23
JASON
It’s two in the afternoon and I’m leaning against my parked car in the car park across the street from Trinity College. I know that Alex will pass by here on her way after work.
I called Aaron to let him know I wouldn’t be at the pub tonight. They can get by without me, I’ve got better things to do.
Oddly enough, it’s a beautiful spring day and I couldn’t help but take advantage of it. I need to spend time with her. Time that I myself robbed us of for all these years and which I will regret as long as I live.
What was I thinking of, trying to push her away from me? What was I hoping to get out of it? Was I keeping myself safe from love, from suffering? Safe from me?
I kissed her, I held her close. I touched her all night. I breathed in the sweet scent of her hair.
Of her life.
She didn’t faint, she didn’t have a seizure.
She slept in my arms happily and that’s what I want—that it could be like that every night. And that every next morning, she’d open her eyes.
That’s all I’m asking and it doesn’t seem too much to me.
I see her coming towards me slowly. She walks with a big smile on her face, kissed by the sun and windblown hair, that she brushes away from her face with a spontaneous gesture that makes me swallow hard.
God, help me.
I stop leaning on the car and go towards her, taking off my sunglasses and smiling at her with my whole face.
“Hey…what are you—”
I don’t give her time to finish the question.
I grab her in my arms and inhale her sweet scent, running a hand through her hair. I kiss her forehead and whisper: “I’ve missed you.”
“I think we saw each other this morning,” she says sarcastically.
“That was a long time ago.”
“And we were together all night,” she continues, getting a bit flushed. “Haven’t you had enough of me yet?”
She’s making fun of me?
“I will never have enough of you.”
She shakes her head and wraps her arm around my neck.
“Good to know.”
I kiss her lightly on the lips because I’m afraid of exaggerating, I never know how her heart will react to too spontaneous a contact.
“Jason, you may kiss me,” she says, reading my thoughts.
“That’s what I’m doing.”
“That’s not a boyfriend kiss,” she jokes, before squeezing herself against me, opening her lips and looking for my tongue with hers.
I lift her slightly and accept this kiss and my doubts are melting away, because she’s here, she’s fine and she wants me.
And she’s not dying, for crying out loud.
