Stop moving, he commands and I am still.
One-twenty-nine over eighty-eight. He says blankly.
Is that good or bad?
It's okay for now. I'll check again next week.
He takes out the ear pieces and begins to pack up his bags. Mother of miracles, I have a prescription for a new drug for my migraines that actually works. It's an NSAID. For all the triptan-pushing doctors in my life do it's nice to let them know a huge burst of potassium flooding my system at just the right time works better than anything I've ever tried. It's called Cambia and the only way I can remember that it is to call it Coheed & Cambia, which is dumb but if it works, then who cares?
Caleb figures I get the headaches because Ben picks me up by my head. I point out that's only been the past five or six years, I've had headaches since forever.
Well, it probably doesn't help then. He glares at me. He's worried and he's jealous and really, I can't help that. I have my own problems.
***
Don't let go
Don't let go
Don't let go
Don't let go
Don't let go
Don't let go
Don't let go
I climb up the steps and into the little camper. Lochlan follows. He smells like oil and sweat from fixing the motor (again) and he's filthy but he didn't want me to go home and go to sleep without seeing the finished result.
What do you think? He shows me the tiny kitchen area, pops down the table from the wall, and then steers me across the body of the camper to the 'bedroom' which is close enough that if the table is down you can stick your hand out and touch it from a lying-down position in bed. It's cozy and claustrophic and...and....PERFECT.
The bed has a beautiful crazy quilt on it. Which I'm one-hundred percent sure he stole from his mother's linen closet and will never admit it because I've seen it on their clothesline before.
Ooooh! The quilt!
I knew you would like that. He smiles.
It's so neat in here! I want to live here!
Well, if all goes well, we will. He smiles more shyly now, like he has a secret. His eyes are almost black in the dark and he puts his arms around me and squeezes. What else do we need?
A plant.
Flowers?
No, a spider-plant.
Okay. I will leave that up to you. We can put it outside on nice days and in the window on rainy ones. That's what I think he said, anyway. I don't know because he was kissing up my shoulder to my neck to underneath my ear and my heart was beating so hard I didn't think the camper would be able to contain it much longer. I wrap my hands up in the front of his shirt and brace for the full-body tremors as he reaches the sweet spot just under my jaw that almost makes me invariably burst into flames.
Oh. Yeah. That's it. BOOM.
He stands back up straight and welds our foreheads together. Green-eyed transfer of confirmations all around. This will happen and it will happen here. Soon. As long as we can hold out but soon.
My newly eleven-year-old completely unformed brain is yelling NOW NOW NOW NOW but only on the inside of my skull.
I wonder what his sixteen-year-old brain is yelling at him?
A head-on kiss feeds the fire and I no longer care about thinking or anything else for that matter. I'm glad breathing and heartbeats are automatic or I'd be dead right now. His strong hand comes up and holds my head just under that sensitive ear and he pulls away. I am breathless and ruined and so so happy to be alive right now right here. If this is love then I'm set. I never want to feel anything else or do anything else but be right here with him.
(Gosh. I wonder what he's thinking?)
But then he tells me and I don't have to wonder anymore.
I love you, Bridgie.
But at the age of eleven I wasn't even sophisticated enough to know how to respond to this and so I whispered Yay! right into his mouth and he laughed and kissed me again and it took me days and days to remember that you always say it back and so I ran to the camper on a Thursday, late for dinner, rain pouring down, soaking me before I made it from my driveway to his. I threw the door open and he looked up and smiled from his seat on the floor, fixing a stuck cupboard door and I crossed to him, getting water everywhere and I threw myself down in his lap and kissed him hard.
I love you too, Lochlan.
The grin he flashed still remains the biggest one I've ever seen him make.