Earl Crush

by Alexandra Vasti

“To know you have them all to go home to, I suppose. To have someone in your life who grew up alongside you. Who can hold the memories of your childhood with you.”

Do you know when it started for me, love of mine? It was that first moment. The very first instant that I saw you on the doorstep, in your green dress and your green shoes and your hair the color Nature uses for things so sublime you cannot hold them in your hand. Autumn. Sunset. A flame.

She had not known that her heart could wrench when he said her name, or that his hands on her waist would feel like an anchor when the world spun free around her.

To speak first—to drop her armor—was terrifying. But— Brave, he’d called her. If there was ever a time in her life when she had needed to summon courage, it was now. She would not hurt him, not by her apprehension nor by her cowardice.