She doesn’t need to lift her head to catch my eye to see if I’m joking or not. Not only is my voice wavering like I’m going through puberty all over again, Magnolia knows that I don’t say shit like this unless I really mean it.
She lets her head fall, moving to bury it in my neck, and I wrap my arms around her, pulling her to me as tightly as I can without hurting her. Within seconds, I feel the first tear slide past my eye, and it drips down my cheek to land in her hair. I then feel a second set of tears sliding down my neck, and I purse out a breath before I roll her to the side.
“Look at me,” I coax, sweeping her hair out of her face. Some strands are sticking to the tears that now streak down her face in waves, and I brush them away with the pad of my thumb.
Propping my head up with my opposite arm, I lie facing her, ushering her to face me.
She looks at me, trying to force a smile, but through the tears it comes out a little grim, a little psychotic, and I laugh, causing her to relax a little.
“Why is this so hard?” she asks, pulling her bottom lip in between her teeth to stop it from quivering. “It’s just for a few months, we’ll see each other once we get settled.” We already have an idea of when we will be seeing each other next. Mags will be traveling with The Ballet Theater. Sometimes she might be across the U.S., but others she’ll be right back in Iowa. Therewill be times she’s near Florida, and I plan to fly to wherever she is, even if it only means seeing her for a few hours.
I clear my throat and swipe my thumb at another set of tears that drip down her face. “I think it’s so hard because we love each other so much. We haven’t missed a day of talking since we first became friends a decade ago. It’ll be a big change.” Some of our friends think we’re crazy for doing this long distance thing. We know what they think, that we’re just kids. That even though we love each other now, the distance will put strain on us. Once we take time apart from one another, we’ll realize that we want different things.
But I don’t believe that, not for one damn second.
What I know is that even though it’ll be really fucking hard, and we’ll hate it at times, I know that I was made to love Magnolia.
She smiles through the tears, a genuine smile crossing her face before she pushes my shoulder back onto the ground. Her long, lean leg slides over mine, and then she’s on me, kissing me with as much passion as I can push back on her.
We make out like it’s our first time, like we’re teenagers back in the horse barn. I kiss her until my lips are numb, until hers are puffy and red, and I know my brothers will give me shit at Sunday dinner for it.
A heavy wind kicks up and gusts flick up the corner of the blanket that we’re lying on. Mags breaks the kiss, lifting her head up toward the sky. “Looks like rain coming in.”
I look past her, toward the gray clouds moving in on our perfect day. Much like the gloomy future rearing its ugly head, and the endless time that we get to spend together coming to an end. “Better get home before it starts.”
I stand first, brushing the grass off my jeans before reaching a hand down to help her up. We work together, always in perfect symmetry, to gather our quilt and cooler, then my ball and glove.Mags grabs the bat and my ball cap off the ground. She slides it on her head and flips it backward, winking at me as she does.
There’s never been a more perfect sight than her, cheeks stretched from smiling, with my hat atop her perfect blonde head.
“Is this going back inside, or…”
She lifts her arms to reference our stuff. For the last two years, we’ve kept a few things at the abandoned farm house. I look back to the worn home, to the one my great-grandparents built when they first established this ranch. My parents and grandparents now live in the main farmhouse up the road.
My two older brothers, Grayson and Theo, have graduated. Theo works at the local fire department so he has a house in town. Grayson is still living at the main house while he renovates another small home on our road. No one comes to visit this one anymore, and it became the perfect place for us to hide out. She wasn’t technically lying to her parents when she said she was going to my house, and I wasn’t lying to mine when I said we were going to hang out. We’d meet at the old farmhouse, which eventually became our house. This is where most of our memories were made, where we confessed things to one another under the light of the moon. When her grandpa died, I met her here and held her on the front porch while she sobbed, her frame wracked in grief. The parlor room inside was where we gave each other our virginity at seventeen, and it was the same room I held her in when she got accepted to The Ballet Theater. We jumped for joy, our giggly screams echoing off the walls, and then we sat, legs tangled together as we counted the miles that would soon separate us.
I pull the items from her outstretched hands. “I guess, I better bring them back to the main house.” I don’t know the next time that we’ll be here. Our visits from now on will be short and sweet, likely meeting somewhere in the middle.
I turn my back to her, thankful that she can’t see my face on the short walk to my truck. I swallow hard, my throat thick and scratchy.It’ll be fine, I tell myself. She won’t be the only one I miss, I know that. I’ll miss my mom, my grandparents, my entire family. I’ll miss Mags's grandma, too. But there’s something about this woman, I think, as I toss the items in the back of my pickup. I turn back to the house and see her making her way up the front steps. She turns around, hands on her hips, looking around at the countryside. I follow her gaze from the wide open fields that run parallel to one side of the house, to the single lane gravel road where I’m standing, to the West where the main farmhouse and barns sit in the distance, their rooftops barely visible over the old trees. With my gaze locked on her, I stalk back to the old house, footing sure but slow.
Her eyes fall to me the closer I get and the soft smile on her face slowly fades. “Lukas?”
I take the three wooden steps of the house, pausing once I’m standing right below her, leaving us at almost the same height. My hands come up to rest on her waist, brushing against the sliver of skin that peeks out between her jean shorts and her tank top. Then my hands rise up, cradling her face, letting my fingertips rake through the hair at the nape of her neck. Her chin rests in my hands, and I stare down at her, letting her see the tears fall freely from my eyes. “This is so hard, because you and I?” I let my eyes dart back and forth across her face. “What we have isn’t ordinary, Mags. It isn’t what everyone else in the world feels when they’re with someone. You and I … I don’t think we were ever meant to say goodbye, not even for a day. I think each goodbye is going to hurt like this, no matter how long it’ll be before we’ll see each other again.” A few of the first raindrops fall down, and I feel them land on my neck, tickling as they slide down my shoulders, but I don’t break eye contact from her. “Ithink no matter how many times we say goodbye, we won’t ever get good at it.”I don’t ever want to get good at it, either.
Her bottom lip starts to quiver, and I brush my mouth against hers to catch her cry. Her arms fly up to wrap around my neck, and she grips me tightly, pulling me under the awning of the deck just as the rain starts to pour.
I back her up until her shoulders hit the front door, the wood creaking with our every move. “We were never meant to say goodbye,” I mumble again, and she pulls back, burying her face in my chest. I hold her with my arms wrapped around her shoulders until the rain falls so hard it drowns out her sobs.
She pulls back, and I swipe the streaks of mascara from her cheeks. “Promise me something,” she says.
“Anything.”
“Promise me that no matter how hard it is, we’ll make it. That some day we’ll come back here and this will be our house.”
What started as a joke between us when we started dating has turned into our dream. When I first showed Mags the abandoned farmhouse, I gave her the grand tour, showing the broken windows and peeling wall paper. She covered her mouth with horror when she spotted the mouse poop in the basement, and I jokingly promised her that if she stays with me, that one day, this could all be hers. At the time, she rolled her eyes, but over the last two years, there have been enough memories made in this house that in many ways, it already feels like ours.
“Promise,” she says again, her hands gripping the hem of my shirt.
“I promise, baby.” I lean down to kiss her lips once, and then pull back. My arms slide from her shoulders. I reach into my back pocket, pulling out my pocket knife, and I step back, her eyes darting to my hand at the sound of the switchblade flipping open.
