced boy underneath the height and squared jaw, that kid I walked up to the day the loneliness of losing my best friends became something I had to let go of. I saw something in him, some kindred thing that came true, and knowing I don’t have the words to properly convey what that’s meant to me makes me want to cry.
It’s an echo of the other day: you can be messy. The people who love you will accept every single piece of it.
“Second of all, why didn’t you say anything?” “Everyone’s had so much going on and no one else seemed particularly bothered by it. And it’s hard for me to…say things sometimes.”
“Not that talking about it hours before your wedding is great timing.” “The ideal timing is when you’re feeling it,” Eli says with the softest edge only I catch.
“It sounds dumb when you say it,” I admit. “Just not when I’m feeling it.”
“I think I do,” I admit. “I’m just scared.” “All the best things are scary,” Jamie says, squeezing my hand.
I sneak a glance at Eli. He’s been so quiet this entire conversation, but his silence is shaped like words, like a monster looming at my back. Everything is just starting to feel calm and controllable. I let my messiness out here, but this is a cup of water I can hold without spilling. The mess with Eli is the ocean; it’ll drown me.
“Keeping tabs on me?” It’s an echo of a few nights ago, right before we went swimming. Just before we gave in. “Always,” he says quietly, but this time it’s not teasing.
“I’m in love with you.” That easy, like he’s said it a hundred times before. It takes me a second to realize this is the first. But it’s now, not then. I get out a strangled, “Again?” He’s not smiling, but his mouth is soft, his eyes are soft, this word is soft: “Still.”
“When I say I’m still in love with you, I mean the first time I saw you and right now. I mean every second in between.”
“Yes,” Eli says. “That’s why it matters. Because I’m so in love with you that I feel like I can’t breathe. I think it every time I look at you, every time you let me in or you laugh or you look at me like I mean something to you. I know it’s fucking messy, and I know you hate that, but it’s also true.”
Time is cruel and a miracle all in one swoop. It shows you what you had, and sometimes brings it back to you, but it’s always different.
“I want you any way I can have you. I want you every way I can have you. I just want it to be honest.”
But this list shows the best and worst of us, through so much change and turmoil and separate growth. The one thing that hasn’t changed at all is him loving me. And me loving him. It’s our tether, the thing that’s never let us drift too far.
I love him because he finds beautiful moments even in the hardest of times. Because of his determination and dedication to the things and people he loves. Because he really is an annoyingly talented parallel parker. Because he’s pushing through his anxiety with the same commitment he gives everything. Because of his terrible coffee and his quiet mouth and that crease he gets between his brows when something annoys or perplexes him. Because of his unshakable belief in airport snacks and his sweet little puzzle addiction. Because he assigns nicknames to the people he wants to keep. Because he’s
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It’s a privilege to have someone trust you enough to show you those pieces of themselves, the most vulnerable and tender, the least polished. It’s a show of trust to let you see them first thing in the morning, in the middle of a panic attack, right after they’ve cried. To give you a shaky smile after a messy fight. To come back to you again and again with their heart in their hands.
“You wrote the things you loved about me in good times and bad, when we were at our highest and lowest. I was wrong when I said before that we’re only good at loving each other when it’s easy. I think we’re good at loving each other out loud when it is, but we’ve silently loved each other through all of the hard stuff.”
“We have,” he says quietly. “God, it’s so good to hear you say it, though. I wasn’t sure.” “I’m trying to be better about saying hard things. It’s scary, though.”
“I can be anywhere, Georgia,” he murmurs, running a hand up and down my back. “I’d like to be with you. Here, if you’ll have me.”
Time is a miracle. It shows you what you had, and sometimes it brings it back to you. Different. Better.
Thank you specifically to “Maroon,” “Labyrinth,” “This Love,” “Paper Rings,” and “You’re Losing Me” by Taylor Swift; “Your Needs, My Needs” by Noah Kahan; “Work Song” by Hozier; and Georgia Parker’s cover of Taylor Swift’s “Karma.”
