Page 163 of Falling Backwards
I’m not sure this is a good idea, but I’m also not sure it isn’t.So I go with what I do know: I don’t want to step back or let go of her hand I’m still holding or lower my fingers from beneath her chin.
I just nod.
More moments pass with us looking at each other.
Then she asks, “Do you remember the little things?”
A gentle question.
Not a test.Not a challenge.
An admission more than anything else—her expression tells me so.
“Like how…” her voice softens and her feet shuffle, “…like how I remember what color your shirt was the first time you talked to me.Maroon.And that you gave me your last crinkle fry at lunch one day even though I hadn’t asked for it.And I remember you playing air-guitar to Story of the Year and Fall Out Boy.And you got a big waffle bowl of ice cream after we went and played mini golf, but you couldn’t eat the whole thing, so you put it—the chocolate-dipped waffle bowl with rainbow sprinkles all over it—you put it in front of one of the tires on your car and ran over it.And I remember us scaring a bunch of birds out of a tree by the lake ’cause we were laughing really loudly about‘Egg’fromArrested Development.And—”
Light laughter bubbles up out of me.Like a few minutes ago, she joins in, a pretty smile taking over her face.
Even as her eyes glisten.
It feels like her fingers flex around my heart rather than my hand.
I squeeze her hand, too, and reflect on those memories—and others—for myself.
My own admission has to be made.“Yeah, I remember the little things.All that stuff you said.The bird thing was so funny.”I smile with her.“Youhad on a flowery dress and a dark blue cardigan the first time we talked, and your hair was in a braid.And I remember us sharing chocolate at the movies—I touched your hand when I gave you some of it.”As it drifts through my mind and washes sweetly down my spine, I add, “I can still see the way you looked at me after the first time we stayed up almost all night talking on the phone.We went to bed at 4:30 in the morning, but when we met up in front of the school just a few hours later, you looked at me like you’d been missing me for….”
My voice weakens away.It shouldn’t be a difficult thing to say, but for some reason, it is.
Probably becauseImiss that look like absolute hell even knowing how we went down in flames not long after.
Maggie is nodding.She whispers, “For much longer,” as an end to my sentence.
I nod, too, and clear my throat once, twice.My voice returns, but it comes out thin when I specify, “Days.That’s what I thought:‘She looks like she’s been missing me for days.’”
Those eyes of hers lower to my…I don’t know, my everything.Lips, chest, down, down, down towards my feet.
“It felt like that,” she tells me.
I slowly take this confirmation in, and she takes a slow breath before looking at me straight again.Her cheeks are going newly pink.
“And lately,” she says haltingly, “grown-up me feels it too.”
That has me holding my breath.
My heartbeat seems heavier in my chest.Along with it, another truth starts up a pounding in me—starts trying to pound rightoutof me.It wants to meet hers and let her know I feel the same way.
I watch her eyes fall closed and I realize my thumb has started brushing over her jaw again.The breeze is shifting her hair again.And I’m breathing again because I can’tnotbreathe her in.
It feels lacking to just tell her I miss her, too, so while I try to figure out how to put the sentiments in me into proper words, I let my eyes wander away from her.They absently take in the blue sky, the trees, the pond…
…and…
…Kyle.
My soft thoughts stop in their tracks.
Kyle.Kyle.Kyle.
A small, disbelieving part of me wonders if that’s really him lingering over there, pointedly glancing over a sign about feeding park ducks, but the rest of me recognizes him with ease.I haven’t forgotten what he looks like, and he’s close enough that there’s no mistaking a different sandy-haired dude for him.
