“Huh?” I actually check my shoes pretty regularly. When you share a yard with three dogs, you kind of have to. “Which shoes? Why?”
She laughs. “I don’t know. Before he left, Knox just said to tell you to check your shoes.” She starts walking up the stairs. “Does he know about your obsession with Cinderella? Because that was the first thing I thought of when he said it.”
Cinderella. We did talk about that story. The first night we met. Soul to soul.
“My shoes.” The only ones he could be talking about would be the ones I wore that night. They’ve been buried in my closet again ever since.
Racing up the stairs, taking two and three at a time, I run to my room and go straight for the closet. The first shoe is just a shoe. The second has a folded sheet of paper in it.
“Holy shit,” I whisper to Hannah who was up here napping until I came storming through. Too frazzled to do much else, I decide to plop down onto the floor and just sit for a moment. “Okay,” I try to pep myself up, “whatever is on this piece of paper is bound to be good.” Unless it’s a Dear John letter.No!I shake my head at my own ridiculousness. Freakin’ mean girl voice inside my head doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Knox wouldn’t do that. It’s not who he is.
I take a breath, and once I’m committed, I unfold the paper as fast as I can.
“They’re lyrics,” I mumble, taking in the handwritten words.
At first, I just love the sight of his handwriting. I always think it reveals such a personal, intimate side of a person. Entire aspects of their personality show through in the way they swoop their t’s or dot their i’s.
Only after I let the feel of him in the words sink into my chest, do I let the meaning of them enter my mind.
They say I’m far too independent
To ever tie myself to someone
But here you are
They say it’s much too late for me
To ever change my way of being
But here you are
They say my life is complicated
No one could ever understand it
But here you are
You show me all the ways you see
A beautiful kind of light in me
Now here we are
You truly, wholly show me
All the things I never see
All the pieces I was missing my whole life
I truly, wholly love you
To see you is to know you
Yeah, you’re everything I never thought I’d find (yeah)
One look at you, it was soul to soul
Fell for you, and found the magic, found the magic
