Page 185 of Falling Backwards
I make a mental note to tease her later about how I remembered to go buy them all by myself, without a reminder.Then her voice pops into my head:‘A mental note?No!Actually set a reminder so you won’t forget!’
It makes me roll my eyes.
Also makes me chuckle, though.
I’ve got it bad for that girl.
The honest thought has all kinds of things rippling through me: heat, a chill, something admittedly fluttery, something else heavy with surety.
It all intensifies with my quiet resolve to do things right this time.To do what it takes to keep her and allow her to keep me.
I never thought I’d get a second chance with her—never thought I even wanted one—and now that it’s in my hands, I can’t wait to hang on to it.
—
What.A.Day.
I haven’t quit thinking it because things have kept getting better.I got my apartment tidied up, including my bedroom since I don’t know where Maggie will feel comfortable sleeping, and it felt good to have everything extra in order.We texted during her break at work and she had me grinning over her optimism about Kyle and her seeing that the universe didn’t unravel from her not clocking in on time.Then I talked to my aunt on the phone for a while, helped Ms.Ruth and Mitzy hang Christmas lights outside their front window, got the idea to have Maggie help me decorate my own front porch soon….Now she’s back with me and we’re shopping for things with which to do that very decorating and she’s dropping her head back and laughing because I let her put a reindeer headband on me and apparently it’s hilarious.
I don’t even care if I look silly.I can’t help laughing with her.
But I say, “All right, you owe me,” and reach for some of the fake mistletoe set out for sale on the endcap of this aisle.
She gasps out of laughing as I hold it above us—but nope, the laughter is back because I’ve bumped my reindeer antlers with my hand and I guess they’re even funnier-looking now than before.
“Oh, you don’t need this,” she manages to assure me.She takes the mistletoe from me and tosses it away, her other arm going around me as she slants her face up to mine.
It’s my turn to gasp even as I draw her closer to me.“Did you just blindly throw that thing somewhere instead of putting it back where it goes?”
She presses her lips together as if embarrassed, the pink in her cheeks adding to the look.But that color has been there for some time now, born of her good mood, the brightness of which hasn’t gone anywhere.
I freaking adore it.
I think about the mistletoe and about her being a little late to work, and finally letting my lips near hers, I drop my voice to a whisper.“You’re a rule-breaker today.”
“Well,” she whispers back with a smile, “relish it while you can, because Iamgonna put the mistletoe back where it belongs.”
“Unless…?”
We laugh so much it gets in the way of our pressing kiss—and then somehow the antler headband topples awkwardly off my head and bonks hers, which cracks her up so much that her burst of laughter echoes around this part of the store.
I’m hit right in the middle of my chest by that unbridled sound, by the happiness in her eyes when we lean back from each other…and by the realization that this is…
…how it feels to fall in love with someone.
My breath catches.
No, this is how it feels to fall in love with Maggie Moss.
In a rushandin moments we’ve paused everything else for.
Out of nowhereandafter a long time coming.
And…it’s exactly right.
She is exactly right for me.For who I am.
She always was.
