Chapter 18 #2
“Allie,” I heard Chris say from behind me. I stopped, stepped down from the rail, and turned back to him.
“Yeah?” I asked as he came closer. He reached his arm around the small of my back and pulled me in to him, his body pressed up against mine.
“You’re incredible.” He said, looking down at me.
His mouth was close enough for me to feel his breath upon my lips.
As I looked back up at him, I was speechless at the light of the full moon trapped in his eyes.
It was still difficult for me to understand why someone as hot as him wanted to be with someone like me.
I decided not to jinx it by asking. Instead, I leaned in and kissed him.
We stood there on the train tracks, kissing softly among the lightning bugs as they flickered all around us in the dark.
The world stood still with nobody else around, and the tracks would be quiet until the train passed through again at 4:00 am.
These train tracks were once a happy place from my childhood, the memories now stained.
I wanted this new moment to last forever.
Sharing these tracks with Chris was healing.
It gave me the chance to see them in a new light, even if they were as dim as I remembered from so many years ago.
Someone really needed to change that bulb.
“I guess we’d better head back,” I said. “I don’t want to get in trouble with my Mom.”
“Okay, let’s go,” he said, as he grabbed my hand and helped me back down the loose gravel.
As we walked out of the pine trees, I felt a shift in my unresolved feelings about this place. I felt a sense of peace. I had let Chris into a space that I had always held sacred, and I hoped this was a sign that I was learning to break the pattern of pushing people away.
We made our way back across the air strip towards the three-board fence that led back to my house, and as we walked, I wondered if Chris had learned to love the silence, or if he wondered whether I was still doubting everything about us.
I reached my other hand across my body and gently squeezed his arm, which held my hand as we walked.
He looked down at me, and I leaned my head onto his shoulder.
My head bumped slightly against him as we walked, but he didn’t seem to mind.
When we got back to my driveway, I let go of his hand, stopped for a moment, and reached for the knot of his hoodie around my waist to untie it. The temperature had dropped, and I was starting to get cold. His hands met mine and rested gently on top of them to stop me.
“I’ll do it,” he said, as he pulled my hand away and slowly untied the loose knot at my hips.
As the sleeves loosened, his fingers gripped the fabric, and his thumbs traced the bones of my hips.
He bent over slightly and reached around me to catch the rest of the hoodie before he fell to the ground.
When he stood back up, he opened the body of the hoodie and invited me to dive into it.
As he pulled it down over my head, I scrunched my nose.
My hair was still caught inside, so he ran his fingertips behind my ear, then slid his hands behind my neck and pulled my hair out to let it fall down loosely onto my chest.
“Mmm,” he said. “Seeing you in my hoodie is such a turn on, I can’t explain it.”
I pulled the sleeves down past my fingertips, then bowled into him with a hug. He wasn’t expecting my sudden arms around him. He laughed, and we rocked back and forth in the driveway by his truck until I realized it was probably getting late.
“Thanks for coming with me tonight,” I said, then I reached into my pocket and held out the flattened pennies in my hand.
“Thanks for trusting me enough to show me a place so important to you,” he said, then he looked at the pennies, picked one up, kissed it, and put it back in my hand. “That one’s yours.”
I followed suit. I picked the other penny up, kissed it, and handed it to him. He clutched it tight, put it in his pocket, and then leaned in for one last kiss before climbing into his truck.
“Goodnight,” he said.
“Goodnight.”
I stood there in the driveway among the lightning bugs until his taillights were out of sight.
Then I looked back down at the Chris-kissed penny, and I traced the now organic outline slowly with my fingertip.
Smashing these pennies was therapeutic. I slid it into the front pouch of Chris’s hoodie, then headed for the front door.
As I got to the bottom step, I noticed motion in the upstairs guest room window. It was Amy. I decided I was done letting her jealousy bother me. I didn’t care what she saw. I headed inside, replaying the scenes from my evening with Chris over and over again in my mind.
Once in my room, I placed the penny in the marble trinket box on my bedside table that my Dad had brought back from one of his lavish trips.
Then I pulled out my blue composition book journal and wrote about my evening with Chris and shoved it safely between my mattress and got ready for bed.
The last time Amy found my journal, it was in the bottom drawer of my dresser, covered with clothes.
I would make sure that she wouldn’t find it again.