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Suddenly, all the emotion balled up in my chest and went rolling out of my throat in a barrel of giggles. But this time I knew why I was laughing. Because I was free. I was happy. And I was being kissed by the man I loved. I still wasn’t confident that he was completely mine, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t take away from the immeasurable feelings I felt for him. And if I took this moment out of life and time, it was perfect. I would savor it always.

I giggled for a moment longer and then made an effort to tame myself. When I looked over my shoulder and he caught the look on my face, he smiled too. Not a mischievous grin or a wicked smirk, but a small, sincere smile. He seemed to enjoy the amusement because he turned me around and pulled me into him. “Ahh, I’ve missed you,” he whispered, and then he pressed his lips into mine.

I wrapped my arms around him as we hugged, wishing every problem away. Who cares if I had a breakdown a couple weeks ago; who cares that there’s another woman out there with hopes of him coming home to her; who cares if I’ll never let her have him.

“I have serious issues,” I said, unable to hold my thoughts from him any longer, even if I wanted to.

“I’m the one with issues,” he said as he held me close. “I can’t stop thinking about you, Heather. Wondering where you are, who you’re with, if you’re okay. Everything you do, everything you are, makes me want you more.”

His eyes settled, dark and unwavering on me, and his hands moved slowly down my arms. He tacked my hands around his neck again and then slid his hands back down the sides of my body to my waist. He lowered his mouth to my lips, and his kiss was so tender and so thorough that I drifted away, like a leaf to the cool wind.

The sound of our lips coming together and parting was natural and raw, but natural and raw was just right for us. He kissed me like he’d been holding in three years of unrestrained kisses, and we went at it with a passionate tenderness that could have lit all of St. Louis on fire.

“You’re shivering,” he might have said after a while. I was lost, barely registering his words. He caressed my shoulder blade with the pad of his thumb. “Heather, are you there?”

“What?” I opened my eyes.

He pulled away from where his lips were attacking my neck. “You’re cold.”

I shook my head, my eyes hazed over.

He stared at me for a long moment. “I used to love that look,” he said with a sleepy grin.

“Hm?” When I saw my face through his eyes, I instantly came to and bit my lip, embarrassed. “What look?”

His thumbs were running along my cheekbone as we stared at each other, and all I could think of was how much love pumped through my heart at that moment, so much so, that I thought it might burst.

We kissed for a while longer, but I could tell the second time around, something was different. Because I was so attuned to his moves, I knew he was holding back, keeping his emotions in check and reining them in if they got too hot. It was discomfiting to feel his reserve. Not a good sign.

While dropping me off, he walked me to the door. Before the moment got uncomfortable, he turned us together and gently cupped my face into his hands.
A kiss would be good
, I told myself.
A full kiss would hold me over
. But his friendly lips found my forehead. His voice strained as if trying to talk himself out of something. “I’ll call you later.”

“Okay.” I didn’t want him to see my disappointment, so I turned my head.

Before my brain knew what was happening, my body took over like a boomerang, turning me back into him. I lunged forward and took his lips with mine, stopping with a gasp and pulling away quickly. But his lips came forward in response, silencing me. I drew back again, turning my head away.

He whispered in my ear, “Little coward. Aren’t you going to finish what you started?”

“I didn’t start anything. YOU did!” I bit off.

“Always stirring things up, aren’t you?”

“Me?! You were the one kissing and drooling all over my neck tonight, not me!”

He broke out in a confident chuckle. “Did I drool when I kissed you?”

I turned away, avoiding a debate I would lose—his kisses were Heaven—and wanting a different one. “Why did you stop, Nick? What did I say to make you stop?”

He furrowed his brow. “You didn’t say anything. I…I’m not sure. The way you looked at me. I don’t ever want to hurt you.”

My mind quickly sifted through the possibilities. I hadn’t realized I had worn my feelings for him right on my sleeve. And it wasn’t that he responded wrong. But after all that was shared tonight, drinking him in without any reserve, he didn’t respond right. I had gone to the edge of my safety zone and stepped into the field of sheer vulnerability. And that must have been why a tear gathered in the corner of my eye. I blinked it back. No tears tonight.

“Nick, I don’t want you to hurt me either, and I don’t want to hurt you. But I don’t know if I can do this anymore. I can’t make you love me.”

“You know I love you, Heather.”

The words sunk deep into my soul, conjuring memories of what used to be. I pushed the sweetness out as soon as it entered. “That’s not enough.”

“What would you have me do?”

“That’s not…I can’t tell you that.”

“I want to know,” he said. “What do you want me to do? Should I turn my back on everyone, and ruin a girl’s life who doesn’t deserve it, and run away with you, and get married and have a family and—”

“And give me a big box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day,” I couldn’t help but say. I had to make light. The pain of rejection was too fresh, too excruciating.

“Don’t joke,” he ordered.

“Fine. What do
you
want?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want.”

“How can you say that, Nick? It’s all that matters.”

“No, sometimes you don’t get what you want when you’re doing the right thing.”

“How do you know what’s right?”

“Heather, I lost my brother because I didn’t follow through once. I can’t do that again and have it sitting on my conscience for the rest of my life.”

“So that’s what this is about?” His feelings were to be sacrificed on the altar of duty? Bull crap!

Then what would I do if I were him? The sincerity behind his earlier question was so precise, I wondered if he’d put the decision entirely in my hands. I loved this man, more fully than my heart could hold. So much, that at the moment, staring into his eyes, I did want his happiness more than my own. I swallowed a lump in my throat and the bittersweet taste of longing that went with it. I kept my eyes where they needed to be for added strength, on the man that would always have my heart, and said, “I want you to be happy, Nick. And if that means honoring your promise to her, that’s what you should do.”

Be strong
, I whispered to myself. No tears, no snide comments about her, no playing the helpless, delusional, coma girl card, just dry facts. And then an exit, because there was nothing more to say. He now had my support, the one thing he lacked.

Chapter 11

The next day at school chance ran us into each other. It happened when Liz and I were eating lunch in the main cafeteria, talking jewelry. We’d been working on jewelry every day after school, which meant we’d been together every day for the past month.

Liz was the type of person you couldn’t help but want to be around. I was drawn to her the first day I met her in History class, and I instantly knew we’d be friends (which might have had something to do with the fact that we’d already been friends in real life, but that was beside the point.)

During our “let’s-go-create-more-junk sessions”, as we now called them, I’d learned several things about her that I’d either forgotten or never known. She was from St. Louis and her parents still lived there. Her only sister, one year younger, had married three years ago, and in Liz’s cute little sarcastic way she’d let me know how
happy
she was that her
little
sister had gotten married
before
her to a
great
guy.

While I’d slept, she’d taken two years off of school, earning money by working at a makeup counter in the mall. Once in a while she’d get hired to do makeup for local weddings, but those jobs were few and too far between. It didn’t surprise me, then, how good she’d gotten at hair and makeup, and I’d told her so several times. Too bad her parents didn’t support the beauty school route. Though I wanted to encourage her to ignore her parents and follow her heart, I also respected the fact that she had loving parents who wanted the best for her; something I longed for. Something I’d being thinking about a lot lately, wondering if I should search out my real father, thinking that I probably should meet him at least once, and recently deciding that when it felt right, I would. Anyway, I wasn’t the ideal person to give parental advice. Besides, the type of advice I would’ve given, Liz needed to discover on her own.

For a couple months somewhere during that time, she’d hung out with a guy-friend, but their relationship never went any further than several group dates, one or two single dates, and a few unmemorable kisses. Evidently Liz’s love life had been slow to non-existent. But she’d commented how work was so enjoyable that not having a better half around was fine by her.

“What did you want to be when you grew up?” Liz continued the conversation as we both forked into the cafeteria Chinese food we were sharing.

“I didn’t think about
what
I wanted to be as much as
where
I wanted to be, which was anywhere but home.”

“But you never dreamed of being a movie star or anything like that?”

“Yeah, I did. But my problem was that I wanted to be the character in the movie, not the person playing the part.” I smiled, biting into my egg roll.

“That’s so you,” Liz laughed, and I nodded. “I bet you wanted to be one of those Disney princesses, The Little Mermaid, or Belle, or…oh, what’s her name? The feisty princess in Aladdin—”

“Jasmine,” I offered.

“Yeah! Jasmine. You wanted to be Jasmine, didn’t you?” she teased. “Or, oh, I know, Dorothy! You wanted to be Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz
! No, not Dorothy. You would never think there’s
no place like home
.” She said “no place like home” just how Dorothy would say it. And I almost choked on the water in my mouth. The way Liz’s mind worked, and the things she did. She was crazy, and I was laughing.

“Okay,” she kept going. “Let me think…Mary Poppins! You wanted to be Mary Poppins. You’d be a good Mary Poppins.” She was in deep thought; this role-filling game had suddenly become serious business.

I finally decided to help her out. “Willie Wonka’s wife.”

She yelped her approval. “That’s your perfect part!” she wailed, stringing out our laughter. “Okay, okay, Gene Wilder or Johnny Depp?”

“Come on, really? Johnny Depp. But not his character,
him
.”

“Right?” she agreed. “He’s a fantastic male specimen.”

At the same time, we both realized how stupid our conversation was, and giggled.

If only she knew how right she was, that I’d imagined being Aladdin’s princess, King Eric’s long lost mermaid, and even Beast’s beauty. Mostly, it was the happily ever after part I wanted more than anything.

“You know what’s funny? Most of those movies I watched at Creed’s house, with him. And he liked them just as much as I did, you can tell him I said that.”

Liz smiled first, and then laughed. “What was Creed like growing up?”

I curled some teriyaki noodles onto my fork. “He was like a big brother to me. Really protective. He taught me how to kick a ball and swing a bat. Then he’d get mad when I’d hit the ball farther than him. He would say it was his pitching, not my hitting.

“But he was so protective. He would never let anyone say anything mean to me or bad about me. And he would never let anyone treat me unkind. He was good to me.”

“I bet,” Liz said distantly.

“In high school he was really popular. A ton of girls liked him because he was nice
and
good-looking. I think I ruined a lot of his chances with other girls, though. He was loyal to me; too loyal. I would tell him to go out with other girls, to take someone besides me to the school dances, but he never did. I think he thought if he didn’t take me, I wouldn’t go with anyone else. He was probably right, but still.”

“Why wouldn’t you go with anyone else? I bet a lot of guys wanted to go with you; you’re a babe.”

Perfect timing. I looked up with a big, toothy smile, noodles hanging all out of my mouth.

“Sick!” she yelped. “That’s my food too!” Teasingly, she took a napkin and dabbed at the noodles, then took a bite as if to say her cleaning job had worked its magic.

“We were best friends.” I shrugged. “I guess in the end, we really did want to go with each other as opposed to anyone else.”

“But you were never more than friends?”

“We were. We were always more than friends. But in a familial way, not a romantic one.”