Page 40 of The Truth About Love

Summer-Raine

“What are you doing for New Years?” Auden asks, looking at me from where he sits on a wicker chair on my balcony. The breeze rolling off the sea catches the loose strands of his hair and blows them across his face.

It’s brisk despite Florida winters never being particularly cold and the late December air makes me want to grab a blanket from the bedroom to wrap around my shoulders. We’re in that weird purgatory between Christmas and the New Year when everything just feels kind of uncomfortable and no one can ever remember what day it is.

For once, I’m not curled up in Auden’s lap like a baby with my head tucked into his neck. Instead, I sit cross-legged on the floor, fluffy socks warming my feet, as I sift through the pile of literary postcards that he gave to me for Christmas.

We didn’t spend the day together like the both of us had wanted, but we had our own mini-Christmas just the two of us a couple of days later. We hung twinkling lights from every wall in my bedroom, ate leftover turkey subs and pretended the holly vine suspended from the top of my balcony was mistletoe just so that we could kiss underneath it.

Before we went to sleep, I gave Auden a framed print for his room with a quote from his favourite book, Great Expectations, that said, “You are part of my existence, part of myself.” I don’t have the guts to tell him that I love him yet, but I thought that line might give him an inkling as to the way I feel about him.

I’d wrapped it up in brown paper and string, adorning it with a sprig of lavender that I’d saved and dried from the bouquet of wildflowers he’d given me on our first date.

And he’d loved it all.

He’d stared at the print, studying the words, for several long moments before giving me a smile so breathtaking, it’s been seared into my memories forever. He’d brought the lavender to his nose to smell before slipping it into his wallet, promising that he’ll keep it safe for the rest of his days and never lose it or give it away.

Then, he’d passed me a bundle of postcards with the most beautiful designs I’d ever seen, all tied together neatly with ribbon. He didn’t have any wrapping paper, he’d said, but he still wanted it to look like a gift, not just a stack of small papers.

I’d rolled my eyes at that.

He could have given me a rock from the driveway of my house and still I’d have treasured it. Because it had come from him.

“It’s actually my birthday,” I say, answering his question.

“On New Year’s Eve? How come I never knew this?”

I shrug. “Didn’t come up, I guess.”

“I was going to ask if you’d spend it with me,” he says, that signature smirk of his fixed firm on his lips, but there’s disappointment in his eyes. “But if it’s your birthday, then I assume you have plans already?”

“No, actually.”

I’m usually dragged along to some kind of ostentatious event hosted by my parents or one of their friends to celebrate the New Year, but this year will be different.

I guess my parents decided that since I’ll be turning eighteen it won’t be necessary to burden themselves with my presence, so they’re going to a party in Miami and didn’t extend the invitation to me. Not that I’d have wanted to go anyway, but it’s nice to be asked. The fact that it’ll be my birthday wasn’t mentioned, but then, I guess, it never is. Winter tried to insist on spending the evening with me instead, but I knew how much more fun she would have if she were to stay at FSU and I didn’t want to be the reason for her missing out.

I give Auden the CliffsNotes version of all this and he listens with both an empathetic expression and a hopeful one.

“Does this mean I can spend the day with you?” he asks, struggling to keep the excitement from his voice.

“If you want to.” I try to be casual about it when really I can think of nothing better than spending my entire birthday with my boyfriend by my side.

That’s still a concept I haven’t quite adjusted to yet. Having a boyfriend.

Sometimes I psyche myself out, panicking that I’m not doing the relationship thing right or that I’m a shitty girlfriend, or even that this whole thing is one big hoax designed to humiliate me and break my heart.

But then I remember that it’s Auden we’re talking about.

I force words like boyfriend and girlfriend out of my head and concentrate on the one thing I know to be true, the goodness of Auden’s heart. He may be the popular, all-American football player with floppy hair and a smile that makes women of every age fall panting at his feet, but his soul is as pure as glacier water.

It’s just him and me.

The labels don’t matter.

And when I remember that, I calm down instantly.

“Don’t be an idiot,” he says, seeing straight through my cavalier bullshit. “Prepare for the best birthday of your life, baby.”

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