Page 129 of Nothing Without You
That’s what I told myself, but whenever I opened my fucking mouth, the words disappeared. She stroked my cheek, looked at me with utter devastation that I couldn’t tell her today.
Later.
Adelaide was enjoying herself without the distortion of feelings or the constant weighing of watchers. She felt safe enough to let her hair down with me. She felt safe enough to be herself.
How could I wipe that away with a couple of truths and bring those feelings back?
It just wasn’t the right time.
Tent four was for hertwenty-secondbirthday and it was pyjama party themed. There were mattresses covering the whole tent. Fuck, this was crazy.
Remind me to pay the workers more money for this shit cause it was fucking insane.
Adelaide took her shoes off and urged me to do the same. She then dragged me into the mattresses and started to jump. “Come on!”
I wasn’t going to the jump because how fucking stupid would I look in front of her?
Before jumping again, Adelaide kissed my cheek. She continued to do it until my feet moved on their own accord.
Then right next to her, in the middle of the fucking day, we were jumping on mattresses like a bunch of children.
“We should take a break,” I wiped away the hair stuck to the nape of her neck while she was panting for air.
Three more tents left.
I was getting fucking nervous.
Tents five and six,twenty-threeandtwenty-four, were merged into one because inside both of them was a rollercoaster that connected to each other. It wasn’t huge by any means. It was definitely a small rollercoaster you’d find in malls.
“How the hell did you do this?”
Her bafflement amused me.
“It wasn’t hard.”
“This had to have cost a fortune,” her hair spun over her shoulder when she turned to look back. “All of this must have.”
I shrugged. “I have the money.”
Her expressions steadied themselves. “You would have done this for anyone then?”
“No, fuck no.” I grabbed her arms to pull her to me. “Only you.”
Couldn’t she feel what she did to me? My entire existence turned into a speck of dust that didn’t matter when she was in front of me.
She’s what mattered.
I opened my mouth to tell her how long I'd been working on this project, how I did it to remember her, to pretend we were still together, or that one day our paths would cross again, and I could show her this.
But her phone rang in the midst.
“Excuse me,” she answered the call. “Auntie?”
Eda.
Nails dug into my palms.
She picked at the skin surrounding her nails while she spoke with hesitance. “How’s Bali?”
