Page 43 (1/2)

"I told you I would shut you up the next tiized"

He slides his hand around to cup ain Once Twice And a third time Hard Then soft Just my bottom lip The corner ofto uncover every possible way to kiss me and check them off the list one by one I open ue flicks out, but I taste hi He falls back against his pillow, and I notice for the first time that one of his cold packs has fallen on the floor, and the other is lost somewhere in the couch

"Why didn’t you tell ?"

"Because then I would have had to stop"

My heart is a spinning top in s are slowing down, I can feel et the ice packs back where they belong

Now I just need to get everything else back where it belongs, too

Except I’" anywhere is false We go through our whole lives thinking that we belong in one place and not in another We think certain ideas and actions have to be relegated to the tiny little boxes we place them in What if we just react instead? What if we take whatever the world gives us and instead of focusing on what it isn’t, we enjoy what it is?

I lean back against the couch and don’t think as I begin to talk I tell hi the way news happens, changing the way the world interacts and reacts He tellshe’s wanted since a coach plucked him out of a standard PE class his freshman year He pulls the rubber band fro strands out over his chest He coh the waves carefully while he tells h school tea

"Before thatthe world felt so daht We lost and there were all these guys on my tea and falling to their knees, and I was just standing there staring at the stadium around us, and all the people that came out to see these two tiny schools duke it out And it didn’t feel like I lost Instead it was like I kicked open soht for the first ti That had been you, too"

He picks up a lock of hair and twists it, and I shiver again

"I think ere suffocating in different ways, but yeah I guess that was it"

His hand in ht there beside him on the floor I close ainst the cushion Quietly, I ask, "You don’t feel that way any to feel pretty fking sain"