Junie

by Erin Crosby Eckstine

He isn’t looking at the sunrise anymore. He’s looking at her. “I just think you deserve more than a pretty view, Delilah June. You deserve to take all the beauty of this world and hold it in your hands. You deserve to bite it like a peach and let the juice drip ’til your fingers get sticky.”

“What was it that Jane Eyre said? ‘I would always rather be happy than dignified.’ ” “You know I like Wuthering Heights better. ‘Whatever our souls are made of, hers and mine are the same.’ ”

There is beauty in the persistence of her heartbeat, the tenacity of her breath, the courage of her bones.

“You love me?” Junie asks. Caleb raises his head from his hands and looks up at her. “Yes. Of course I do. You’re my middle C.” “Middle C?” “The key between the lows and the highs, the balance of it all, the true center of the music. But it don’t matter, that’s the thing.”