Page 44 of Our Hearts Knew Better

My breathing skipped, then my face flushed as I heard him sneak up on us.

“That’s not exactly true.” His voice was as light as the mischievous look in his eyes that put another skip in my breathing. “I shut up sometimes.”

“Oh, sure, sure,” his mom joked, but our eyes were still locked on each other.

And when he said his next words, I stopped breathing entirely.

“Are you ready to go sailing?” He asked me slowly, a nervous suspense in his voice as he rubbed his knuckles along the kitchen door jamb, a smile budding on his lips.

It bloomed when I beamed, my breath gusting back and releasing as the giddiest sounding laugh.

I hurried to and past him with the skip in my feet now. “Well, let’s go!”

We’ll Steal Away

I already knew imagined experiences weren’t the same as real ones, and after having now experienced so many things I’d only imagined, only read about or saw as a bystander, I kind of never wanted to imagine things again. At least not things I couldn’t also experience.

Therewaswind in my hair and the waveswererushing, with the Gilligan in action.

The vibrations were full-bodied, like calming, steadying hands, a rocking lullaby.

The open sea washed life’s dirt from my skin and the salty air cleared the soot from my lungs.

This was Levi’s thrill, and my new thrilling escape. Discovery. Claim.

Elliot got us going, showing me how, including how to raise the sails, then stayed closer to the sails to keep watch as I took the helm—me!—with Levi as the teacher now.

He stood behind me, near enough for my back to brush his chest anytime I shifted, with his hands on mine at the start. Which he didn’t have to do. But he did, the tips of his fingers dipping inside the spaces in mine, a light hold as I still led us and he followed.

Elliot glanced back at us, doing a double-take, and I noticed the crease in his cheek.

Levi got something else from his dad—his dimple.

I wouldn’t catch my own dad smiling over this picture. Levi’s dad would probably poke playful fun at him later. Some father-son teasing—about me!—that was as normal as they were.

I peeked at Levi over my shoulder to see that adoring look directed out ahead, then down at me, the slowest and most exhilarating smile spreading on his face.

Still touching me. . .

I had to force my focus. I’d told him he could touch me and he was, with none of his hesitance, and I wanted to be swept away by him instead of the sea.

I pressed back against him, feeling the stalling then restarting of his breathing as his fingers tightened around mine.

I was living myTitanicmoment. We weren’t at the bow and he wasn’t singing in my ear and we weren’t kissing and he wasn’t going to draw me nude after this—I flushed at the image, knowing if Levi could draw and he wanted to draw me naked, I wasn’t sure I’d say no. He’d have to keep my bareness under lock and key, but I trusted he would.

I trusted him too. We’d taken so many of those steps and hadn’t fumbled a one.

Still touching. . .

“Can you draw?” I blurted from all the overwhelming sensations, all real and all from him, the question important to my overactive brain at this moment.

And he put two and two together; most people knew what a boat plus drawing equaled. “I can make you look like the best stick figure around,” he joked close to my ear, and I flushed even more. “My mom loves that movie.”

“It’s one of my favorites,” I said, thinking maybe his mom and I could watch it together sometime. “What about you?” I asked him, waiting for the boy smack talk ofchick flicks, but he answered like the boy I knew I was with.

“I like it okay. I felt real bad for the ship.”

It took me a second to register his stressed, half teasing passion for that casualty, then I burst out in laughter, feeling the light jerks of his silent amusement against my back.

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