14. Summer 19
“What do you mean?” Andrew stammers. His earlier confidence is gone, and his summer tan has turned nearly ghost white.
I glide a little closer to him, looking into his eyes. “You know exactly what I mean.”
His gaze shifts down nervously. I become aware of the fact that I just asked what we are to each other while we’re naked in the lake with a fifteen-minute walk back to the truck and then a five-minute drive to follow. Way to think.
“Honestly, I don’t know why you need to ask me that after all this time.” He looks off at the mountains and then back at me. “I think I’ve been pretty obvious with how I feel. It’s you that I can’t figure out.”
“What?” The word comes out shrill. “I think I’ve been pretty obvious.” I laugh nervously.
“Hmmm…We both think we’ve been obvious, and we both think the other is confusing. Guess we have some things to work on.”
“Like directly answering the question I just asked you,” I remind him.
“Damn it, Em.” He sounds exasperated, but he continues quickly. “You’re my favorite person in the whole world. I just want to be around you all the time. When I’m with you, I forget about all the shitty things I’ve been through over the last year, and I’m the best version of myself. Seeing your smiling face every day is a true test of my self-control because, God, it takes everything in me not to grab you and kiss your sweet smile.” He continues rambling as if he will lose the courage to say what he has to say if he takes even a second to think about it. “I’ve been stupid in the past, and this summer, I’ve tried to give you the space you need to heal. I know you’ve struggled with being back here. And I hope I don’t have to bury my feelings to be your friend, but if I do, I will. I’ll do whatever I can to keep you in my life because you mean the world to me, and it was hell without you for the last nine months. I didn’t picture this being the setting of this conversation, but at least it’s out there now.”
Every part of my body is on fire at the sound of his words. I want to swoon right now, but if I value my life at all, and perhaps my dignity, I have to keep treading water. I want to kiss him more than anything else, but this isn’t the right setting. We are skinny dipping in the deeper part of the lake for crying out loud! Instead of doing either of those things, I find myself frozen.
He likes me!How long has he felt this way? How long have we felt this way for each other and stepped around the issue because we were scared to ruin our friendship? How long would it have taken us to finally find this out if I hadn’t said something to him just now?
“Em? Say something, please,” Andrew implores.
I swallow. Even with him laying his feelings out like that, it’s still hard to cross that threshold. It won’t be easy to go back to the way things were once I do. I suppose it already won’t be after Andrew’s confession. I inhale and exhale. Here goes nothing.
“I feel the same way.” I watch the wild smile spread across his face. Suddenly, the words I have left to say become easy. “I’ve felt this way about you for as long as I can remember, you idiot.” I laugh. “You are this ray of sunshine in my life. I feel comfortable just being myself around you, but there’s also something about being with you that makes me want to do everything I can to become an even better person. Somehow you make that so easy to do. I don’t know where we go from here, but I hope there’s some place for us to go because after all this time—” I stop, unsure what else to say, breathless from the combination of the last five minutes and still treading water.
“I think we can start by getting out of this water and getting our clothes back on because all I want to do right now is kiss you, but I need to get these groceries back to my mom. She’s already going to whoop my ass for taking so long.” He chuckles. “Besides, I’m still a gentleman.” He nods toward my naked body.
A smile cracks across my face as I scootch away from him a little bit. “Who’s getting out first?”
“You can go, and I’ll watch from here.”
My jaw drops. “What? Absolutely not! What happened to being a gentleman?”
He bursts into laughter. “I’m a gentleman, but I’m not blind. Seeing you in a bathing suit kills me.” At the instant coloring of my cheeks, he quickly adds, “You can still go first, but I promise I will turn away.”
My pounding heart settles as he promptly turns away from the shore. I find my clothes and get dressed.
Getting back to the road was no easy feat. We didn’t talk much, too preoccupied with our thoughts and our attempt to make it back to the truck in one piece.
Now sitting in the passenger seat, I debate breaking the silence between us. “After both hiding our feelings for so long, I don’t know what to do once they’re out there. Now what?” I try to make it sound like I’m teasing, but underneath my fa?ade, I’m panicking a little.
He peers over at me for a moment before returning his eyes to the road. “Listen, we can’t let things be weird between us now. Nothing has changed because we both had the same feelings for each other before we shared them out loud.”
I shake my head, agreeing. He’s right. There’s no reason for anything to feel different. My courage comes back. “Can I play ‘Porch Swing Angel’for us again? I have it on Spotify if I can connect to your truck.”
“I’d like that.” He clicks a few buttons on the screen in the center of his truck. “It should be ready to connect to your Bluetooth.”
I play the song, and it takes on a whole new meaning. I’m not listening to the same parts as before quite so much because I’m no longer burying my feelings for Andrew. Now, I’m hearing the parts that unravel the love story.
This song is poetry. I catch Andrew humming along, reveling in the moment as much as I am. I can’t help the smile that blooms on my face at the sight of it.
The song ends, and I put on some random song from my playlist to get us through the rest of the drive. Andrew immediately twists the dial to turn the volume down.
“Hey! I was listening to that.”
He smirks. “One of us needs to get a porch swing. It sounds romantic as hell.”
I snort and roll my eyes. “You’re such a dork.”
“I’m serious,” he insists. “Then we will be the perfect embodiment of that song. It can be our song.”
My lips curve at the thought of us having a song together, even if it feels a little cheesy. Andrew interrupts my thoughts. “I have something to talk with you about.”
I give him a weary look. “Okay.”
He grabs my hand, resting on the center console. “Relax. It’s nothing bad.” He squeezes my hand. I realize this is a completely normal action from him, but it feels immensely different now that we have professed our feelings for one another. His hand lingers longer than normal, not letting go as he continues. “I want to take you on a date. I know we went to the bookstore and got ice cream a week ago, but I want to take you out to do something we haven’t done before and be able to call it a date.”
I feel the squeeze of giddiness in my chest that gradually bubbles up and shows in my face as I grin like a total idiot. “Yes…Yes, let’s do that! I’d like that.”
He returns my lame grin with a goofy smile of his own, as if he can’t contain his joy either. He collects himself and responds. “How about tomorrow night? I’d do it tonight, but I have to be at the dinner my parents are hosting tonight. I can pick you up at five tomorrow.”
“That sounds great. What’d you have in mind?”
We pull into the Martins’ driveway, and he pulls out his key after killing the engine. “That, sweet Em, is for me to figure out.”
I giggle. “No clue, huh?”
He walks me toward the front door of our cabin. “The problem is actually that I have too many ideas, and I have to settle for just one night’s worth.”
I gaze up at his beautiful blue eyes. “Play your cards right, and we can do everything you have in mind because there will be plenty of dates.”
He gives me a smug look. “I already know there will be plenty. Now that we’ve made it this far, I’m not screwing this up. You’re stuck with me.”
“Oh, crap!” I tease as I open the door and take a step inside. “Thanks for a fun day, Andrew.”
I reach out for his hand to give it a tight squeeze. He grabs it and pulls me in for a hug instead, and I feel myself sink into him.Despite spending an hour in the lake, he still has a clean, masculine scent to him. His body is warm and firm in all the right places. I could get used to the feeling of his strong arms wrapped around me.
We slowly peel our bodies apart, but his forehead remains pressed to mine. I can feel his warmth, and my heart is beating a thousand miles a minute. I can feel the soft puffs of his breath against my lips, and all I want to do is break the space between us, but he remains super still, and I’m careful to follow his lead.
“When I finally kiss you, it’s going to be amazing. We aren’t just going to kiss on your porch like some teenage cliché. I’m going to have something bigger planned for us.”
His words take the wind right out of me. The combination of his lips this close to mine and his sweet words have made me forget about the most basic thing I need to live. He pulls me in for another squeeze before he finally pulls away.
He steps off my porch, heading back to his cabin. I walk into the house and head straight for my room to grab fresh clothes so I can shower. Dani is sitting on the couch, reading a magazine. Why on earth she isn’t outside basking in the lovely afternoon sun is beyond me.
She peers up at me curiously. “Why are you wet? I thought you were getting groceries with Andrew?”
I run my fingers through my hair. “We did. We went for a spontaneous swim on our way back.”
The look of shock on her face is priceless. “Since when were you one to be spontaneous?”
“Since now,” I state, confidently storming off to my room.
I grab some running shorts and a T-shirt to put on after my shower. I have no one to impress. Andrew won’t be around, and even if he were, he’s seen me in running clothes countless times, and he still adores me. Wow. Andrew feels the same way for me as I do for him. This is incredible!
I can’t wipe the smile off my face as I turn the water on and think about the fact that Andrew Martin told me how he feels about me today and is taking me out on a date tomorrow night. Rebecca would freak out if I could tell her.
That’s when it hits me. The one person I want to talk about this with right now is Rebecca, and she’s gone. I can’t tell my best friend in the whole world about this exciting news. She spent so much time planning how to get the two of us together, and she doesn’t even get to see it come to fruition.
Andrew and I both said we had cared for one another for a while before we professed our feelings, so what took us so freaking long? I’m not mad about the time Andrew and I missed together. Sure, it would be nice to have him be mine for longer, but I’m content to have found our way to each other now. However, I am angry at us for not getting our shit together for Rebecca. She wanted to see this happen as much as I wanted it to happen, and we took so damn long hiding our feelings because we were scared. Now, she doesn’t get to be here for any of it.
At this point, I’m sobbing. I’m angry at myself, and I’m hurting for the loss of Rebecca. This should be a happy moment. I should be hugging Rebecca and giving her a play-by-play while she tells me “I told you so” right about now, but I’m not. I can’t.
I get out of the shower and gain some composure while I get dressed and brush out my hair. I open the door, sniffling a little, and find Dani standing outside. She looks like she was just waiting there for me to come out.
“Sorry, did you need to use the bathroom?” I ask, wiping gently at the corners of my eyes, hoping she can’t tell what I was just doing.
Dani opens her arms and wraps me up in them as if I’m a caterpillar and her arms are my cocoon. It feels good to be cared for like this. In college, I’ve been on my own. No one knew what I had been through right before coming to school, and my family was two hours away. Dani was even further because she’s going to school out of state.
Rubbing my back, she asks, “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
Just like that, the dam breaks, and I burst into tears all over again, balling in her arms.