Page 87 of Lost in the Current of You

He shook his head, and his jaw tightened. “You can’t help me, Kody. I don’t think anyone can. This is a me problem. I can’t expect anyone else to fix what's already broken.”

“I’m not asking to fix you. I just want to be the person who holds you when you feel like everything is falling apart. I want you to be able to come to me and just unload all of what is trapped in that head of yours. You can’t be expected to hold this all on your own.”

He turned his head towards me then, eyes full of sadness, vulnerability, and such deep-seated guilt and grief. He let go of my hand and beckoned me to come closer. “Come here.”

I tucked myself into his side, my head resting on his shoulder as his arm came to curl around me. I felt the light press of his lips against my temple, and I relaxed into the comfort of his embrace. I was engulfed in that mixed earthy and woody scent that seemed to be entirely his.

I let myself sink into the feeling of us together and how well we fit. His heart thundered under my head in a fast, rhythmic beat, but when I started to trail my fingers in patterns over his chest, I smiled when I felt his heart pound faster, and I let myself believe it was because of me and my touch.

The sky melted into darkness, and only a few specks of stars appeared for us, if any.

“So much for star gazing,” Reece said, amused.

I chuckled. “That’s fine. This is nice, though.”

I tucked closer to him and his arm tightened around me while his other hand reached over to rest on my hip. The night buzzed around us, but there we were, just two souls intertwined as minuscule beings in the universe.

A content sigh left him. “Yeah. This is nice.”

35

In the boot of his car with the door wide open, we lay together in piles of pillows while the car stereo lulled soft music in the background. His arm wrapped around my shoulder and I was tucked in his side as the golden glow of the late afternoon sun shone down on us.

We were parked in a small car park on a hillside where a lot of locals and tourists came to take pictures and admire the view, but that time of year in mid-January, it was just us and the buzzing of wildlife in the bushes down the hill in front of us. It was like a scene straight out of my favourite rom-com, with almost complete blue skies in our view as we curled into each other, the lyrics of this is me trying floating in the air, and surrounded by snacks in abundance.

But it didn’t feel romantic like the movies portrayed.

If yesterday felt like our time was ticking down to its final seconds, today, I could hear the bell ringing clear as day in my ears.

Last night was interrupted by Reece’s dad calling him. He’d withdrawn then, and the whole drive to my house was silent. He pulled into the driveway, cutting the lights before they shone through the windows, and when I turned to him, he dismissed me with an emotionless “goodnight, Dakota”. Whatever I was going to say to him caught in my throat, and in my dumbfounded state, I got out of the car. I walked a few steps toward the house and he immediately drove off. The ache in my chest intensified then and I went to sleep with fear in my heart.

Earlier, Reece had texted around the time his baseball game ended with a ‘we should talk’, followed by asking if I wanted to go to the Lookout with him. I hadn’t gone to the game because I had been avoiding exactly this. And I thought if I didn’t go, I wouldn’t have to confront it. It wouldn’t be the end.

I already felt like I had lost him, but I didn’t want to make it official. I was afraid of losing the last thread of him that I was holding onto.

I was nervous, and I started biting my nails almost to the quick. My heart was pounding with questions, what-ifs, and scenarios that almost spiralled into madness.

He pulled up at my house about half an hour later, still in his baseball gear and with a strained smile on his face.

It was silent between us on the way to the Lookout. Even in his arms now, the distance was stretching further between us and it felt like a cleaver was slowly and torturously slicing the string tying us together bit by bit.

I was desperate to keep it from tearing apart just to keep us held in the before. Before the tears. Before the heartache. Before the friendship was torn to shreds. Before, where I could still touch him and feel his heart beating in sync with mine. Before, where he could still kiss me and tell me all the pretty white lies that I could tuck into my pocket and hold onto.

I looked up at him, taking in every inch of his face. Eyebrows that made me want to smooth the crease between them, eyes so green that they reminded me of the forest, straight nose with a slight bump curving the top, high cheekbones that make everyone envious, full pink lips that are just as soft to touch and kiss as they are looking at them, sharp jaw that I loved to run my fingers over when we laid together.

He looked over to me, noticing my examining gaze as his jumped between mine. They softened before reaching over to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear. His thumb smoothed over my cheek in a soft brush and it was so lovely to be the centre of his attention. To have him look at me like I was the only person in the world that would ever hold his attention. Having him hold me like that almost made me feel like we were the only people in the world and it would be so easy to just lay there with him, day in and day out.

But then he opened his mouth.

“We should talk.”

A crease formed between my brow as I shook my head and reached up to hook my hand around his neck, my thumb brushing his jaw. “Can you just… just kiss me? Please?”

He frowned as his eyes shone with pain. “Dakota…”

“Please,” I begged. “Just kiss me before I—” I stopped as my voice cracked. I didn’t want to say the rest of my sentence. I didn’t want to voice the reality.

Then he was pulling me in, and his lips met mine in an instant, pouring all the pain, longing, and yearning into that one kiss.

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