No one would say I’m the kind of girl who falls into guys’ arms, yet here I am, with the warmth of him, the scent of him, all wrapped around me tighter than his arms. I have to be hallucinating.
My brain takes that as a cue and it’s off and running. Crazy daydreams explode behind my eyes like a sappy, heart-shaped fireworks montage. I see us kayaking on a placid lake, then we’re swinging together in a hammock, dozing in the dappled sun. Next, we’re walking at the crest of what I imagine the cliffs of his island home might look like. Worst of all, Xander’s carrying a young child on his shoulders who looks like a disturbing combination of the two of us. The rush of longing, belonging, and happiness that washes through me startles me. I push away from him so fast I trip over the ground anchor and land on my butt.
He coughs into his fist. “You alright?”
“Of course, I am.” It irritates me no end that I fell on my butt at something I grew up doing. And it’s his fault. All I can do, though, is stare at him. He said he loved me. Surely, I didn’t hear that right. Yet he’s meeting my gaze, not flinching, not laughing, just smiling softly. It’s almost as if he’s daring me to ask him to repeat it.
I stand and try to pump some air down my shirt. Why is it suddenly so warm in here, and why does my voice sound stupid and breathless? To get my mind off that, I start talking and gesturing. But I use a bit too much gusto, and it unquestionably makes everything way worse. A shaky laugh bubbles out of me. “Ah, next, you should… hands… you have big, meaty… you should grab big ones, I mean… not pockets because you can only fit two fingers up there, I mean, in there, and you might hurt yourself… then there are those hips, by that I mean yours… in a corner like this, ah, stemming helps, like counterpressure… because pressure can help you drive, like, up….”
My hands hover midair when Xander closes the gap between us. Since they’re caught between us, they curl into his T-shirt all on their own. He takes my face in his hands, tilts it up to him, and smiles. “You don’t know how many nights I laid awake thinking about how to tell you that. May I kiss you, Hattie Blue Montague?”
I can’t tell you for certain if I pulled him down, or if he bent down, but the result is the same. Just before our lips touch, we both hesitate. Right after a quiet breath, the edges of our lips lift in an almost simultaneous, uncertain grin. I reach my finger up to touch the right side of his pouty mouth, the crooked mouth that has haunted me in my deepest dreams for so long. His slight smile melts into something more intimate, something much less playful, and he turns his head enough to kiss the tip of my finger softly, taking it ever so slightly between his lips. I slide my hand up his cheek and press my lips to his. My breath catches in my chest as his lips move against mine, softer than a breeze at first. He brushes them slowly, as if he’s exploring and memorizing their topography.
Somewhere in my fuzzy brain, I can hear a bell jingling. At first, my brain wonders about the strange response to his kiss, then I hear the middle school kids giggling like crazy little banshees. Xander pulls away and chuckles. “I should have done that years ago. My Hattie.”
My Hattie. Those two words destroy me.
And with them, I realize they were wrong. All of them, every single poet and scribe who ever described butterflies in your stomach. None of them even came close. I don’t have light touches flicking haphazardly in the depths of my belly, barely touching and caressing, before bouncing away again on gauzy wings. No, it’s nothing remotely that innocuous. Swiftly flowing currents of rushing, pent-up emotions are crashing against my insides, swirling with the need to finally be acknowledged and allowed to pass. They storm my quiet eddies and burst through, washing away the numbness I’ve clung to for so long. This, they rage. We need this, the connection, the contact, the touch of human lives intertwined.
Except I can’t, not with him. That kiss just proved it. My hand shakes when I press my fingertips to my lips. If I feel like that after one brief kiss, what would happen after two? Three? More? I let my hand drop. “Get on the wall, Greye.”