Page 16 of The First Kind of Love
“Really? I couldn’t tell.”
Although apprehension stains her words, a half-smile rewards my efforts, and it’s a welcome sight after a tiresome thirty minutes without witnessing it. Her lips are naturally plump and moisturized, and the blush-dusted apples of her cheeks puff out from the motion, bringing my attention to the blink-and-you’ll-miss-itdimple winking at me.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to invade your personal space,” she rambles, gearing up to break contact.
I don’t let her withdraw her hand. I need her touch more than I need my next breath of air. Not only is Shiloh the embodiment of a glowing beacon, but she’s a luminescent lure dangling in the ocean’s midnight zone, enticing me, leading meon a safe path home after I narrowly miss the snapping of carnivorous teeth.
Reassurance scrapes up my throat. “You’re not invading anything.”
Some of the tension in her shoulders melts, the clench of her hand following suit. She opens her mouth to say something, but the words seem to face some sort of delay, and I wish I could rewire every single one of her worries.
She never has to apologize for touching me. Ever.
“I don’t like being out of control,” she ekes out, and her palpable discomfort feathers from where she’s touching me.
“You should’ve told me you were afraid of flying,” I say quietly.
I can’t believe I practically kidnapped this girl and stuck her on a plane with me for two hours. She literally has nowhere to run. Why didn’t I think to ask if flying would pose a problem? Not everyone travels. Not everyone likes heights. This mini vacation is already off to a rough start, and that’s overlooking this airplane’s invisible, one-sided fight with gravity.
“You already paid for my ticket. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. And it’s”—Shiloh drives her nails into my arm, her whole body wilting like flaxen parchment curling amidst a ring of roaring, orange-blue flames—“it’s notthatbad.”
I’d usually be jumping for joy at the prospect of a girl entertaining any sort of physical contact with me, but not when she’s under the impression that she’ll die if she lets go of my arm.
Maybe it’s the altitude sickness talking, but I impulsively thumb away a loose strand of her hair, pushing it out of the frisbee-sized eyes that regard me with an unearthed innocence I’ve never seen before. “You know, I would’ve driven us.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. That would’ve taken twenty hours.”
“I would drive any amount of distance, any length of time, if it meant that you were comfortable,” I insist, my heart drumming an unruly tune against my rib cage, almost loud enoughto be heard over the whoosh of air skittering over the plane’s wings.
Shiloh’s eyebrows knit in confusion. “You’d do that? For a girl you just met?”
“No, Shiloh. I’d do that foryou.”
Her perfect lips round into anOshape, and that concerningly green pallor of hers thaws into the usual warmth of her olive skin, so flawless that God himself must have dry brushed her with the finest of earth’s clays.
Good job, Fulton. That was…flirty. But not too suggestive.
I barely register the pilot’s distorted voice crackling through the speaker before the plane gives one last shudder, the crowd gives one last collective gasp of fear, and then we return to our regularly scheduled programming. Shiloh’s grip has loosened exponentially, and when she realizes that she doesn’t need to jerk my arm out of its socket, she crawls back into her shell and extricates herself.
She digs around in her backpack for God knows what, and then she brandishes a pink, spiral-bound notebook with a meek but proud smile. “I made this itinerary for us. You didn’t really give me one, so I looked up some fun things for us to do. It’ll help us stick to a schedule when Hurricane Wedding hits in full force.”
I didn’t know an itinerary could be so sexy.
Soundlessly, she hands me her schedule, and I flip open to a page overrun with glitter ink, doodles, sticky notes, and sectioned-off bullet points corresponding to different days of the week. It’s freakishly organized, and probably the most beautiful thing my eyes have ever seen.
Her fingernails pry apart the emaciated threads on her sleeve as she peers at her work. “There’s this really cool turtle release project going on at the beach near our hotel. We can watch olive ridley and black turtles hatch and journey toward the sea. I’ve never seen a turtle in real life before, but they’re soadorable. Did you know that olive ridley turtles aren’t naturally migratory like other sea turtles? They actually prefer to remain within eight hundred and fifty kilometers of wherever they decide to nest. Which can be good or bad, I guess. Good in the sense that conservation measures reap a larger benefit for the survival of their species, but bad in the sense that their varied habitats raise their exposure to accidental capture by humans.”
I’ll admit it—I lost her somewhere around the second “turtle,” but fuck, watching her talk about something she’s so passionate about makes me fall for her even harder. And I’m already one perilous, pigeon-footed trip away from face-planting.
Admiration toils inside me, nearly turning my solar plexus on its head, and I blink at her like some lovesick puppy dog. I don’t know anything about turtles, so I don’t have anything to contribute to the conversation. I’m honestly afraid that I’ll embarrass myself if I say anything when I’m in such an incapacitated state. She’s a drug I can’t quit—a saccharine delicacy lodged in the molars of my teeth.
Icy realization fastens to her features, and she quickly closes her journal like she’s harboring some dark, deadly secret instead of a to-do list full of Cabo’s cutest wildlife. “But we don’t have to look at turtles. We can do whatever you want. This was just a suggestion.”
Something bitter crosses my tongue, and the dejection on her face twists a blade through my gut. I wish she didn’t feel the need to make herself small around me. I catalog the heavy weight of her brow, the strained cords of her neck, the bottom lip that’s been mottled with teeth concavities and a small smear of dried blood.
“What if Iwantto go look at turtles with you?” I ask.
“You’re not just saying that to be polite?”
