Winter Wonderland

seven: it's a date

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All I can hear is my heartbeat in my ears, so loud and fast that I'm sure if I stood right now, I would pass out. My skin flushes hot and cold and I'm sure I heard her wrong, but I can't think of anything else she could have said. It feels like forever passes before I respond, though it's probably only a couple of seconds before my brain kicks in.

"You still love me?" The words are clunky and awkward and they tumble out before I can find something better to say. "As in ... you still love me?"

Storie doesn't laugh or even crack a smile and in that second, I'm convinced I heard her wrong, but she nods, her expression severe. I can only just see her in the dark of her bedroom, her face barely illuminated by the city lights that sneak through the curtains.

I'm torn between wanting to turn on the light and drink her in, and wanting to just bask in the rawness of the moment.

"I never got over you," Storie says. "It took me a long time to realize that." She lets out a quiet hum. "I tried to move on. I tried so hard. I went away with Gray; I dated other guys; I nearly got engaged. But something always felt just ... a bit off."

She sucks in a breath and pauses, my pulse filling the silence.

"I don't know if it's because you were the first guy I loved or because of everything that happened with us, or just because you're you," she continues, her voice barely louder than a whisper, "but I can't get you off my mind."

"You didn't say," I manage to stutter. Inside, I'm skipping; my pulse is deafening.

"I thought that, maybe, seeing you again was what I needed to put my feelings to bed," she says. "I mean, after I ended it, we never spoke again." She lets out a long sigh. "I couldn't help but feel like we were unfinished." She pulls the comforter tighter around her shoulders, her eyes fixed on me. "We started something good, but it had to end."

Her words are like an arrow through my balloon of hope.

"If I hadn't broken up with you back then, there always would've been this giant question mark hanging over us and I couldn't have dealt with it."

There's nothing I can say, not even when Storie falls quiet and the silence between us stretches like an ocean. I'm trapped in a boat without a paddle, aimlessly floating. I don't know who's supposed to speak now, whether her thought is unfinished or this is my space.

When Storie says nothing else, I take the plunge.

"Can we give this another go?"

The time it takes her to respond is pure torture, milliseconds expanding into years before her hand finds mine and her touch sets me on fire and my heart explodes when she sighs.

"I think we owe it to ourselves," she says, curling her fingers around mine. She smiles, a cautious smile that makes me want to kiss her a million times more. "Take two?"

*

I don't know how the hell I slept last night. How on earth did my mind shut down for long enough to let me fall asleep with Storie right beside me, ready and willing to give our relationship another go?

I have no clue. We didn't talk for much longer last night before she drifted off and I couldn't sleep, listening to her snores. The snoring never bothered me. I have six siblings and I spent the first two years of college in a twenty-man dorm room, so I've seen and heard it all. If anything, it's weirdly endearing. I know she hates it, but I couldn't care less.

It was her mere existence beside me that kept me awake, and my inability to believe a moment of the entire day.

It's only when I feel a hand on my shoulder that I wake up to see Storie fully dressed and standing over me with a mug in her hand.