Page 34 of It Couldn't Be You
“Well, okay. Yeah.” I sat my drink down and scooted in close to him at the bar. “This is cozy.”
He laughed. “Now that I’ve got you alone, I can properly flirt with you and only you.”
“Gabriel, good Lord, with the flirting comments.” I took a big drink and then said, “Fine, flirt with me if you want to.”
“Oh, trust me, I will.” His eyes gleamed playfully. I felt it all the way to my toes.
We never went back to the booth. We sat in our own little corner of the bar and talked about his new apartment in California and the magazine where he worked and how I would apply to work there too.
We dreamed about living in the same town again, about our shared hopes and goals.
We talked about my classes, and songs that were stuck in our heads and movies we’d recently seen, my friends and his, our parents, and we laughed at the idea we were growing up.
We talked and talked and talked until the bar was closing up and my friends had come and kissed me on the cheek goodbye. Gabriel said he’d drive me home in the car he rented.
We talked until the bar locked its doors and began to sweep the floors around us.
We talked until Gabe sighed the deep sigh of someone resigning to do something they absolutely didn’t want to do and broke the spell, saying, “I guess we should head out.”
The air was crisp with the hint of winter to come as we walked down the street. What was once busy and crowded was now quiet and empty. It felt like the entire street was just ours as we walked to the car—like the whole night was just ours.
It felt easy and right when I slipped my hand in his, and he interlocked his fingers with mine. I looked up at him to see him smiling back at me. We walked hand in hand the entire time to his car, giddy like two little kids getting away with something. He walked me to the passenger side. I leaned against the door instead of opening it, fingers still intertwined, laughing for no reason. He grabbed my other hand.
And there we stood, holding hands, our eyes searching each others. All the feelings still unspoken but visible in these touches, in this heat. If feelings were palpable, they were on us like sweat, like breath. Then, he was leaning into me, our foreheads together, hands still holding.
“Emma,” he said in a rough whisper. “Do you know what you do to me?”
Our eyelashes brushed when I blinked. “I think I have a pretty good idea,” I said back.
“Do you?” he said, his voice low.
“Trust me, I do,” I said, my breath heavy, my mind swimming.
And just like that, his lips were on mine. I can never remember who kissed who first. But there we were, two magnets, finally making contact. He slipped his hands around my waist, his hands on the small of my back, pulling me closer to him like he’d been waiting way too long to do this. My hands were in his hair.
Never had a kiss felt so completely natural, so completely right. So completely desperate. We kissed until we were out of breath, like we couldn’t get enough—like we should’ve been doing this all along.
We looked at each other for a while afterward. Our bodies were still pressed together. We laughed a little. What now? Would we just go back to normal life? Was kissing now normal life?
“God, I’d been wanting to do that forever,” Gabe breathed into my ear. Shivers ran everywhere.
“I guess we should go?” I asked, dizzy, drunk from more than the drinks.
He nodded, a little hesitant, like he had something else to say, but he didn’t want it to end just yet. He opened my car door, and I slid inside. As we zoomed through downtown Fort Worth, we held hands again, and I fell asleep safely next to Gabriel. I didn’t wake up until we were on campus, and I directed him to my dorms.
When we pulled up front, we sleepily said our goodbyes. He was flying back home the next day. Maybe we could get breakfast? I asked. Maybe he’d let me sleep, he said. It was such a nice time, and we would miss each other, we said. Then I looked at his lips, he looked at mine, but we didn’t kiss.
I slipped out of the car and tiredly walked up to my dorm room. I waved goodbye one more time as he waited to leave until I was safely in my room.
I lay in bed all these years later, still with Gabriel on my mind—still with that kiss on my mind. But he was off to California last time, and he would be off to California again. And, as usual, I was tucked into a bed in Texas, states away.
Eleven
Katie
OK so send me all the updates while I’m away.
Katie
