Page 58 of Run Away Home: Tempered

“So, you do love me?”

“I do. I love you very much. And it’s okay if you don’t love me yet, or ever, but I just want you to know that you are so deserving of love. All the love in the world, not just mine.”

A tear falls from her cheek onto the pillowcase. I lift my hand, wiping away another one with the tip of my pointer finger.

“Don’t worry. I washed my hands.”

She laughs. “I wasn’t worried about that, Peter.”

“Do you remember the first time we saw each other?” I ask.

“Not really.”

“I do. You walked by my room. I was sitting on the floor, facing the wall, talking to...myself.”

“Oh, yeah. I do remember this now. You looked so sad, Peter.”

“I was sad, and then I saw you staring at me and asked—”

“Who the hell are you?” We both say it at the same time and laugh.

She kisses me on the cheek.

“I told you my name, but you wouldn’t tell me yours. You told me you were nobody,” she responds.

“Sometimes I still feel like nobody. Do you remember what you did next?”

“I asked if there was anything I could do to help you, but you told me there was nothing I could do. I think you wanted me to leave.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. I came into your room, and I sat next to you. I know what it feels like to be nobody.”

“You told me that you’d wait right there until I was ready to tell you my name. I thought, ‘what a strange girl,’ but then I turned and looked at you...”

“You thought I was pretty?”

“I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in my whole life, inside and out. You cared about me. You broke the silence in a moment when I needed it most. You have a way of doing that, actually...”

“Yeah, and then I offered you marijuana,” she says and laughs.

“Yeah, and we smoked the shit out of it!”

“My first day back at Melissa’s and I was already causing trouble. I really can’t believe she took me back. No matter how strict she was, or how much I hated her sometimes, she was a great woman. I wish I was half the woman...”

“You are, though,” I say. “You are a whole woman.”

I kiss her on the forehead and gently cup her face. We gaze into each other’s eyes for a long while. I think she likes what I said. She’s waiting for me to say something else that she’ll like, but I can’t think of anything. Just like the first time we met, my mind is absolutely blank. She has that effect on me. She’s a drug all on her own, and I’ll keep chasing her high as long as I live—the empty, uncomplicated bliss of nothing but her. She’s the noise that creates the silence, the ringing in my ears, the something that creates the nothing.Nothing but her.I don’t want anything else. She reminds me of what I’ve been missing, waiting on, for all of the loveless years I can count. She fills that void.

Her eyes open wider, and she smiles just a wee bit. She bites her bottom lip. I look down at her chest and slowly back up at her face. She puts her hands on my cheeks and yanks my face toward her—violently, recklessly. We kiss. My heart beats faster and faster. She pushes me flat on my back and climbs on top. She leans over and kisses me again. I lean upward and pull her down.

Knock, knock.

Fuck!

“Uh, just a moment,” I whisper to Hayley.

Knock, knock.

---