“Are you sure you’re okay with this, Gabi?” he asks, his eyes searching mine. “I wish I could stay, you don’t know how much.” He shakes his head, exhaling heavily. “Fuck, I hate this.”
“I know,” I reply, my bottom lip quivering. “I know you can’t stay. You have a job, and school… Iknow. I just… We’ll be so far away, in different time zones, and I guess I don’t want you to be so busy that you forget me.”
His eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Are you… Are you kidding? I…” He closes his eyes for a second. “Gabi, I haven’tstoppedthinking about you for ten years,” he says, his eyes locking with mine. “There’s no way I could ever forget you. You’re always at the forefront of my mind.” His lips press together, and he blows out a sigh. “I still remember every detail of the very first time I ever saw you.”
“You do?” I ask, my brows furrowing as I try to remember it.
He lets out a laugh. “Yeah, pretty girl,” he says, dropping his hands to my hips as he steps between my legs once again. “You were wearing a flannel shirt around your waist, and your hair was in two braids.”
My face scrunches up. “Ew.”
He lets out a laugh. “I thought you were so fucking pretty,” he says, making my heart skip a beat. “I just kept looking at you, watching as you did your tricks on your skateboard. And then I fell over.” He laughs. “I was so distracted by you, that I fell onmy ass.” He looks up at me, swallowing. “But then you noticed me, and you rushed over toward me, and helped me up. I was so blindsided by you, that I didn’t know what to say,” he admits with a nervous laugh. “I just kept staring at you while you asked if I was okay over and over again.”
“I remember that,” I say, tilting my head. “I thought you’d hit your head or something.”
He shakes his head. “Nah. just scratched my knee,” he says. “But you still helped me up, and grabbed hold of my skateboard. That’s when you noticed my Spiderman stickers, and you said ‘I love Spiderman’,” he mimics in a girly voice that makes me narrow my eyes.
“I definitely did not sound like that.”
“And then I finally found the courage to talk to you, and we ended up talking about spiderman, and then—” He pauses, pressing his lips together.
“What?” I say, my brows dipping.
He sighs. “Don’t hate me.”
My frown deepens. “Why? What did you do?”
His lips curl in a sheepish smile. “I told you I was new to skateboarding.”
I blink. “You weren’t?”
“No. I’d been skateboarding for a little over a year by then,” he admits, pulling me closer to him. “I just… I really wanted to see you again.”
“You did?” I ask, my breath catching in my throat.
He nods, his hand cupping my face. “I asked you if you could teach me some tricks,” he reminds me.
The memory comes rushing back to me. “We spent two whole weeks meeting up every day so I could teach you.”
The corner of his lips lift. “Yeah.”
My heart races in my chest. “You liked me then?” I ask, unable to believe what he’s telling me. We were just twelve at the time. And he’s telling me he liked me since the moment he met me?
He nods again, brushing his thumb over my bottom lip. “Always,” he affirms. “I’ve loved you for so long I wouldn’t know what it feels like to not love you.”
My eyes start to tear up, and I try to blink them away, but they keep coming. We lost so much time. So much time we could have been together if I had just realized he was everything I wanted.
“Chris,” I say, my voice breaking.
He covers my lips with his, kissing me until I can’t breathe, until all I can focus on is him. His taste, his touch, his warmth. When he pulls back, tears glisten in his eyes as he looks into mine.
“It’s just one year, Gabi,” he reassures me.
“I know,” I say, though my heart still aches.
“We’ll get through this,” he promises. “And then when we graduate, you’ll get into your dream dance school, and we’ll go to New York together. We’ll live in a small, shitty apartment, maybe get a dog, and I’ll make you pancakes every morning.”
“Every morning?” I ask, loving the sound of that.
