I make a very unladylike squeal when he heads straight for me and lifts me in his arms, bridal style.
“Mason, put me down.”
My protest is weak, as evidenced by the way my arms loop around his neck, because what woman in her right mind doesn’t want to be carried like this by her man.
When he takes me out onto the deck, I exclaim, “Mason, I’m not dressed!”
“It’ll take just a second.”
The early morning sun is blinding, and I have to shade my eyes with a hand.
“What if the neighbors see?”
“I’m your neighbor. And you’re decent.”
“I am not! I’m wearing a sheet.”
My words fall on deaf ears as he pads down the steps and rounds the corner between our houses and stops in front of the Southern red oak.
“You kidnapped me to come outside with no clothes on for a tree?”
“Nope. I wanted to give you this.”
He gently lowers me to my feet onto the dewed grass. I grip the sheet tightly to my chest for obvious reasons.
“Know what this tree reminds me of?” he asks.
I love how he sees it the same way I do.
“The Wishing Tree.”
“Yep.”
He takes something out of his pocket and places it in my hand.
It’s a piece of wrinkled pink construction paper in the shape of a heart with a small hole at the top. The paper’s edges are frayed, and the pink color bleached white in a few places.
At first, I’m confused. And then I see it. The cursive writing. It’s barely legible, but I see it. Recognition slams into me.
“How?”
I can’t even get the rest of the words out because I start bawling like a baby.
I want Mason to love me.
It’s my wish. The one I wrote a dozen times and hung on the Wishing Tree at CU. How is it possible he has it?
He hands me another paper heart. This one new, the paper crisp and bright with a thin satin ribbon looped through the hole.
Mason loves Aria.
“I love you, Aria. You will never doubt it because I am going to fill the branches of this tree every day with paper hearts.”
Our very own Wishing Tree.
Speechless, I look at him through tear-streaked eyes, my heart about to burst with the love I feel for him.
And by some miracle, or whatever magic exists in the world that grants wishes, he loves me back.
