Chapter Thirty-One. Rory
Rory
Daye was sitting on the old swing when Rory came into the clearing.
Spring tolled around them like a bell, clear and lucid.
Sun streamed down in shafts between the greening trees, painting a maze of silhouettes on Daye’s cheek.
She was facing away from him, one hand folded to her neck, the other reaching coaxingly forward.
He could just see the curve of her smile, but not what she was reaching toward.
Her hair was spring brown. Brown like the thawing earth after the snow receded.
Brown like the light streaming, cathedral-like, through winter-old marcescent leaves.
Brown like the last of the summer honey, dark and heavy and achingly sweet.
Rory looked for a long moment, soaking it in. The hair, the smile, the unbearable sweetness of it. Her beauty, almost sharp-edged in this kingdom of rounded flower petals and transparent, budding leaves.
He couldn’t help but drink in this privilege. To look his fill. To air out the words he’d kept tucked away all these months, in hopes that if he didn’t look at them, they’d go away, and see if they still rang true:
I love Daye. He did. He always had. That was easy.
I want Daye. That was less easy but no less true. He couldn’t help it.
I am in love with Daye. That was the crux of the matter. How readily these words came. The surety of them. How inevitable they felt. It wasn’t going away.
It felt a little like defeat and a little like relief. It isn’t going away.
He shifted. His shoe scuffed something, and the sound ricocheted through the clearing.
A bird startled in the underbrush. Daye, too, startled, hand snatching back.
Then she looked up and saw him. A long moment of stillness tolled, suspended.
Then her smile, which had begun to collapse, widened, curving higher.
No. He wasn’t ready yet. All his feelings were tossed on the surface like driftwood, pale and stark. He didn’t have time to tuck them away.
‘Rory, come quick,’ Daye signed, hand stretching his way.
He came. What else was he to do?
‘Look,’ she signed as he stopped beside her, and pointed to a shrub by the pond. ‘It’s a nightingale.’
It was, brown and improbable. They stayed still for a while, looking. Daye shifted so her head rested against his arm. After a moment, the bird opened its beak and let out a long, trilling array of notes.
Daye looked up at him, her smile full of wonder.
Without ever deciding to, Rory leaned down and kissed her forehead.
It was okay, though. It wasn’t crossing a line.
He’d kissed her on the forehead plenty over the years.
His driftwood emotions rattled and bobbed, too close to the surface for comfort, but he was already starting to pull back, already tucking his feelings back in where they belonged.
Only then Daye closed her eyes and leaned, a puff of air that could have been a contented sigh ghosting against his neck. And he could feel his hold slipping.
He thought, Things are getting out of hand.
And then his hand was rising, palm cupping Daye’s cheek.
And Daye, lashes feather fine against her skin, tilted her head.
Nestled closer. And Rory was leaning down again, his lips skimming the tip of her nose.
It was still okay, but only just. He had kissed her on the nose before, even if not since puberty.
It was toeing the line, definitely, but not traversing it. Not yet.
But it really was time to pull away. He was waiting. He had to wait.
Only Daye didn’t move. She kept smiling up at him, mouth magnolia pink and eyes alight. And the light kept pouring down, turning her hair amber, honey, fawn-soft and molasses-smooth. Sketching shapes across her cheekbones, her nose, her lips.
And months of indecision folded into themselves as his lips touched hers, softly, so very softly.