Page 147 of First-Time Caller
“Hold on,” he says. “I’ve got a few more things.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
“She told me once she doesn’t want to settle anymore and I think that’s what I’ve been doing. My whole life, I’ve intentionally broken everything down because it’s been easier for me to handle. And it’s been the same with her. I’ve been letting myself have sips of her, afraid of what might happen if I let myself go. But I want— I want to kiss her when other people are around. I want to hold her hand. I want to have pancakes at her house on Sunday mornings and I want to help with Indiana Jones costumes. I want her people to be my people too.”
My eyes burn. I blink and a tear spills over, glancing along my cheek. No one has ever wanted the full package before. All of me and all of Maya. The family I’ve cobbled together for myself.
Another tear chases the first, then another.
I want to see him. Ineedto see him.
“What do you think?” he asks, sounding shy and unsure in a way he never has before. Aiden with his heart on his sleeve.Finally.“Is this what love feels like?”
I ignore his question. I don’t want to answer it over the phone.
“Where are you?” I ask instead.
He’s standing in the back parking lot with his phone halfway to his ear, watching the back door with quiet, focused eyes. I burst through it like a tornado and his face tumbles into something relieved. Like he wasn’t sure I’d want to see him. Like he was hedging his bets.
I ignore the car in the back corner with a small face pressed up against the passenger window and head straight for him, walking until the tips of my boots are pressed to his and he has to angle his face to hold my gaze. He’s still holding his phone halfway to his ear, even though I hung up on him thirty seconds ago. This part of the conversation is for us. No one else.
“Do you mean it?” I ask.
He nods. “Every word.” He finally drops his phone and slips it in his back pocket. I catch a glimpse of my hair tie on his wrist and my heart stumbles over itself. “But I might have lied a little bit. I already know the answer to my question.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he says, his eyes amused. He reaches up and traces his fingertips across my cheek, then curls his hand around the back of my neck, his thumb beneath my ear. He holds me steady, nowhere to look except right at him. “I know what falling in love feels like because I’ve been falling in love with you.”
My breath rattles out of me in awhoosh. His thumb dances a circuit from the hollow beneath my ear to my cheek again, catching a tear. I guess I haven’t stopped crying.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“What else could it be?” he says, voice hushed. Reverent. Wanting. “I’m sorry about this week. I wanted to take the time to find the right words to say. I wanted to get it right.”
“I don’t need the right words. I just need your words.” I grip his sweatshirt. “Don’t make me wait like that again. Tell me where you are, even if it’s not perfect.”
“Okay,” he says quietly, its own kind of Band-Aid over the wounds we inflicted on each other. A laugh sighs out of him. “You’ve always been so much braver than me.”
“You called in to a radio station.”
“You started it,” he says, voice low. “I figured we should end how we began, yeah?”
I feel my face pinch. “Are we ending?”
A slow smile inches across his face. I watch it start in his eyes and drift down to his lips like the sun setting in the sky, the whole world lit up in gold. “Not even close, Lucie.”
I want to kiss him so bad I feel it like a palm between my shoulder blades. A string from his chest to mine, pulled tight.
“What now?” I warble, shifting closer, digging my nose in the hollow of his throat. He laughs, his big hand cupping the back of my head.
“Well, I’m hoping you love me too.”
“I do.” I sniffle, somewhere in the depths of his sweatshirt. I’m probably getting snot on it, but I don’t care. I never thought I’d be wanted the way Aiden wants me. Never thought I’d be seen and appreciated and adored. But he does. He sees me. He wants me. Helovesme. “I love you a lot.”
He hums, a vibration in his chest that rumbles into mine. The hand in my hair holds me tighter. “I’ve never let myself feel like this,” he confesses quietly. “I’m out of practice, but I’m going to work so damn hard at it. I promise.”
“I’ll be right here with you.”
