“Who else would come here?”
She turned her head to stare at me, questions running through her eyes at a million kilometres per second. “I thought it was Daniel.”
“My dad couldn’t give less of a fuck if he tried,” I said without thinking. She didn’t know my relationship with my father was strained.
Maybe if I told him about the letter, about everything, he would’ve left her and helped. Maybe we could’ve sewn the pieces of our tattered relationship over the years. Maybe it was my fault for letting him get so fucking far away from me andEomma. When I was a kid, he used to sit on the ground of my room when I was mad at him. He’d wait for me to talk to him about my feelings and shit. Eomma would be the one to yell, to be strict, and get agitated. But he was patient with me. He always was. Which was why maybe I should’ve given him the benefit of the doubt,butdid the man who left my mom alone in her last minutes of life deserve it?
He walked away from me the moment I asked for Moonshine. He never bat an eye, didn’t call, didn’t text, didn’t fuckingcare.
In the end, I didn’t give a fuck either.
One look at her face and I knew exactly what those furrowed brows were wondering. “We used to be close,” I brushed the mud off my pants as I got up to my feet. “Not so much anymore.”
“Where is he now?”
In Bali, probably fucking your aunt.
“Don’t know.”
There was an odd familiarity in the comfort that proceeded afterwards. Adelaide and I at our parents’ graves together.
“We’re getting married today,” she turned her body to face me and tucked a loose strand behind her ear. I never noticed how the lines beneath her eyes protruded heavily with stress or how she looked at me with such sadness.
You did that to her.
Sneaking my hands in the pocket of my jeans, I waited to see where this was going. “We are.”
“How do you feel?”
“You’re asking me howIfeel?”
The utter softness amplifying from the light hitting her skin was unbelievable. I proposed this marriage. I put her in this situation. Yet she was asking me how I felt like it was the other way around. “How doyoufeel about it, Adelaide?”
“I asked you first.”
A gentle wind caressed Adelaide’s face. I never knew I could be jealous of fucking wind.
Hair fell over her face and without thinking, I brought my hand up and tenderly brushed it away. Her eyes caught mine in the moment and we stared at each other. Mytingling fingers prodded to touch her again, to feel her silky waves blend through the space between my fingers.
Looking into Adelaide’s eyes was hypnotising. She was magnetic, pulling me into her orbit—eradicating me of my control and stripping me away so all that was left was vulnerability and an intimacy between us.
My layers were made of thick glass, yet Adelaide’s single touch broke them down. Here I was, openly touching her and savouring what should feel like forever. I looked down at her lips. Would kissing her still feel like sitting on my old rooftop under the stars? Or would it be different?
Adelaide was the last girl I kissed and hoped that she always would be.
She followed my movements, staring at my own lips before the chirp of an obnoxious bird snapped us out of our moment.
Clearing her throat as she took a step back.
Hands fisted into her plain white dress, forcing herself not to look at me. I hated when she did that. I wanted to fucking sew her eyes open and tie her onto my arm so all she’d ever see was me. “You can tell me, you know?”
Her lashes fluttered against the tops of her cheeks. “Tell you what?”
“What you’re feeling.” She turned her upper body away from me. The only evidence of her listening was her feet. “Your body does this thing… it shuts down. You fade away into whatever darkness going on in your head and you stay there despite you, you know? Shrinking into yourself.”
Wide eyes stared back at me. “You notice that?”
“I notice everything about you, Adelaide. You’re always in the back of my mind so when I see you, Iseeyou. There’sno such thing as simply glancing in your direction. I’ve tried many times, trust me. But you exist and for as long as you exist, I’ll always notice you.”
