Page 1 of All the Way
Prologue - Chris
One Year Ago
My fingertips paint a trail of warmth against her cheek as I pull her close. The mix tape I made for her last year is playing softly inside the cab of her truck, me and her in the back at the end of the tarmac. A plane roars overhead and I almost mistake it for a shooting star.
“You’re going to love it.” My fingertips dig into the flesh on her hip as she rolls over and puts an arm around me.
“I know,” she says. “I’m going to miss you, though. But you already know that.”
She’s bigger than this town. She’s larger than life. I can’t tell her to stay with me. I can’t keep her from the big, bad world out there. She wants out, and I’d be a selfish prick if I told her to stay here. Letting her go is the biggest sacrifice I’ve had to make, but I can’t let her stay for me.
I sit up and pull her onto my lap, nuzzling into her neck and kissing her jawline where her ear meets her hair. She’s never been as beautiful as she is tonight, and it’s a damn shame that we have to say goodbye.
Lights glow overhead, but no one can see us. We’re hidden out in the open. I pull our blanket around her shoulders and wrap her up in my arms.
“How about a kiss?” I say softly into her ear, pulling her closer, her knees on either side of my lap.
Her face falls forward onto my chest and she moves against my body, warm and soft to my hardness. I dip my hand between us and move between her legs.
“I’m going to miss you.” Her eyes flash open. She could illuminate the whole fucking world with those blue eyes. I lean down and forward to catch her mouth with mine, her lips parting to take my kiss.
“I want more of you,” I say. “And I always will.”
“I’ll be back, Chris,” she says. “We’ll see each other again soon.”
I know she means it, but her words put distance between us. And soon there will be thousands of miles between us, too.
But for tonight, I hold her close.
Chapter One - Jess
This one goes out to all you lovers out there this Christmas.
I click the dial all the way to the left and shut off the radio. There’s already too much buzzing in my head, and I don’t need more. I start to back down my driveway when my truck stalls. I turn the key again and try to get the engine to turn over. The cold weather, plus the snow, plus the fact that I haven’t used my truck in over a year has the stupid thing stalling constantly.
“It’s okay, Maddie. I’m sorry I called you stupid. But please, please turn on,” I plead with my old truck. The windows inside are starting to fog up, and I rub the windshield with my mittened hand and try to wipe away some of the cold.
“Come on baby, let’s go!” I pump my fists in the air as she finally turns on. “There’s my trusty old girl.”
I turn the radio on again, and it’s Christmas song after Christmas song on every radio station. That’s fitting, since it’s Christmas Eve and everyone wants to hear festive music right now.
But not me. I root around in the back of my truck and dig past my old textbooks piled up in a box, finally finding the old mixtape I’m looking for.
“Ah, the glory of college,” I mumble. The warm days during summer break. The cold days when the air would turn our breath to steam. I turn the cassette over in my hands. I still can’t believe Chris made this for me. But he was always a little bit of a romantic, a little old school, and the tape was all part of that. Part of him.
I slip it into the tape player and turn up the volume, not bothering to rewind to the beginning. Instead, I want to listen from where I left off last time.
It’s an old favorite of ours, something by the emo band Brand New, but I can’t remember the name of the song. I shift my old truck into drive as the song picks up speed. It still sounds great, even on the old, busted-out speakers.
All I need right now is to go for a ride, and I say a silent thank you to whoever is watching over me and made my car start up. Maybe it’s my granddad. I inherited the truck from him when I was barely able to legally drive, and I’ll bet he’s still watching down from somewhere.
I continue to back out of the driveway and think about how nothing’s changed in this town as I pull out to the snowy, quiet rural street. The tires crunch over the combination of snow, ice, and rock salt, and I turn up the radio as my taillights sweep over a large pile of snow.
I don’t come back home as much as I should. I started to miss the winter of the Northeast after staying away in California for the whole semester, where I go to grad school for molecular biology. I want to work in a lab and eventually work at a university, researching treatments for diseases.
Either that, or working with animals. I’ve just been accepted to the veterinary medicine program at one of the schools near my hometown, and I’m on the fence about transferring.
I come to the corner and stop for a deer. Not many of those where I live now, unless you count all the girls in Hollywood who wear sky-high shoes. They kind of walk like deer. But not me. I wish I could, but I’ve never gotten the hang of walking in heels.
