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Because life is only happy when it’s shared.
“Lust, learn, and love,” she says, placing the condiments and touching her finger to the ketchup. “My mother said the first boy—or man—is a crush. You think you love them, but what you really love is how they make you feel. It’s not love. It’s lust. Lust for attention. Lust for danger. Lust to feel special.” She looks between us. “You’re needy with number one. Needy for someone to love you.”
“Love.” She snatches the bottle away. “When the lessons of your weakness with number one and your selfishness with number two sink in, and you find a middle ground. When you know who you are and you’re ready to welcome everything he is, and you’re not afraid anymore.” She puts the bottle back in its place. “You still might not have a happy ending, but you’ll engage in a healthy relationship and handle yourself in a way you’re proud of.”
People learn about themselves through sex. It’s true. And sometimes it may take a lot of living to become the person you want to be. I’m happy my future wife won’t have to experience the complete prick I was at seventeen. I was much worse. Like, a lot worse.
Sometimes people have to make their own mistakes and feel the pain.
Snowfall isn’t like rainfall. Rain is passion. It’s a scream. It’s my hair sticking to my face as I wrap my arms around him. It’s spontaneous, and it’s loud. Snowfall is like a secret. It’s whispers and firelight and searching for his warmth between the sheets at two a.m. when the rest of the house is asleep. It’s holding him tightly and loving him slowly.
“Craving that fucking escape so badly, because someone else left you empty?”
Saw her smile today. I like having a girl around.
I want to be outside. I want to be in a tree. I want to be wet. I want to be on the forest floor as the rain hits the leaves above. I like that sound. I want to be warm. I want to hold something. I want to talk to my dad. I want to be tired, so I can sleep more, and I want to walk. I want to be in love. I want to be safe. I want to be over. I want things in my head to be gone.
I want to be everything she sees.
Saw her smile again today. She turned her face toward the sky and closed her eyes.
God, she feels good. She looks like she’d be pudding in your fist. Soft. Too soft. It was so good, though. Those seconds on the car that she let me bury my face in her body. Her skin is like water. I want her smell in my bed. And in my hair. And never far away from me.
They’re such deep sleepers, they don’t hear you at night. Just me. When I touched your face, you quieted. When I tried to leave, the nightmare started again. So I stayed. I come in every night. You tuck your cold feet between my legs, and I hug you to me, resting my hand on your back and feeling your body calm as it nestles into me. Do I make you feel safe? I like taking care of you.
Let’s not be friends. Let’s fight and laugh and make babies someday and go insane, because I’m fucking in love with you.
Credence. I’m close enough to read it now. It means “belief as to the truth of something.”
I’d love to have his child, though. Someday. I’d love to be his forever and see him as a father.
They lend credence every day to what happened to me and to my need to be in this.
But at the time, in my head, you weren’t the first. You were the one I should be with, because I finally liked myself, and I liked how you pushed me, because it made me push back. You made me learn how to demand. And for that, I’ll always be grateful.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” I tell him just above a whisper. “You actually left Colorado.” “It was time,” he says. I suck in a breath, his words hitting me like a truck. What? I slide off the tire and turn to face him, not believing what I just heard. Deep but soft. Clear and strong. He spoke. Kaleb spoke. Walking around the tire, he steps toward me. “My home is where you are,” he says quietly.
“I won’t be happy without you,”
As long as we’re together, we’re home. It doesn’t matter where.
We were lost and broken, each in our own way, and she needed us as much as we needed her. We’d die for her.
