45. Chapter 45
Chapter 45
Matt
I brushed Riley’s hair off her face, and she wrinkled her nose. She was in the center of the bed spread out like a starfish; her hair halfway escaped from the bun she twisted it into last night. I don’t know why she even bothers trying to tie it up. There had to be a better way.
“Riley, it’s time to wake up.” I whispered against her lips. She reached for me to pull me back into bed, her eyes stayed closed. I smoothed more of her hair back. “Come on, my love, wake up.” I brushed a kiss on each of her eyelids until she opened them.
“Why aren’t you still in bed?” she mumbled squinting at me. I smiled softly. I knew Riley wasn’t a morning person, and had experienced it on a few occasions now. Maybe one day it would be one of those things that bothered me about her, but for now her snuggled up in my bed and trying to pull me back in was cute. She reached up to run a finger over my bottom lip. Her fingers moved up to the damp hair hanging down over my forehead “You showered without me? How long have you been up?”
We said I was the clingy one, but Riley was the one that hadn’t been able to be away from me long enough to shower. It was like she was obsessed with me or something.
I couldn’t get enough.
“A little while. Wake up, I want to open our presents together before we need to get ready.” I pulled the blankets back and goosebumps raised on her bare skin as she shivered. I sat on the side of the bed and pulled her up into a sitting position, rubbing away the goosebumps. I held up a sweatshirt and encouraged her to lift her arms.
“We could open them in bed.” She let me tug the sweatshirt down over her. “Why are you dressing me? I can do that.” She squinted at her phone. “Matt, it’s so early.”
It was 7 am but the way she said it sounded like I was waking her up at 4 am. I wanted time with her this morning before we had to rush off to be with our families. I was excited for everyone to meet her, for how packed our day was going to be, but having her all to myself the past few days made me a little selfish for our time together.
I wrapped a thick knit blanket around her shoulders and pulled the covers the rest of the way off her. “Come on.” I tugged each of her feet onto my lap so I could slip on her favorite thick knit socks. She was constantly stealing them from me, and had been since the weekend at the cabin. I’ll happily spend the rest of my life buying pair after pair for her to steal.
She rubbed her eyes and then reached for my face. “Merry Christmas, boyfriend.” She kissed me slowly.
“Merry Christmas, girlfriend. Now get your cute butt in here and open all your presents.” I looped one arm behind her and the other under her knees, standing up with her cradled against me.
“You better not have gone overboard.”
“First of all, do you even know me? Second, you don’t have room to talk. I saw how many gifts you added under the tree last night with my name.” We had agreed on a limit of gifts, a limit that I swiftly ignored. She thought she was being sneaky last night, adding another gift whenever I wasn’t looking while separating out gifts going to each of our families.
I lowered her onto the couch, tucked another blanket over her lap, and handed her the mug of coffee I had ready for her. “You need to let me spoil you for once,” she told me. Then she shrugged and added, “they’re all small.”
“You spoil me all the time. Small gifts are the best.” Small gifts were always my favorite, little things that a person saw and immediately thought of you. I couldn’t remember ever receiving a gift accompanied by the words, “sorry it’s small,” that wasn’t one of the most thoughtful things I’d ever been given.
Riley sipped her coffee as I sorted out our gifts, making a pile next to her on the couch and then another on the opposite side. I pointed to mine and then to hers a few times to make a point. Mine was larger by two.
“You still went over the limit,” she argued.
“One is technically for me too.” I did go over the limit, and she had another gift buried in the box full that we were taking to her family. I placed a box in her lap. “Are we taking turns or just opening all at once?”
“You’re going to open all of yours first while I drink some coffee.” She took an exaggerated sniff of the mug. Her favorite flavor for this time of year was maple and cinnamon. I had been making it every morning since she told me.
Riley’s first gift to me was a braided leather bracelet with a large metal clasp. She motioned for me to look at the back of the clasp to see the date of our first date and the coordinates of the café. I traced my fingers over the metal, beaming.
“We’re on the same page,” I said. I moved the smallest box from Riley’s pile onto her lap. “Go ahead and open that one.”
She held up her coffee and shook her head. “Keep going.”
I pouted for a moment before I fastened the bracelet on my right wrist with my watch and picked up my next gift. I hated the feeling of anything on my left wrist growing up because of the way it felt against the desk at school when I wrote. The habit stuck with me.
The next gift was a coupon book for different dates. They varied from things like cooking, dance, and art classes to an assortment of at home dates. There were a total of thirty different. I couldn’t help the goofy smile on my face as I flipped through them. Each one had been hand drawn. She must have been working on this for a while.
The next two were T-shirts with cheesy music jokes on them, followed by a few other items that she said made her think of me. My favorite was a bumper sticker that said “don’t follow me. I’m lost too.”
When I picked up the final gift Riley focused on her coffee, avoiding looking at me. Inside was a leather portfolio filled with handwritten letters. I opened the cover to the first one.
I started this as a form of journaling, a way to write out how I felt about you when I wasn’t ready to tell you. The first one was after our first date, an apology as well as a way for me to write down everything positive and negative those few days leading up had made me feel. It was supposed to be a one-time thing, but once you came back into my life in August I started writing more. It’s probably weird and you don’t have to read them if you don’t want to. I wanted to give you the chance to see all the things I’ve been struggling to tell you.
I flipped through the pages, my eyes catching words and phrases here and there.
Love at first sight.
You were always meant to be someone important to me.
The moment I knew.
She was still staring at her coffee when I closed the book. I moved it aside and squatted on the floor in front of her. I gently pulled the mug from her hands, moving it behind me to the coffee table. I brushed the hair off her face and waited for her to look at me.
“I wrote those without ever intending to give them to you,” she spoke slowly as she tried to explain without panicking. “But then I thought maybe it would be nice to let you read all the things I’ve been wanting to tell you but wasn’t ready to at the time.” Even after everything she was still bracing herself for me to get scared.
I dipped my head until I could meet her eyes. “You keep saying you’re not good at romance, but then you go and do things like this.”
She lifted her face, and I adjusted my position so I could keep our eyes locked together. “It’s not weird?” she asked.
I shook my head and kissed her. “I love you.” I sat back and tapped the gift in her lap. “Now open yours.” None of the gifts I got her could compare to everything she had given me, but they would put a smile on her face.
The first was a small silver locket necklace with the same engraving as my bracelet on the outside and our favorite photo together inside. She laughed as I fastened it around her neck, running her fingers over the metal. “Great minds think alike.”
The gift for both of us was the same dress she wore when I first kissed her but in light blue, my favorite color for her to wear. “As much as I like the black one, I wanted you to have it in a color that was more you.”
The largest box held four different sized matching flower vases. “So you have somewhere for all those flowers I keep buying.” They were supposed to be for her house with Emery, a little something to put around that was all hers. Now that she was moving in, she needed them even more. We had been back and forth to her house picking up more things for her to bring here every day. The apartment was getting cluttered while we moved my things around to make room for hers. All my drinking glasses were full of flowers.
I should buy another set. Or two. Or three.
My personal favorite was a hoodie with a picture of me making a kissy face printed on it. Riley laughed so hard she couldn’t breathe and the only sounds coming out of her were wheezes. “I might wear this to meet your family today,” she said, sending herself into another fit of laughter.
“As excited as I am to see you wearing that, you know the dress code is Christmas pajamas.” I tried to maintain a straight face as I spoke but erupted into laughter. She pulled off her sweatshirt and tugged on the hoodie.
Was it normal for me to feel this happy seeing her wear something with my face on it?
“What if I wear it over the blue dress?”
I pinned her to the couch and tickled her until we were both wheezing from laughter.
I can’t believe I get to marry her. I can’t believe I ever thought someone else could be the one.