Page 151 of Home Field Advantage
Yes, it’s all of that, but it’s so much more.
It took him leaving for me to realize. How I miss the way he laughs at anything and everything. The way the sunlight catches his eyes makes me smile without even realizing I am.
The way I feel for Dallas Westbrook isn’t some casual feeling. It’s a deep, tangled in my ribs type of feeling. I’ve shown him theparts of me I’ve never shown anyone else, physically and mentally.
I crave him in a way one would crave their favorite dessert.
I want his peace, his chaos, hispresence.
I now know what this feeling is.
This is grounding, the feeling of finding a home in a person. It’s the scariest feeling in the world, like standing on the edge of the tallest cliff, but knowing you’ll jump anyway because every part of you wants to.
It’s a feeling too big to contain.
The scariest part? I didn’t mean to feel these things for him, but I did.
I love him.
Tears threaten to break the surface at my realization. The unknowns of everything feel like they’re crashing down around me.
Picking up my phone, I decide to send him a text message.
Ineedto know what’s going on so I can relax even a little bit.
Hey. It’s me. Poppy. I was thinking about you and wanted to see how you were. Are you coming back?
I delete the text before I hit send, tossing my phone on the couch and plopping myself down next to it. I sit and stare at the fireplace in front of me, yet another thing that reminds me of Dallas.
“Get a grip, Poppy,” I say, picking up my phone to actually send a text this time.
Hey.
And then I put the phone face down on the coffee table.
I keep it short and sweet, the invitation to hear back from him, and then I grab a blank piece of paper and start a new list of things for myself.
1. Wipe down the back deck furniture
2. Buy paint for the DIY bathroom project
3.
I can’t think of a third one at the moment, so I move to stand at my back sliding door, noticing there’s still sun left in the day, and I decide now is the time to get started on everything. My brain is a mess, and I realize I cannot control this situation even if I wanted to.
But I can control this list.
Stuffing it in the back pocket of my jeans, I spend the next half hour wiping down all the furniture on my back deck as the sun creeps behind the mountains, and then order paint colors online for the bathroom project that’s been sitting on my saved tabs for months now. Next, I clean up the living room mess by fluffing my throw pillows and folding the blanket over the back of the couch in its usual spot.
Checking my phone, there’s still no reply from Dallas.
My eyes land on the unopened baseball puzzle that Dallas surprised me with. A smile touches my lips, even with the sting of my text message going unread, it still brings me a small bit of happiness, mostly because I haven’t touched a puzzle in what feels like weeks. I’ve spent so much time wrapped up in Dallas, getting out of the house more, Sage, and teaching. It’s forced me to do things outside of my old routine before him.
And I was really starting to like the new routine we fell into.
I turn on the soft light over my puzzle table and get to work on it.
As day turns to night, I have all the edges of the puzzle pieced together to form the outer piece of what will be a baseball field.
