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Smiling back at me as she fought not to wake up fully, she released a breathy laugh and laid her hand on my chin. Without opening her eyes, she patted her fingers against me. “You’re talking crazy. Go back to sleep.”
I folded my arm underneath me to rest my head on it and pulled her fingers to my lips. “I’m dead serious.”
Fluttering her eyes open enough to see me, she nodded. “When you finish college and have your dream job and” — I rolled my eyes and collapsed back onto the pillow as she turned into me more — “do whatever else you want to do.” Following me, she slid her arm around my waist and rested on my shoulder. “Then I’ll marry you if you still want me.”
Shaking my head at the ceiling because there were no words to explain this darkness inside me, my foot bounced the whole truck as the panic set in. “I can’t wait that long.” I’d been up for days by that point, I think. Like ants marching along my nerves, my body vibrated, and my head throbbed, snapping me out of sleep the second I got there. “How can I ever go back to not having you beside me at night? I can’t not be with you.”
When her eyes dropped between us, I shifted my chin slightly toward her. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”
She squinted at my chest as she twisted the couple of hairs I had. “I’m not sure. Why?”
The shoulder I held her up with jerked as I pieced together the logic of our relationship in a way that would make sense to someone else. “To piss off my mom, I think, my dad gets me these books on philosophy and metaphysics and all that kind of woo-woo shit.”
I rolled back toward her, dragging my fingers down her body until they came to her belly. “The gist is we’re all energy traveling through the universe like ping-pong balls. We live and die and start over again forever.” Wondering if she felt the same thing, I traced her belly button with my fingertip. “But sometimes, two energies like each other so much they decide they’re going to travel together.”
I flattened my hand against her skin, feeling the thump of her pulse under my palm. “Right here. I have this pain right here when I’m not with you, even before I met you. And the only time it leaves is when I’m kissing you, or holding you, or making love to you.” The magic of what was growing between us made me cry when I thought about it too much, and I blinked away from her like she wouldn’t hear it in my voice. “I thought it would go away once we had sex, but it’s worse. And it makes sense. Doesn’t it?”
I pulled her hand away and bunched it with mine between us. “We’re a pair. We’re not supposed to be away from each other. That’s why it hurts so much more now that I know what being one with you is like.”
The only person who could pull me back from those times I got too strung out on life, Faith gave me a quick smile and bent down to kiss my hand. “Your mind is so beautiful, Dom. Everything you feel is so big and complicated, like a book filled with words I have to sound out a few times before I get the meaning.” Faith was the most practical person on the planet. The entire world was black and white for her, and sometimes, she took what I said the wrong way. “And I’m sorry I’m hurting you because I can’t understand things like you do.”
I dove into her, pushing her to her back to hover over her. “You’re not hurting me. That’s not what I’m saying, and I’m not blaming you for anything.” Her tears slid through my fingertips as I curled and uncurled them against her cheek. “I guess I’m only trying to make you understand what all this means for me. There isn’t any other way out of this but putting a ring on your finger. That’s it.”
She smiled and clicked her tongue as her eyes fell to my open zipper. “Well, I’m glad to hear you say that after what we did last night.”
How the guys I hung out with ran through girls without a thought was a mystery to me. I only had this one to worry over, and the constant fear I might let her down or hurt her made me crazy half the time.
My fingers worked into her hair a little more, taking my eyes with them as I figured the calculations in my head. “Eight-hundred and eighty-one days.”
Faith had many gifts, but math would never be one of them. So, she didn’t at all catch what I meant, only drawing up her nose. “Until what?”
For the first time all week, I relaxed enough my eyes started weaving together, getting heavier with each blink until they closed when I laid down in the pit of her arm. “Eight-hundred and eighty-one days until graduation, and you’re mine all the time.”
The timer started for me at that moment. I had a goal and a target date to focus on, and it changed everything for me, honestly. I was laser-focused on the finish line, putting in my best every day at whatever I did.
I made a lifetime of plans for us over those eight hundred and eighty-one days — all she had to do was trust me to make sure they played out how they were supposed to. But I guess I could never make her feel safe enough to do that.
10
Price to Pay
Dominic
The warm glow of the late afternoon Spring sun lit Faith up as she stood at the pitcher’s mound and sized up the batter.
Over the past nine months we’d been together, she and I became like one person. So when her shoulders pitched upward as she took a deep breath before she swung her arm, I almost smelled the freshly cut grass surrounding her.
She had the prettiest face I’d ever seen, but her teeth gnashed together, making her ugly for a second as she released her pitch. Bringing a quick end to the third inning, she blew a kiss at me as I waved at her on her way back to the dugout.
Her joy was my joy, and watching her pitch strike after strike filled me with as much pride as any touchdown I’d scored during football season.
Though she cowered away from the slightest attention on an average day, my girl shined like a diamond out on the ball field and demanded that everyone kept their eyes on her. Unfortunately, her coming into her own like that was a double-edged sword for me.
Faith wasn’t only my girlfriend, she was part of me. Our connection was more than the stupid fleeting infatuations the kids at school started with a new person every other day.
Like the roots of a tree tangled up with each other, we were inseparable, intertwined. Even when we weren’t together in the flesh, we were with each other.
I was never more secure about anything in my life than I was in our love for one another. But beneath the surface of that comfortableness and devotion was a constant fear that it would all be snatched away at any moment.
