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The sudden clarity of that acknowledgment is comforting, but also startling, terrifying.
Five, four, three, two, one. Five, four, three, two, one,I remind myself, hoping to slip further away from the panic.
Five things I can see:Jude’s arms holding me tightly against him, his strong hands keeping me steady. Stormy gray eyes, and the concern churning violently within them. A broad chest rising and falling with its breaths, matching the cadence of mine. Dark boots on the concrete as he pushes that much closer, dragging me into him in a fierce, comforting hug. The dip in his throat as he swallows, and his head nods, encouraging me to keep breathing, and breathing, and breathing.
Four things I can feel:Jude’s hands sliding from my elbows to my shoulders to my neck. My heart trembling as it beats inside my chest. My breaths squeezing through a tightened windpipe, fleeing from my mouth in a hurry. His forehead knocking down into mine, rooting me in place against him, grounding me.
Three things I can hear:His steadying breaths. His heart pounding beneath my palms. His quiet, careful words—"It’s okay. We’re going to find it. Keep breathing with me. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Two things I can smell:The grass surrounding us, and Jude.Spice, thunderstorms, and fresh rain.
One thing I can taste:His mouth when I lift up onto my toes and kiss him. He tastes like cotton candy. Like every summer and storm-drenched day rolled into one. Sweet, sugary, masculine.
My heart finally calms, my breaths settling into a regular tempo. Panic bleeds from my body, from my psyche, taking thebuzz of adrenaline along with it and leaving a numbness in its wake.
I nearly sag into the floor.
If it weren’t for Jude’s hold on me, I would. But I melt into him instead, molding my body into his as exhaustion flourishes around my bones. He holds the full weight of me in his arms without a single complaint.
I want to go home now. I’m mortified.
But my necklace.“Fuck. My necklace…” Anxiety expands again like a balloon inside me.
“We’re going to find it, Little D,” he says, and I believe him. It’s impossible, but I believe him.
We scour the park, tracing our every step backward for so long the sun disappears. Down every sidewalk, and in every swatch of grass, back at the hotdog cart, and inside the museum, and all the way back to the carousel again.
I walk around its perimeter, my eyes glued to the spinning floor, watching for a spark, or a glare, or anything that might signal a missing necklace dropped on the ground.
With every passing minute, my heart sinks lower, burrowing into the deepest pit of my stomach.
There’s no way we’re going to find it now.
“Declan! I got it! I found it!” Jude rounds the carousel and doesn’t stop his quick pace until he’s right in front of me, a golden chain dangling from his fingertips, and a thin pendant, too.
Relief floods through me. It washes every ounce of dread away from my body,because he found it.He found it.
“You—” Tears spring forward behind my eyelids, spilling free. I can’t finish my sentence as he stretches his arms around me and clasps the necklace together behind my neck. Giving it one last squeeze, he drops it softly against my heart.
“We found it, baby.” He presses a kiss to one of my cheeks, and then the other, holding me carefully between his palms.
Declan, California, Dec, Little D—he’s run the gamut of names with me, butbabyis a first.
My eyes meet his. Gray, but no longer chaotic, no longer turbulent. Just sure. Settled. Calm.
“Declan, I—”
I push up onto my toes and kiss him, silencing his words. Our mouths slide together as two separate entities, and then melt into one. I can hardly tell them apart as we move them together—lips, tongues, teeth, exploring. Exchanging feelings and words I’m not ready for us to say.
I think I could kiss you for a lifetime,being one of them.
And I tell myself it’s possible, too.
______
Later that night, in my dorm room when I’m all by myself, I stare into the mirror. Into the torrent of my own gaze—blue and raging like the sea.
Opening the cabinet, I grab the orange plastic container I’ve been avoiding and clutch it tightly in my fist. I sway back and forth, mentally, between being brave and taking them or tucking them away and putting it off again. I know what I need to do, but I keep telling myself I can handle it. That I can fix it.