Page 297 of Falling Backwards
“Yeah!”
Her smile isnotdry, just lovely, and it makes me want to kiss her again.So I do.
After we’ve chuckled out of the two short presses, she says, “Okay, enough of him.”
I have a real smile now too.“Yeah, we’re done with him.Let’s go get my gift card!”
Hand-in-hand, we leave the alcove.
I briefly compare this to the last time we were there—and I wonder if Mr.Moss would be as glad about me punching Jayden as he is about me having stood between Maggie and Kyle.
I believe so.
When I ask her, she heartily agrees, which…feels good, honestly.
But of course it does.I learned the other day, at long last, just how damn good it feels to make a father proud.
And I have the equally good feeling that it’ll keep happening for me.Unlike my former best friend, I’m not a fucking moron—not anymore.I grew up.I got better.I have what it takes to make Maggie happy and take care of her, and it’s going to be my sincere pleasure to continue doing those things.
That’s not to say I don’t laugh when she trips on nothing or that I don’t ask if she walks much as I help her get steady.What can you do, though?
I guess if you’re Maggie, you can give me an unamused look and then smack my ass.
I’ll take it.
God knows I love the spirited side of her just as much as the soft one.
—
New Year’s Eve with our friends is fun.Merritt’s is even busier than it was that Wednesday before Christmas, but Maggie and I came prepared for it this time.
And even though the place explodes with cheers and shouts of, “Happy New Year!” at midnight, all that really reaches me is the enthusiastic, grin-laced kiss she and I share, each of us with an arm tight around the other while we also hold little plastic flutes of champagne.
“You got a resolution?”I ask her through the noise around us.
“Yeah!”Her eyes are crinkling from that ongoing grin.“To convince you to use your damn blinkers!”
I laugh big into kissing her again, unable—at least for the moment—to counter thatmyresolution is to convince her to leave me alone about the damn blinkers.
It’s probably going to be a back-and-forth we’ll have for the rest of our lives.
Bring it on,I think as I catch another glimpse of those magic-touched green eyes.I’m ready.
—
“Just about gone,” I mutter.In the sunlight coming through Maggie’s living room windows, I study the small burn on my arm.It felt like ass in the early hours of New Year’s Day when I first got it—and later in the day too—but it’s healing up nicely now, a couple days later.“Not too bad….”
“Finally feeling better?”Maggie asks from across the room.
Her tone is light, but I know she’s thinking Paxton and I were halfwits to set that little spinning firework off so close to his car at his apartment.And it’s true because, yeah, the thing ricocheted off one of his doors and flew right into my arm.
She got a lot of mileage out of,‘I told y’all we shouldn’t do fireworks in an apartment parking lot!’We tried to argue that her original aversion to the idea had to do with getting in trouble somehow, but it wasn’t a good argument…especially since five minutes later, we did get warned by management to wrap things up and be quiet or else.
I rub at the blemish, then turn my attention to her.“Yeah, it looks good and isn’t hu—”
Startled into silence, I soak up the sight of her.
Over there by the wall near her bedroom, she stands barefoot with her hair up in a ponytail, her body clothed in her shimmery dark green leggings…and a black sports bra visible through the sheer black crop top she bought a long time ago.
