Page 58 of The Boy from Half Moon

He was so sweet, so heartbreakingly perfect. Part of me knew that what I was feeling right then was the beginning of something major. Fighting my heart was futile. I was done. Put a fork in it.

“What are we doing, Luke?” I whispered, exhausted from the questions in my mind.

He closed the small gap between us. We stood in an empty, graveled parking lot, staring at each other. There were a thousand things I wanted to say. Each one of them made no sense, considering I barely knew him. But isn’t that how love can be sometimes? The age-old adage, ‘It’ll happen when you least expect it.’

“I can’t speak for you, Tate, but I’ve been dreaming lately,” he stated. “I’m dreaming about being with you. I’m dreaming about what I can do to prove to you I’m someone worth being with. So, I’m dreaming about the day you feel the same way about me.”

Wow! That was a response I wasn’t prepared for. People might think Luke was simple. Perhaps they looked at him and then lumped him into a category where he was less than they were. They, like me, could never know what choices were made for him when he was born. Decisions that brought him to the life he lived.

But Luke was anything but simple. The sad reality for others was that all they had to do was scratch the tiniest bit of his beautiful armor and they’d see what I saw; a truly wonderful human being who said exactly what he thought. Spoke straight from his heart.

“What if I already felt the same way?” I asked, figuring he wouldn’t be expecting that response.

I was wrong when he unexpectedly had an answer ready. “Then I would be ready to show you how much you mean to me, Tate. I would prove to you I’m more than what people think I am,” he began. “Sure, I don’t know all the right things to say. And I’ve never even kissed anyone, but I would be loyal to you. I would work really hard to improve myself for you, too.”

“I don’t want you to change,” I stated. “No one is worth changing for, Luke. Especially when you’re already so good.”

Luke cupped his hand over his eyes, looking into the distant horizon, the sun about two hours from calling it a day. His mouth pinched while I watched him. He seemed to have more to say. I studied his profile and wondered if he had any idea how handsome he was.

He was a big guy—it seemed I always went back to that—but carved to such perfection that you overlooked his sheer mass. He definitely had me feeling weak in the knees whenever I thought about being with him in a certain way. A way he admitted he lacked experience in. A way he’d also stated he’d prefer not to participate in.

“I’ll need to make plenty of changes, Tate,” he said, lowering his hand from his eyes and turning back to me. “I won’t be able to be with you if I don’t.”

Alarm bells sounded, setting my goal of being with him ablaze. “What kind of changes?”

“I won’t be able to stay on the ranch if you’ll agree to be with me, but I don’t know how I’ll protect my family if I don’t.”

“They need protecting?” I asked, surprised yet not truly knowing anything about his family or the ranch they all lived on.

As I stood there, doubts and life experiences began flooding my mind. What the hell was I doing? We came from entirely different places. Our lives couldn’t be more different than if he’d arrived from outer space. Was I really willing to ask this boy to change his entire world for me?

“They’ll suffer if I leave,” he stated. “But then again, they’ll suffer if I stay.”

I turned away from him. This was all going way too fast. I had no clue what his other life was like, and encouraging him to join my world? Where would Luke fit into my world?

“Can we maybe not rush you into something?” I asked, turning back, biting my lower lip, knowing that wasn’t what I truly wanted.

Like the ones on playgrounds, my emotions were on a see-saw ride. Up. Down. Love him. Don’t love him. When he wasn’t near, I was desperate to see him. When with him and confronted with the reality of his world and what the odds were for us, I panicked that I’d end up hurting him. Hurting me.

“I’m not rushing,” he stated. “My whole life I’ve stood still. Idly standing by and waiting for something to happen while the world around me keeps going by,” he explained. “The ranch and that life isn’t what I want, not as an adult, anyway. Something has always been missing, but I couldn’t figure out what that was, Tate. Not until the day you walked into the bakery.”

“I felt something that day, too,” I admitted. “You didn’t give off the impression you liked me, though, Luke,” I teased.

“I was tongue-tied is why.”

I checked my watch. “I suppose you have to head straight home?” I asked, wanting to table this until we were somewhere more private. “If so, can we pick up from here another night so we have more time to talk?”

“Can I show you something?” he asked.

“Now?”

He nodded and motioned to the truck. “I’d like to now, and we’ll take the truck because where we’re headed is dusty and too bumpy for your car.”

“Can we stop and get some caffeine-free Cokes on the way to wherever you’re taking me?” I asked. “Perhaps officially call it a date?”

His mouth pinched. “I can’t,” he replied. I sensed he was disappointed about why he couldn’t.

“Did I push the Cokes on you the other night?” I asked, worrying I disregarded his lifestyle. “Maybe crossed a line I shouldn’t have?” He kicked at the gravel and wouldn’t look at me. “Luke?”

---