Chapter Thirty
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What is love? Baby, don– oh. Sorry. Wrong chat.
Poem
My leg bounces.
Is this what love feels like?
When you love someone, is it this big, huge, infuriating thing? Are you supposed to want to strangle them half the time and soothe them the other half? Are you supposed to be livid at the very idea of someone hurting them—unless it’s you? Unless it’s fun? Unless you’re both enjoying it?
Are you supposed to think about them every moment of your day? Are you supposed to cry when they propose?
Are you supposed to want to say yes, despite not knowing if you’re in love with them, too?
Is this what love is?
Is this what it feels like?
Do I love him?
“Thank you,” Belinda says, grabbing my hand. “Thank you for having the conversations we didn’t know needed to be had.”
I tear my eyes off Fox to smile tremulously at her. “I didn’t do anything.” Or maybe I did. I don’t know. Maybe I was loving him.
Am I in love with him?
My stomach droops.
A little line appears between Belinda’s eyebrows. “Are you okay?” she asks.
“Sure,” I answer. Probably, anyway. Plausibly.
I might be having an epiphany. Or a breakdown.
It depends on the answer to my question.
“Kit?” Fox calls, coming around to stand before me in all his possibly-the-love-of-my-life glory. He puts his hand on my forehead. He has to wipe it on his fancy sweatpants after. “You’re sweating.”
“Am I?” How strange.
Do people sweat when they’re in love?
“Pancakes will be done in a second,” Gil says. “Why don’t you take her to the living room for now? Get her away from the heat. We can’t thank her for talking sense into you by letting her overheat at your island.”
Fox nods, hands already at my waist and lifting. “Come on,” he mutters gently. “What’s wrong?”
“Uh…” I burn where he touches me. My heart rate most definitely increased when his fingers made contact with the skin exposed by my DIYed crop top.
My stomach positively trembled when he pulled me up like it was the easiest thing in the world to simply put me where he believes I need to be for him to effectively care for me.
Is that love?
Is that attraction?
Is it both?
He leads me to the couch as Belinda hovers, wondering aloud if she should get me an ice pack.
“I don’t need any ice,” I tell her. “Sorry. I’m fine.”
Is love supposed to be so scary? Or do I simply only know “love” in the context of fear?
I groan in frustration.
“I’m getting her an ice pack,” Belinda decides. “Lay her down on the couch. I’ll be right back.”
Fox listens, and I’d be embarrassed if I weren’t so agitated.
“Kit,” he rumbles. He tucks my hair behind my ears as he frowns down at me. “You’re worrying me.”
“My parents are so stupid,” I reply. “My goodness, I can’t even recognize love when I’m feeling it. And it’s all their stupid, stupid fault.”
He stills, nose scrunching. “What?”
“I’m so glad their lives suck,” I continue.
“Thrilled about it. But mine is supposed to be better without them. I’m supposed to be thriving now that I’m no longer under their care.
But no. Nooooo. Instead, I find out that I’m in love with a man after…
well, who knows how long? But did I have a clue?
Of course not! Because they messed me right up!
Are you kidding me? What kind of trash is that?
” I groan again, this time in disgust. “You’re literally in there finding out that your parents believe all of the exact same things I’ve been telling you I believe about you, and I see so clearly that they love you in part because they believe in all of the goodness that you put into the world, and I believe all of those things, too, and so…
I mean, I love you, then, right? I must, if I think all of that about you.
I think more highly of you than I do Almond, or my sisters, or anyone, really, and isn’t that just more proof?
” Desperate, I lock eyes with him, hoping he’ll see right through my irises to the emotions beneath and identify them for me.
“Except I don’t feel about you how I feel about Almond, or my sisters, or anyone.
I feel much differently about you. You make my heart pitter and patter.
You make my skin sting like a livewire. You make me want to kiss and be kissed.
You cause all this… this… physical sensation.
Attraction, I thought. But if you’re attracted to a person that you think more highly of than anyone else in your life, then…
well, what is that? Is it love? Is it in love?
How am I supposed to know when the only ‘love’ I ever saw or received was so steeped in fear and anger and resentment, it was most certainly not love at all. ”
I jolt to sitting, the better to appeal to the experts. “How do you know when you’re in love?” I ask Belinda. “How do you know what it feels like?” I ask Gil.
Fox’s breaths cease as I pant for my own.
Belinda sets the ice pack on the counter beside her.
“Sweetheart, I think you already know,” she answers softly, the same knowing spark in her eyes as when she rescued Sonnet and me from our car when we first met.
The spark that says that she knows what my future looks like, and she’s happy she gets to be a part of the beauty it will hold.
She wasn’t wrong last time.
So she must not be this time, either.
And that’s good enough for me.
I launch myself at Fox, wrapping my arms around his neck and pressing my mouth to his startled lips.
“We should go,” Gil murmurs as the gas stove clicks off.
Belinda agrees, and they sneak away next door to visit Amia and Wolfe while Fox and I cry like babies on his living room floor, kissing each other’s tears away until I’m not sure if the salt on my tongue is from me or him.
“We should have my parents over more often,” he says, hoisting us up. “Real problem solvers, them.”
I dig my face into his chest, laughing as our arms cocoon each other. “They love you,” I say. “I told you so.”
“And so do you.” He sighs. “Not even 8:00 AM and this is already the best day of my life.”
As the morning sun beats down on us through his big, beautiful windows on this big, beautiful day, my agreement comes quickly. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize sooner,” I tell him. “I blame my parents. Fully. As usual, they are the cause of every bad thing in my life.”
“Let’s be honest, kit, would I have believed you?
If you had known sooner? If you had told me sooner?
I didn’t think my own parents thought that well of me.
As it is, I’m not completely convinced this morning hasn’t been a dream.
My parents trust me. The love of my life loves me back.
” He rests his cheek on my hair. “It gives too good to be true in a big way.”
“Too good to be true would be if I hadn’t hijacked your conversation with your parents to have a minor mental collapse in the face of a big emotion,” I retort, rolling my eyes at myself.
He shrugs. “Conversation was already over. You laid the groundwork for them already. All that was left was to hear it from their own mouths, and then it just… clicked. You were right. Everything you said they thought about me, they did. Everything you said I didn’t need to worry about, I didn’t.”
I sniff. “I guess…”
“Not to mention, you wouldn’t be you without a bit of drama thrown in. I’d expect nothing less than for your love to be as dramatic and bratty as the rest of you. Of course it wouldn’t present itself tied nicely in a bow. And none of us should expect it to.”
He’s… really not wrong. At all.
And yet.
“I still blame my parents.” I pout. “We could’ve been kissing way sooner if it weren’t for them.”
He lets loose a big, booming laugh, then bends, lifting me into his arms princess-style. The smile on his face radiates joy, beaming more light than the early-morning sun could ever hope to wield. “Let’s go make up for lost time, then, yes?”
I return his beam, hoping my watts measure up to his. “Yes,” I answer. “And Fox?”
“Yes, my kit?”
“Yes to that other question, too.”
His smile falters as confusion hits, then clears, elation turning up the sunrays in his smile near to blinding.
“Yes?” he asks, so, so hopeful.
I lay my hand on his stubbled jaw and rub my thumb across his smile.
“Yes,” I confirm. “And I think that always was the answer. In my words, in my tones, in my play, and in my choices. You have been asking with your every breath, and I have been answering, though neither of us knew how to decipher the answer I was giving. Now, we know.”
“Now we know,” he echoes. “And everyone else will, too.”
I drag my left hand in front of us, wiggling my temporarily empty ring finger.
“Yeah,” I murmur happily. Then, louder, “But that’s for later. For now, I believe I’ve been promised kisses?”