Denver （Sixteen Years Old）
Denver
(sixteen years old)
I was waiting outside the barn, our horses already tacked up, when Blair hopped out of the truck at six a.m.
“What on Earth are you doing?” She laughed as she spoke, jogging down the driveway toward me. “The sun’s hardly up.”
“Exactly.” I beamed, bending slightly to kiss her. A hint of spearmint toothpaste still lingered on her tongue, and she wrapped her arms around my neck, kissing me deeper.
Finally coming up for air, her lips curved into a smile against mine. “What do you have planned for us?”
“Well, it’s the anniversary of our first kiss, in case you forgot.” I could never forget the date.
May twenty-sixth. A blessing and a curse. I wished I had kissed her a single day sooner, so the kiss wouldn’t be forever associated with finding out about Mom’s cancer. A diagnosis which quickly changed from “she’ll be fine after some treatment” to “we’re going to sign her up for trials because her body isn’t responding to conventional cancer treatment.”
Blair pulled my mind from the dark place with a single hand on my jaw, thumb rubbing across my bottom lip. “Hey. Let’s have a good day, okay?”
“That’s the plan. Let’s go, we have a long day ahead of us.”
Giving Chief’s neck a firm scratch, she laughed. “You better not be conning me into helping fix fences or something.”
“Damn, you caught me.” I smacked her ass, eliciting a shriek, and mounted my gelding, Rune, before she could get me back.
For the next hour, we rode side by side along dusty trails and across wildflower-blanketed fields. Talking about our plans for summer, our plans for college, our plans for the rest of our lives together. We raced across a field—naturally, Blair won. And I wasn’t even mad about it, because the sight of her flying through the tall grasses with one hand on the reins and the other holding her hat down, hair flowing behind her, was worth losing miserably.
She hollered loving insults with a glowing smile when I caught up.
“Never met such a sore winner before,” I yelled back, continuing past her.
“I just don’t want to pass up an opportunity to humble you.”
“Such a loving girlfriend. I’m so lucky,” I teased.
She followed me through a stand of poplars, to the shady grove somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I’d stumbled across the spot while driving cattle the previous fall, when I ventured off to move a rogue cow back to the herd.
“We’re here.” Rune stopped and I hauled my ass out of the saddle.
“We’re…where?” Blair looked around confused as she dismounted and tied Chief to a tree.
“Our special spot.” I rummaged through my saddlebag. “Grab the snacks from your bag.”
She did as she was told, pulling out the picnic snacks and bringing them over to the patch of grass where I was fighting with a blanket my mom had given me, struggling to get the silly charcoal fabric to lie flat in the clearing, filled with thick grass and tiny blue flowers.
“Den…I can’t believe you planned this.”
“Yup. I planned a whole romantic thing just to have my lovely girlfriend make fun of me on the ride here.” I shook myhead, gripping the cork from a stolen bottle of white wine. My mom had woken up before dawn to lovingly help pack apple cider alongside the snacks and blanket into the saddlebags. And I promptly switched the bottle out after she left the barn in an attempt at making this picnic a little fancier—more adult.
The cork flew off with a loud pop, and I handed the wine to Blair, who took a swig, wincing at the taste. Eyelashes fluttering closed, she leaned into me, gripping the neck of the bottle and snuggling in tight against my side.
“You know I tease you because I love you,” she whispered. “I love you more than anything in this world.”
“I love you, Bear.”
She set the bottle on the ground beyond the blanket edge and took my face in her palms, kissing me with the taste of wine on her lips. Never breaking contact, she swung a leg over mine and kissed me hard.
“Please. I’m ready for this,” she murmured against my mouth.
I gulped, chest heaving, and Blair worried her bottom lip as she waited for my reply. Likely expecting another rejection. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it. But spending so much time around my grandpa’s rowdy ranch hands had me feeling nervous I’d get it all wrong.
“Are you sure?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Because Blair had been hinting at having sex for months, and it was me who was too scared to go for it.
Her hands tenderly held my jaw, and her rich brown eyes searched mine. “I’m sure, if you are.”
I nodded. With more privacy than we’d ever had before, no rush to get back home, and an entire box of condoms— another thing packed after Mom had gone back to the house —I planned this trip with a goal. It was finally the perfect moment, and Blair deserved nothing but perfect for our first time.
I watched her peel off her jeans while I did the same. Then I kneeled on the blanket, unable to breathe, hands shaky as I fought to open the condom wrapper. “You’re beautiful.”
Blair sat up and raked her nails through my hair, pulling me into a kiss that erased every anxious thought. And when she lay back down, she brought me with her, never breaking contact with my lips.
Later, she packed away our belongings, and I pulled a folding knife from the pocket of my jeans to meticulously carve our names in the bark of a towering cottonwood.
“There,” I said triumphantly, shoving the closed knife deep into my pocket. “Now you’ll always be able to remember the exact spot where you had the best time of your life.”
Laughing, Blair wrapped her arms around my torso, and kissed me. “As if I would ever forget.”
Smoothing a hand over her mussed-up hair, I whispered, “You’re okay, right? No regrets?”
“Denver, I love you.” Her lips punctuated each word with gentle presses to my cheek and jaw, until she was brushing them against my ear. “That was better than I ever imagined.”
Blair picked a bouquet of wildflowers, tucking them into her saddlebag while we exchanged glances. We didn’t get back to the ranch until well after dark, and there was no doubt in my mind that I’d be marrying Blair Hart at that exact spot on the mountainside one day.