22. Together
22
Together
Carson
My memory can be spacious, but that kiss has taken over my entire brain.
It only happened about an hour ago and I still wish that stupid beach ball didn’t spray sand all over us. I couldn’t even find it in me to care that I got sand all over my jacket.
But the moment was ruined. That didn’t stop my brain from spinning in circles at the events.
I kissed Diana Blanco.
I fucking kissed her and she kissed me back!
She wanted to kiss me. This almost feels like a high school crush even though we’re both twenty-year-olds in our third year of university. But the giddiness of kissing the girl I’ve fallen for still feels the same. Except, while my teenage self was filled with nothing but nerves, this time around I feel a sort of coziness.
We’re now sitting at a bench on the pier, looking over the very same beach. I don’t want to break the silence between us, but we’ve literally said nothing else since that happened.
All we did was grab sodas—I’m halfway through a water bottle while she’s slowly sipping a cherry Coke, to no one’s surprise—and place ourselves on this bench.
One minute we were talking about our biggest secrets and the next…nothing but the sound of silence fills the space between us.
A silence that one of us has to break. And it might just be me even if it’s with something stupid.
“What do we do now?” Like this. Yeah, that’s a question I just asked. Way to fucking go, Ryder. My nerves are bouncing inside my head like a crazy table tennis ball because I am truly speechless.
We both are.
“It’s only one, right? We've still got time,” she responds, her gaze still aimed at the beautiful view in front of us. Though my eyes only focus on her.
“That’s not what I’m talking about, Diana.”
She sighs, shifting herself so that her entire body faces me. Her hair still has some bits of sand and I reach my hand out to dust it all off. Diana doesn’t say anything for a while but once I move my hand away from her hair, she speaks.
“Maybe we should just start walking,” she suggests before standing up from the bench. Wow, she’s desperate to avoid this topic, isn’t she? “What?”
Oh shit, I must have been staring.
“I’ve never been here, you know,” she continues. “Might as well see what this pier has to offer.”
“Okay.” I stand up from the bench and follow her.
We pass a couple of the restaurants before finally reaching the farther end of the pier, away from the screaming kids on the rollercoaster and wannabe rappers. Diana leans forward on the railing, soda still in hand, twirling the top of the bottle between her fingers.
“I don’t know.” Her eyes are trained on the top half of the bottle she’s fiddling with. “I’m not exactly sure, to be honest. It’s a little scary.”
“Scary?” I arch a brow.
“Not knowing what to do next,” she clarifies. “I mean, I went from calling you an overgrown child, which I’m sorry about, by the way, to now and—”
“Let me guess,” I interrupt, dismissing the small apology. “It’s terrifying?”
She nods and her hazel eyes finally stare into me. “Very. It’s easy when I can just figure this all out on my but I can’t now.”
Diana takes a breath to continue but I hold my hand up. “Sorry, but can I stop you right there, again?”
“Yeah.”
“All on your own? That seems exhausting,” I remark.
She shrugs helplessly. “I’ve managed to do a lot on my own. It’s not that hard.”
“But you don’t have to. You should never feel that you have to do everything on your own, no matter what. If you want to, that’s a whole different scenario.”
“I can take care of myself, you know,” she argues.
“There’s no doubt about that,” I agree. “But there’s a lot of people in your corner who would do anything to help you. Including me.”
Her eyes widen slightly.
“Do you know the one thing I admired about you most?” I ask her. “That you wouldn’t visibly judge me and it made telling you stuff a lot easier than it would with someone like Jake. Or even my sister.” And those two have known me longer than Diana. I don’t tell either of them about how it feels to not do something for myself.
But I told Diana.
“But I’m—”
“Not great with talking?” I had a hunch when she kept herself silent around me after the pie incident. “I don’t want you to feel scared to talk to me. If that’s the case, then I’m not doing my job of being a somewhat decent person.”
“I’m not,” she tells me. “I’m just worried this”—she motions her hand between us—“could be too fast.”
“Then we’ll go slow.” I take her free hand in my own, holding it lightly since it’s her right hand that I know still flares up. “We talk about it, and we figure it out. I want to figure this all out, too, but I want to do it with you.”
She stops twirling the bottle with her left hand but keeps a firm grasp on it.
“I want to do it with you too,” she says softly. I could kiss her again right now but I hold myself back. “But I’m scared.”
“Then we’ll be scared together.” I smile softly at her, hopefully assuring her that she’s not alone. “Besides, if we can get through calculus, then I think we can survive anything.” I wink and a small laugh escapes her lips.
“Yeah, nothing was tougher than optimization,” she groans.
“We’ll have to do it all over again for the final,” I remind her, to which she shakes her head vehemently.
“Fuck. That.”
I shake my head and we both start laughing.
“Could it really be that easy?”
“Talking? Simple. Just like this.” I let go of her hand, stepping closer to her. Placing one hand on her cheek, I inch myself closer to her. “Can I kiss you?”
Her breath tickles my nose and she nods. I close the distance between us and she pulls me closer with the straps of my sweatshirt until there’s just about no space left between us.
It doesn’t feel fast to me. If anything, it feels fucking right. There will be times when we don’t agree on random shit but something tells me that, regardless of what happens, we’ll be alright.
Besides, this is only the beginning.
Hard to believe that this all started with a pie to the face, right?