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She sighs in contentment, and the sound is a vise grip around my heart before it eases, bleeding that same, contented emotion into my veins.
I push my face into her neck and breathe her in.
Ocean, flowers, andsex,invade my senses.
I fall further from reality. Where I can hold this girl in my arms for an eternity.
Next thing I know, I’m gone to the world with Declan sleeping soundly beside me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Declan
A week later, it’s hot, peak summertime.
Sunlight washes in through the small window above my bed, heating my skin, but the air conditioner is on, too, hitting the same stretch of my body and almost cancelling out the warmth.
Almost.
Raspberry and vanilla flood my tastebuds as I slide my popsicle over my tongue and pop it into my mouth. I suck on it, letting it slowly melt on my tongue.
When I glance over at Jude, he’s watching me, a heated look lighting up his gaze. He has a vanilla and orange popsicle, and is sucking on it just the same, so I admire him just as freely.
The shape of his full lips curved around the orange and cream. The striking gray hue of his eyes reaching into me. The small dimple curving into his tanned cheek as he smiles.
How our summer is almost over, I don’t know. It’s felt more like six days than six weeks.
I still remember that first day at the airport, and how nervous I was. How many questions I had where there aren’t any now. And that day Jude picked me up at work and took me to his brother’s tattoo studio. All the tension that stretched between us like a taut rubber-band, and all the uncertainty, too. How that band finally snapped and drew us together.
The day in Central Park. How calm and grounding Jude’s presence was. His quiet words, and his palms at my cheeks, the severity of his stare smoothing my anxiety away. That first kiss we shared. How it stopped time. Stopped the chaos ofeverything. The panic of my thoughts, and my racing heart, and my shaking limbs.
And the day I met Jude’s family.
His sweet mother and his tough-as-nails but just as kind father, and his hilarious brothers. The balloon ritual we all did together. How deeply it touched me.
I still can’t quite believe I got to be a part of that. That he wanted me there, in his home, meeting his family, sharing in an experience that felt so personal, so… beautiful. I felt safe, there, with a porch full of people I’d only just met but already wished I could know forever.
Emotion constricts my throat just thinking about it, a subtle rush of tears burning behind my eyes.
If I thought saying goodbye last summer was hard, this time might break me.
But we still have tonight. And already, time has slowed, defying its own laws, allowing us to exist in its midst just a bit longer.
Or maybe that’s all Jude.
He’s always been able to slow time without trying. When I’m with him, it feels like the entire world is on pause, and the only things that exist are him and I. Only our breaths, only our hearts beating, only our words passing through the world between us.
He leans over and picks up the book that’s been sitting unread on my nightstand for too long, and then he begins to read it out loud.
And time pauses and stretches a little bit more.
______
Hours pass, the sun dipping below the horizon, and the moon shining brightly through my window as Jude reads us pages fromA Little Life.
My head rests on his outstretched arm, my knees bent and my feet flush with the mattress, my finger twirling small pieces of my pink hair as I listen.
His low, gravelly voice hums words about life, and loss, and the irrevocable way things break, but how sometimes, life will shift and conform itself around those losses, around those broken moments, and leave us with something else a bit wonderful in their absence.