Chapter 21 #2
I stare down at the notebook, tears filling my eyes. “Why do you have this?” I choke out. I don’t get a response at all, and I’m about to lose my mind, so I shake Austin awake. “Wake up. Sit up.”
He does. Of course he does. Austin peers at me with one eye closed and the other squinting, his eyebrows drawn in confusion. “Why do you have this?”
After a few more seconds of Austin staring at me like he doesn’t even know what plane of existence we’re in, he waves a hand through the air. “It’s your bedtime idea book.”
“My bedtime idea book?” I ask, throat nearly closing up.
“What are you not getting about this, Luc?”
Is he fucking serious right now? “What are you not getting about this?” I flip through the first few pages, confirming my suspicions.
I can’t make out any words, but at least half of this book is filled with nonsensical scribbles and half-ass ideas.
“You really still have this? This is at least ten years old.”
The awe in my voice is unmistakable even to my own ears. Austin squeezes his eyes shut for a second, his face contorting in concentration. “Fourteen years old, actually. I got it for you when we were twelve. And I told you I still had it.”
I throw the blankets off myself and rush across the room, flipping on the light.
“Wow, holy shit,” Austin complains, covering his eyes with his hand.
“Sorry.” I dive back into bed, laying the notebook down on my pillow and opening it up to the first page.
There’s a treehouse and two best friends. The treehouse has a magic door that only opens if they both say the combination.
A laugh bursts from my chest as I stretch out on my stomach and flip to the next page.
Remember that ice cream place mama took us to last week? Yeah something with that. Maybe the ice cream keeps filling up even after you eat it all.
That one makes me smile, but it also makes my stomach hurt. God, I miss my mom.
Austin lies down beside me, pressing close as he leans his head against mine. “The next page is your idea about superhero rabbits that fight crime.”
I turn my head to look at him. “How do you know that?”
A small smile stretches Austin’s lips, then he leans in to kiss me. It’s just a soft peck, but I find myself smiling into it anyway. When he breaks away, his grin grows. “I must have read through this notebook a hundred times over the years.”
“Why?”
Austin sighs, rolling to his back and staring up at the ceiling.
“You always had this spark about you, Luc. This brightness that nothing and no one could dim.” I study his face, watching as a sweet grin lights up his eyes.
“You’d wake up in the middle of the night rambling about some new story idea, and well—I don’t know.
When you left, I found this under my bed.
Half the time I don’t think you even remembered me handing it to you. ”
“That’s why you handed it to me tonight?” I ask, heart thrumming in my chest.
Austin glances at me with a sheepish expression. “Yeah. Heard you mumbling over there, and muscle memory kicked in.”
“When you say ‘muscle memory,’ you mean tossing my notebook of ideas at me?”
“You got it.”
I flip to the next page, not at all surprised to find that Austin was right. Then the next and the next. There have to be ideas from when I was twelve all the way to fourteen or fifteen in here.
“Oh, look at this one,” Austin says, rolling back to his side and flipping quickly through the pages before landing on one of the later entries.
Two boys falling in love? Big brown eyes, dirty blond hair. Sunburned skin that peels and tans after. They kiss.
A few lines down, I scribbled,
Mom says that Dad’s kisses taste like sunshine. I wonder if that’s true.
I read over it twice, my heart in my throat. “This is the last one,” Austin says. “Always wondered if you were talking about me.”
I was talking about him, actually. And it wasn’t even two weeks after this that we had our first, dry-lipped, fumbling kiss sitting on his bed in his mom and dad’s house.
I had woken up from a dream about it. Kissing him, that is.
Almost made for an embarrassing morning, but thankfully it didn’t go that far.
And then I looked at his sleeping face—the pink on his cheeks from his sunburn, the lighter pieces of blond in his hair, bleached from the sun, and his parted lips—and thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to see if kisses tasted like sunshine the way Mom claimed they did.
“I was,” I say simply. “It wasn’t even two weeks after this that I asked you to kiss me.”
“It was the falling in love part that always got me. This is right around the time your story ideas switched from magical musings to romance and love.”
That makes me smile. My throat is tight again, this time with something I’m not quite sure I can name. “Yeah,” I breathe.
“Do you still think those two boys could fall in love?” Austin’s quiet question makes my stomach twist with want.
“Maybe,” I whisper. I let my fingers idly trace the words on the page. I used to believe so hard in love. I thought it would cure all, fix everything, and be my salvation and my safety. “Nothing really changed, you know? I was still writing about magic. Just in a different way.”
Austin hums, leaning on me and pressing his lips to my temple. “What do you mean?”
“I wrote about love like it was magic.” I touch the word love with my fingertip, tracing it over and over like it can somehow bring back the hope I had when I wrote it. Back when the idea of love was warm brown eyes and sweet, sunshine kisses. Back when it felt like the cure and not the ailment.
Now love is tainted. Just like me. Mixed up with bruises and pain. “It’s not, though. It’s an illusion.”
Austin’s quiet for a second. “Love’s not an illusion, Luc.”
“Sure feels like it,” I mumble.
“Can I tell you something that might hurt your feelings a little?”
I glance at Austin to find him watching me with a serious expression. “Sure.” I brace for impact, sure that harsh words from Austin will hurt more than any hit I took from Damien.
“Damien didn’t love you.”
I blink at him in shock for a beat. “What?”
“That wasn’t love, Luca. Nothing about it was.”
An ache blooms in my heart, nearly stealing my breath. “I know that.”
“Do you?” Austin asks softly, reaching a hand up to cup my jaw. “Because I worry that you think love equals cruelty, Luca, and it doesn’t. If I were lucky enough to love you, I’d never lay a hand on you.”
“I don’t want a relationship,” I say automatically, wanting to suck the words back in the second his eyes dim a little. “I don’t—I mean, it’s just… ugh!”
I sit up, frustrated and upset with myself for hurting him.
He follows in a rush, sliding his hands into my hair and forcing my gaze to his.
“I know what you mean, baby,” he murmurs, and my heart goes haywire.
I really do like it when he calls me that.
“I’ll never push you into something you don’t want. With me or with anyone else.”
That’s never been a doubt in my mind. I know Austin would never force me into anything. It’s part of what makes me feel so safe with him. Knowing that everything is my choice. “I know. Is there a balance, though?” I ask.
“Balance?”
I nod. “Yeah, like… can we still kiss and maybe have sex eventually?” I say. God, I really hope sex is on the table in the future. Sex with someone I trust? Who respects me? Fuck yes. “But like, it not be a relationship?”
I hold my breath while Austin mulls over my words, his eyes scanning my face. “You want the closeness. The intimacy, but not the label or the pressure.”
Fuck, it sounds awful when he puts it like that, but yes, essentially. “Kind of. Maybe it’s all in my head, but being ‘in a relationship’ feels like a trap. I want to be with you. God, so bad. But not, um… not locked into anything.”
It’s not fair to ask of him, and I know that. I know it’s not. He would never ask something like that of me, and I can’t believe I’m even thinking about asking it of him. But I think it’s all I can offer. It’s all I want to offer. And just like when we were young, I trust Austin.
“Okay,” he agrees easily. “That’s fine. We can make it our own thing. No labels. Just sex and kisses and whatever else you want.”
I can’t help but laugh. “You make it sound so simple.”
He shrugs. “It is simple, baby. This is what you want, and I want to give you what you want.”
I don’t even know what to say to that. What do you say when someone so easily accepts your limitations and boundaries instead of plowing through them and acting like they’re entitled to you or your body or mind?
I have no idea.
So I do the only thing I can think of and lean in to kiss him. He smiles against my lips, his fingers gently stroking my face. All too soon, he’s pulling away. “Write your idea down, baby.”
I’m still smiling when I pull the pen from the spiral binding and turn the page, adding my newest idea right after my musing about two young boys falling in love.