CHAPTER 20 #2
“I drew stars because they feel like you.
They bring hope and show a connection to something greater in this world.
You make me feel like that. It's like everything is going a certain way when I was on my way here but now things have changed because of you.
For the better. It's almost like I was meant to find these moments with you to find myself.
" I am shocked. I can't think of a single worthy reply to the beautiful words she just said to me.
“Like a twist in fate,” I whisper so quietly I can barely even hear my own voice. She smiles shyly at my words, and I won't waste another second on speaking. I kiss her lips lightly, my hands cupping her face. The words run around my brain as I do.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
For a moment I wonder if this is my moment.
My time to tell her but as she pulls away, she says “Thank you for letting me spend this summer with you.
I'm sorry it can't last forever.” My chest deflates.
This isn't forever. Telling her I love you will not change a thing no matter how much I want it to.
I feel as if I've woken up. Saying those three words would complicate everything.
She wouldn't say them back and any time spent with her after would be awkward.
She wouldn't spend it happily. She wouldn't let me stay in bed with her.
She wouldn't let me kiss her. She wouldn't let me love her.
Those three words are not worth losing her right now.
To say those three words would be selfish.
“What's wrong?” she asks, and I snap back to reality.
“Nothing.” I take her hand in mine, placing light kisses across her knuckles. “I'm okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Definitely,” I say, but something in me wants to yell. Something in me wants to say how unfair this is. Everything in me wants to tell her that she might be the love of my life. She might be the one I'm meant to be with. I pick up the other lantern and hand her the pen.
“You're definitely better at this than me. This is your surprise, and I want you to do this one,” I say.
She smiles and takes the pen from my hand.
She starts drawing and I shift where I’m sitting so that I’m slightly behind her, watching over her shoulder.
I place my hands against her hips breathing in her fresh scent.
I place a small line of kisses against her shoulder and up towards her neck, my lips grazing the cold metal of the necklace I got her.
“Hey! That tickles. I won't be able to concentrate,” she says, and I can hear the smile in the way she says it. Her curls are covering my face, and I move them over her shoulder and continue to pepper kisses across her exposed skin. She shivers lightly under my touch, and I stop.
“Sorry,” I say, and I lift my head up and away from her shoulder, drawing circles on her hips and thighs every few seconds.
“Okay, I’m done.” I peer over her shoulder again as she lifts up the lantern. Surrounded by a love heart there are our initials. She puts stars near my name and sunshines by her own.
“It's perfect.” I kiss her cheek, and we get up, lifting up both lanterns.
We open up the lanterns and move them around in circles until they expand.
She's practically jumping with excitement and the look on her face is completely irreplaceable.
She laughs a little and the sound moves through the air around us effortlessly.
I place the one with our initials on the floor as I move closer to Ivy to hold out the corners of the lantern.
Ivy reaches one of her hands out take the lighter when I hold the it towards the wick.
“Can I trust you with a lighter?” I say, moving my hand away from her.
She rolls her eyes at me. “I'm not five years old Lucas,” she huffs slightly.
I laugh quietly. “I never said you were. It's just that this is fire, and you are my sister's best friend.”
If she wasn’t holding the lantern, I think she would cross her arms as she huffs again. “So?”
“If you're anything like her, then you won't just burn yourself, you're going to set the whole lantern on fire and maybe even the grass around us,” I say.
“I think I can handle a lighter.” While I extend the lighter out to her, she still manages to snatch it from my hands with a proud smile on her face, as if I hadn't offered it to her.
I place my hands on the corners of the lantern, and she places one of hers on it too but the other hand holds the lighter.
She rolls her thumb against the spark wheel a few times onto the ignition button until a small flame comes from it.
She gives me a satisfied smile before sticking out her tongue at me and a laugh erupts from me.
She holds the lighter under the lantern and suddenly there is a bright glow that lights up her face.
Her smile gets even wider and I’m not sure I have ever felt so happy that I do right now, in this moment, with her.
“Okay, are you ready to let go?” I ask, watching her over the lantern.
“No.”
“Ivy,” I laugh and as soon as I do, she does too.
“Okay, I'm kidding. Let's do it,” she says smiling again. While she's focused on the light between us, I am completely focused on the beautiful girl in front of me who has the power to light up the entire world on her own.
As we let go of the lantern, it floats through the sky, lifting higher and higher with our drawings covering it. As it spins you can see the change of the sunshines drawn wonkily by me and the stars drawn neatly by her.
“It looks beautiful,” she says, and I instantly turn my gaze over to her. Her face is perfectly illuminated by all the light, and I sling my arm around her waist, effortlessly to pull her closer to me.
“It really does,” I say, my eyes still focused on her. She has more freckles than the day she arrived and every night when I can't sleep, suffering with the images of her leaving, I count them slowly. The freckles on her arms I draw together like constellations.
She notices I am staring at her and as soon as her eyes meet mine, a light blush comes across her cheeks.God, I love it when that happens.
“Do you want to do the other one?” she asks me, moving her eyes away from mine. I nod, moving my arm from her waist and back to the lantern on the floor.
This time, when she goes to light the lantern, the small flame hits the skin of her thumb, and she curses under her breath.
I laugh again, taking the lighter from her hand, and give her an expression which I told you to look.
She huffs but she still has an adorable smile across her face that makes me laugh even more.
As we let it up into the air, she instantly wraps her arms around me, watching the sky.
Our initials surrounded by a heart floats through the air.
I lean down to whisper in Ivy’s ear and say, “try watching it until you can't see which one it is anymore.” She instantly becomes focused watching the light join all the others in the sky.
It's beautiful. The people around us are huddled together.
Some people are with their families with children letting lantern after lantern into the sky while some are couples, wrapped around each other.
In their view we probably seem just like them.
A happy couple in love and on a date, hoping that their relationship will last forever.
That's not true at all. I am a guy so in love with a girl who is leaving in a week.
She will be happy and fall in love with some English guy who can be with her every single night.
I'd do anything to be that guy. I can't be that guy. I'm in college and I want to be near my family. This is just completely impossible.
“It's nice, isn't it?” she says, breaking my thoughts.
“What is?” I ask, still staring at the sky.
“Pretending that we could be a forever thing,” she says simply, as if she was listening to my fears.
“It is nice,” I say quietly, not daring to breathe.
I would look over to her again but it's impossible without feeling as though my heart is physically breaking.
She's right. It has been nice pretending that we could be together forever and that we could see each other every single day. It's perfect.
It's a fantasy .