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“Where to now?” I ask as he turns on the ignition. “The best night of your life, honeysuckle.”
I’m not sure I slept at all last night, but at this moment, my soul feels more rested than it has in years.
I always thought that if she loved me the way I loved her, she would’ve come after me. She would’ve responded to me.
She deserves so much better than all of them. She deserves me.
I decide I don’t give a fuck what the last ten years have been like. I only care about the next ten, about having her in my life in whatever capacity she’ll allow me.
It’s so easy with her. When we finally lift the pressure of the rest of the world off each other and allow ourselves to just be.
“I’m going to love your body no matter what,” I promise her. “So that means you should too. I will take personal offense if you hate something I like so much. Understand?”
“Okay, yeah, the huckleberry cheesecake is my favorite flavor. This might be the best thing I’ve ever tasted,”
“Disappointing.” I lick my own lips. “Because your lips are the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
“When you tell me you love me for the first time, honeysuckle, I want you to look me in the eye. I don’t want to ever hear the word maybe in that sentence either. When you say that to me, I want you to mean it.”
As long as she’s laughing, I don’t care if it’s at my expense.
“You finally found your dream car.” I found my dream girl again too, but I don’t say that out loud.
I allow myself, for the first time in ten years, to feel every emotion coursing through my body, to relive the perfect moment from the perfect night all those years ago, the moment I’d known I well and truly gave my heart away to the girl in my passenger seat.
I suddenly wonder how I’ll ever belong to anyone else again now that I’ve experienced what it feels like to be his.
“I’m not the same person I was when I got here a month ago. I didn’t think it would be possible to grow so much in just a number of weeks, but you’ve made that happen for me. You’ve made me brave. You’ve made me want to find myself. Figure out who I am and what I’m meant to do in this world.”
“You’ve changed me too, honeysuckle. You’ve made me understand what it feels like to be found. Seen. Heard. Valued. You make me believe in myself in a way I’ve never had before. You make me feel like I’m worth something.”
“I don’t know if I used to believe in divine intervention, but I think I do now,” I say between his lips. “I believe I was destined to find you. So that you could teach me all of this.”
“You were my first kiss. My first date. My first true, real best friend. You make me feel so safe, Leo.”
“I want you to be my first everything. I want to give you a piece of me, too.”
“I want to be yours. I want you to be mine.”
I want a piece of your soul. Maybe that makes me selfish, but I don’t care. I need to know a part of you will always belong to me, and I want to give you that, too.”
“You don’t need a piece of my soul, honeysuckle. You already own the whole goddamn thing.”
None of it feels wrong. No moment with him ever has. Everything with him feels so incredibly right. So meant to be.
“I can’t believe you remember that.” “I remember everything about us, honeysuckle,” Leo says quietly.
“Then, it became a reminder that you were real. The longer time went on without hearing from you, I began to believe I had made us up, that you couldn’t have loved me the way I thought you did. The way I loved you.”
It’s a reminder that I know what love is. That I have been loved, even if I’m not anymore.”
“I took a piece of you you’d been afraid to give away, and then I left you. I broke you, Leo. I broke you, and you saved me, and…”
“I don’t understand why you don’t hate me, Leo.”
“Stop looking at me like that,” he whispers. “Like what?” “Like I own all the pieces of your soul. Like you’ve been incomplete all this time without them.”
“I’m so goddamn tired of seeing you cry. Let me make you smile.”
“Dance with me, honeysuckle. Please.”
Something about being sweet as a honeysuckle and falling in love with the same person over and over again.
“Even if you have to leave, I’ll be here, as reliable and sure as the waves crashing against the sand. As the wind that rattles the tree branches. As the air in my lungs–the heart that beats in my chest. Only for you, Darby.
“I can see your brain working, honeysuckle. Stop thinking I don’t want you forever, because I promise you, I do.
After ten years of drought, my soul is experiencing its first rainfall, and I almost don’t care that it’s happening inside a crowded bar.
“I wanna kiss you all night, Darby, but I’ve been waiting ten years for this moment, and I didn’t expect it to happen in public.”
“There’s only one bed.” I chuckle. “Yeah, baby. We’re only going to need one from here on out.”
Tonight, I think we’ve both finally realized the only place you belong is right here next to me.”
“I promised I’d always keep you safe. I’ll always be there for you. I came out here to keep that promise, and I’ve also realized I never fell out of love with you, either.”
“So, either you left all those years ago because you decided I wasn’t good enough for you, and that’s going to destroy me all over again.”
“Or, you left me all those years ago not because you didn’t love me, but because some force outside the two of us kept you from me, and that’ll destroy me too.”
“Or…you never came back because you thought you weren’t good enough for me, and that would destroy me most of all.”
“I don’t want to be destroyed tonight, Darby,” I whisper against her sweet skin. “Damn the past. I just ...
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Kissing her feels like a breath of air after a decade underwater, like weaving through waves after so many years with my feet on the ground. Like floating after drowning.
Darby. My honeysuckle. My first love. My only love.
wasn’t comfortable giving him that when I still felt like I belonged to someone else.”
“And I’ve always been yours, Leo.”
“I want to see every inch of your skin tonight, honeysuckle. Taste it. Savor it.”
“Yes, baby. But first, I need a taste of your sweet little pussy. I’m going to remind you exactly what it feels like to be mine.”
God, we’re stupid. Stupid and reckless and mad. But I think we may be all those things in the name of love, the kind you only get to experience once.
