Page 14 of Only After We Met

“You have clothes in that bag?”

“Just underwear. And crackers.”

“Always thinking ahead, I see.”

I opened the small closet where I kept all my clothes, grabbed my smallest sweatshirt, and tossed it to her. She looked doubtful.

“I can’t give it back to you.”

“I already figured that.”

“Okay. Thanks, Rhys.”

She disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the pipes banging as she turned on the hot water. I wished I was in there with her. I wished…I don’t know…that I could lick her skin. Kiss her. Know what she tasted like. I shook my head. That was crazy talk.

I buttoned my jeans and walked barefoot to the kitchen. I poured two coffees with milk and dug out a chocolate croissant left over from the day before in case she wanted to eat something before leaving. She emerged from the shower a little later in the same jeans as yesterday and my sweatshirt.

“I don’t think I thanked you for everything…”

“You did,” I cut her off. “Coffee?”

She looked at me cheerfully and nodded. The silence was comfortable as we ate breakfast together, and even later, when we got on the bus. I decided to go with her to the airport. Surrounded by people coming and going, by loud voices over the PA, up to the security checkpoint, I began to realize how real this was. I was there, saying goodbye to a girl I’d just met…and I had a knot in my throat, and I didn’t want to think about it.

I handed her backpack to her, and she slung it over her shoulder.

She had a hard time looking up from the floor. “I guess this is goodbye.”

“Yeah.” I sure as hell didn’t want it to be though.

Our eyes stared into each other’s so long that the rest of the world seemed to become a blur. I tried to sharpen my idea of her. She was a normal girl. Just a normal girl, I tried to tell myself to convince myself she wasn’t the most beautiful, funniest, craziest girl I’d evermet, the most…I don’t know, justthe most, period. It’s not that we’d done anything crazy special together. I hadn’t had incredible sex with her; she wasn’t some guru who’d introduced me to a new religion that had brought me inner peace. But I didn’t care. For me, she wasdifferentfrom the first moment I looked at her, and that was enough. I couldn’t help but notice how my heart was pounding rhythmically like a song crying out to be written.

Fuck it. Fuck it all.

I wanted to kiss her. I was going to kiss her.

“Rhys…” she whispered. Barely.

“What?” I swallowed.

“Thanks for last night.”

“Stop saying that.”

“It’s what I feel.”

“Goddammit, Ginger.”

“I need to go.”

“I wish you didn’t.”

“Yeah.” She waited a moment. “It’s been fun.”

“Fun,” I repeated, ill at ease.

Fuck that. It had been real. Authentic.

I was tense, but I didn’t know what to say.