Jamie
The front door opens, and Holden appears dressed in nothing but boxer shorts. His hair is a mess, sticking up in all directions, and his eyes have that just-woken bleariness. He’s glaring at me, and I don’t know why. I’ve been awake for almost an hour already, waiting for him to do the same. I stayed in bed for a good half of it before boredom kicked in, and so I got up, made myself a coffee, and now I’m sitting on the bench just outside his front door.
Without a word, Holden re-enters the house and slams the door shut between us. “Holden!” I call out.
“One minute!” he yells back.
“Weirdo,” I mumble, contemplating whether to get up again. I’ve already walked around his front garden, basking in all the smells as I checked out the plants and had multiple one-sided conversations with random birds. In other words, I’m living my dream.
The door opens again, and Holden reappears wearing gray sweatpants but still beautifully shirtless. “Do you have a bird book?” I ask.
He slumps down beside me, his head drooped between his shoulders. “A what?”
“A bird book,” I repeat and sip my coffee while he shakes out his hair, combs his fingers through it. “Like a book about different species of birds.”
He swings his gaze to mine, his eyebrows furrowed. “I’m not sure if you’re aware, Grandma Jameson,” he says, his voice cracking from lack of use, “but they have this thing called the internet now, and you can access it any time from your phone.”
A giggle builds in my chest, but I suppress it. “I don’t recall you being this grumpy in the mornings.”
Swear it, he actually humphs. Right before he takes my coffee from me and throws it across his yard, mug and all. Then he reaches down, sweeping my legs up and over him while lifting me onto his lap. He hugs me tight, and he still has that just-out-from-under-the-covers heat radiating off him. I nestle in while he mumbles into my neck, “I thought you’d left.”
My stomach sinks. I wasn’t thinking, too busy caught up in my own head, my own emotions. “Aww, baby. I’m sorry.” I run my hands through his hair, try to soothe him.
He rears back. “Did you just call me baby?”
I nod. “Is that weird?”
“No.” His grin is ridiculous. “I like it.”
Hoping to lift his mood, I say, “I just thought baby suited you since you’re acting like a giant one.”
“Shut up,” he laughs out, pressing his mouth to mine. I can taste the toothpaste on his lips but can barely feel the touch.
“Is your mouth numb?” I ask, breaking the kiss.
He laughs, nodding once while he relaxes his hold on me. “I can barely feel it.”
After he kissed me in my garden last night, we never really stopped. He’d packed a picnic blanket and basket, and we ate as the sun went down, kissing between bites, and we talked. A lot. Once it had gotten too dark to stay out, we got to the four-wheeler, and he kissed me again. He told me that Maggie had made up the guest room at the main house, stating that he didn’t want to be presumptuous of how our night would end. I told him I should probably stay there. He kissed me some more, and we both knew neither of us wanted to be apart. So, we came back to his house, and lay in his bed, and kissed. And that’s all that we did. For hours. He never made a move toward the next step, and I didn’t really want him to.
It was so sweet.
So innocent.
Like what I imagine being with your first crush is like when you’re a teenager. The butterflies. The giddiness. The fighting the fatigue and the heaviness of your eyelids just so you can be with them a second longer, kiss them one more time.
So, yeah, our second first real kiss kind of did last forever.
It was the perfect first date, and I’m nowhere near ready for it to be over.
“What are you doing out here, anyway?” Holden asks, pulling me from my thoughts.
I answer, “I like it out here. The smells. The plants. The birds.”
“The birds?”
“Yep.” I nod. “I’ve already talked to them, introduced myself so they know I’m not a danger to them.”
His chuckle is deep, raw, and I feel the effects of it right in my chest. “You little Snow White,” he says, tapping my leg.
I look out at the garden and try to spot the same birds from earlier. “What do you mean?”
“Didn’t Snow White communicate with birds or something?” I think about it a moment, coming up blank, and shrug in response. “Yeah,” Holden says, “when she was with the dwarfs.”
I face him. “What dwarfs?”
It takes him a moment to realize, and I can sense the moment it hits him. His eyes turn soft, his lip pulling down to a frown. “You don’t know Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, do you?”
“I guess not,” I croak. “Maybe Mom read it to me before… you know, but I think I was too young to remember it.”
Holden smooths a hand up and down my leg. “Aww, baby.”
“Shut up,” I laugh out.
He squeezes my thigh in response. “How long can you stay for?”
I hide my smile on his bare shoulder. “I don’t have any immediate plans.”
“So forever it is,” he declares.
Forever is a dream, and I hate the flash of insecurity that flickers through my mind. It’s been there since I woke up this morning, coming and going as it pleases, and I really wish it would just fuck off.
Holden runs his nose along my temple, shifting my hair so he can kiss me there. “I was thinking…” he starts, leaning back into the seat. He sucks in a sharp breath, releases it slowly. “Since you like it out here so much, I could build a roof over this area, pave it out a couple of yards. Maybe get some garden beds right here,” he says, pointing a straight line in front of us. “You could put whatever you want in them, so you can choose what you get to see every morning.”
A breath catches in my throat. “Those are some pretty permanent plans,” I say, dragging my hazy eyes to his.
“Yeah, well, my feelings for you are pretty permanent.” He cracks a hint of a smile. “Obviously.”
For minutes, we sit together, neither of us saying a word. It would be so, so perfect… if it weren’t for the constant reminders of impeding dread flying through my mind. In and out. Again and again. Finally, I ask, not looking at him, “How’s your mom, Holden?”
“What?” he laughs out, and my shoulders tense. “That’s random.”
I drop my gaze, trying not to let my discomfort show. “Well, I know that you guys were close. But, I haven’t heard you talk about her much.”
“Yeah, we’re still close,” he answers quickly. “She’s still on her honeymoon at the moment, so we don’t talk as much as we usually do, but she’ll be back in a couple of months.”
A couple of months.
That’s the limit of expectation I’m setting myself.
I push on with the questions because my need to know outweighs the uncertainty. “So, things didn’t change much with you guys after I left?”
“Not really,” he says. “Before you even left, she was already traveling between Tennessee and New York to be with Mia. And once Benny was born, she was there almost full-time. By the time I went off to college, she’d kind of already started a new life with without me.” He shrugs. “Besides, I’m grown now, so… I guess things changed a little, but that’s to be expected, right?”