Page 43 of Anywhere with You
Cara stood in the hallway outside my apartment, her face flushed.
I smashed right into her, nose to nose, boob to boob.
“Ow,” she said, putting her hand to her face.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I said, reaching out as though I was going to pat her boobs apologetically. She swatted me away, laughing.
“Were you—” she asked.
I asked, “Why—?”
We both stopped, touching our own noses, and laughed.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Her hand fell away from her face as she tried to stop giggling. “I’m okay. Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I said, taking a step closer to her, looking at her beautiful hair, her lovely face, allowing myself to look and be caught looking.
“Come back inside,” I whispered. “Please.” I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but she was still here with me. She hadn’t left earlier, and she wasn’t leaving now. I needed to know why before my own words spilled out and trampled hers.
Her smile faded. She blinked quickly, her eyes wet.
“No,” she whispered back, but she took my hand. “Not until I tell you. If I move from this spot without telling you, I know I’ll lose my courage, and I have to…I have to say it.”
I nodded, scared to speak. She looked so serious that I had no doubts about what she was about to tell me.
She’d say it was too hard to be friends.
She’d say that she tried, but it wouldn’t work.
She’d say that all her friends and family thought it was weird that she’d already spent so much time with her soon-to-be ex-husband’s new girlfriend’s soon-to-be ex-wife.
She took a deep breath and looked into my eyes.
“I love you,” Cara said.
In an instant, my eyes were overflowing with tears, and I didn’t try to stop them from falling.
Cara continued, “I’m pretty sure I started falling in love with you the moment you came to my door to apologize for yelling at me in your store.” She gave a little laugh, and I stood there, in awe of the sound.
“It was the pastries,” I whispered through the tightness in my throat. “No one can resist them.”
“It wasn’t the pastries, Honey.” She squeezed my hand.
“It was you. It just took me a little while to realize that the remarkably kind and wise woman sitting beside me was more than just my convenient traveling companion. I’ve never met anyone I admired more, and that was just the beginning.
I love every beautiful and terrifying and ridiculous moment of our time together.
I love every conversation, every argument, every one of your awful jokes.
I love how much better both boredom and excitement are when you’re with me.
I love the way the world looks through your eyes and how willing you are to share it with me.
And that’s all I want. For you to share it with me. ”
She was openly crying now, too, tears falling faster than she could wipe them away.
I didn’t leave her waiting. I pulled her close to me and kissed her, her arms wrapping around me, both of us holding on for dear life. I reached my hands into her hair, curls encircling my fingers. Her lips were better than any daydream, and I had daydreamed. Endlessly.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped, stepping back. “I should’ve asked.”
“Don’t stop,” she breathed, pulling me back to her. “Don’t ever stop.”
I kept kissing her, walking with her back into my apartment, closing the door, and reaching the hallway without losing contact.
Outside my bedroom door, my lips found just the right place on her neck, and she made that soft, happy sound that she’d made earlier.
“Honey,” she moaned, and the sound of my name in her breathy voice sent my pulse running but somehow also brought me back to the moment, to her, perfect and gasping against the wall.
I took her hand and kissed it, then pulled her into my room.
I closed the door so Badger wouldn’t interrupt us if he woke up. My new bed frame was still in a box, so Cara sat on my mattress on the floor, and I sat next to her.
Her lips were wet and red and entirely distracting. I closed my eyes for a moment, but even the sound of her breathing was erotic.
“I need to know what you’re thinking, Honey.”
I almost told her. She would’ve laughed.
Instead, I told her the other things I was thinking, everything I’d been thinking for a while now, and everything I’d just realized.
I had felt so bound up, almost mummified, for years, but all that emotion hadn’t evaporated.
I still had it all. I’d just needed someone to show me what openness looked like.
I’d needed someone who’d listen, whether I was making awful jokes or freaking out in an elevator or lamenting my failures over the edge of the Grand Canyon.
“I can’t believe you were here, all these years, and I never found you,” I whispered to Cara. “I just didn’t see, until everything else in my life fell apart. And there you were, rescuing me, and you didn’t even know it.”
She smiled, and my heart felt full and lighter than air.
“I love you, Cara. I love you so much that I bought a popcorn popper before I bought silverware. I love your meticulous vacation planning, and I love every detour, so long as I’m with you.
I love how outrageously sexy you are in red lipstick and with bare lips and first thing in the morning and when you’re exhausted because we stayed up too late.
I love how you were brave enough to come into my store that day, brave enough to keep going on our trip after I left, and brave enough to come back tonight.
I’m in love with you. If you want to know what I’m thinking, that’s it.
I’m in love with you, and I want to spend every day being in love with you, for as long as you’ll have me. ”
When she kissed me, I felt all my words echoed back to me. I didn’t need to hear her say I love you again. I could tell. I could feel it in the warm tears on her face and the way she pressed her whole body as tightly against mine as she could.
But I also knew that I would hear them, that Cara wouldn’t let a day go by without telling me because that’s how Cara loved: meticulously and bravely and with her whole outrageously sexy self.