Happier

Chapter 6

Rowen

The shutter of her camera cuts into the song of the crickets, and I can't help but feel calm at this moment. I watch her quietly as she blindly turns the dials and changes the angles on her tripod before taking several shots in quick succession. She knows what she's doing, and I like watching her thrive in her element right now. Even though I see the shadow of her, I can trace her outlines and know her every curve sight unseen. She had been the nightmare and the daydream that caused me to overthink and not think at all sometimes.
It's nothing short of amazing what she can do with the old Nikon she bought from a pawn shop back home. She had taken a shot of me on one of my sunset hikes and had it framed for me. I remember our group dinner and the pink high on her cheekbones that night. She knew how to give sentimental and well-thought-out gifts because she had an eye for details that few had. She saw the beauty and promise in things that usually get overlooked, and I loved that about her.
I loved knowing that about her.
When she's not taking classes or grading papers, she helps our college out by using her photography skills for updated website pictures. She also helps stand in as a second photographer for some of the local professionals when a wedding calls for two. She's done high school senior photos, newborn pictures, and nature shots for the state park, you name it.
She was the hardest working woman I've ever known, so watching her fuss over her camera made me smile. She seemed more at ease in the dark now, not self-cautious like she usually was around me. There were no tugs on her shorts or tank tops, none of her standard necklace adjusting, and no fluttering glances when we made eye contact, and she was startled because I was already looking at her.
I hated to break into her peaceful reprieve, but I cleared my throat.
"Nat?" I whisper, and she turns her head a little. "Do you want to look in the telescope?"
"Why's that even a question? Yeah, I want to look." She sat back and started scooting over toward me, and I moved so she could have a better view, but that also meant being precariously close, almost hip to hip. I didn't mind, but I noticed we kept a small section between us. God, did I notice how close we were, but I also noticed how close we were not. We had gotten into this mode of avoiding each other's touch because I think she feels that we are familiar with each other, too. She hugged me once and fit perfectly against me with her arms thrown around my neck. That moment was something else, with my arms around her waist and her excitement seeping into my travel-weary bones, it was innocent, but after she pulled back, there was this little look on her face where her smile slipped, but our eyes connected, and I knew it then and there.
We ignited something.
It was like a slow-motion scene, some little ignition of awakening after hibernation, and I was for damn sure she felt that same spark because she would stay close enough to me but never really touch me accidentally or on purpose. If she goes to, she quickly thinks better of that action.
On the outside, I was used to putting on a calm, cool-as-cucumber façade, and I looked indifferent even if I wasn't. I hated being examined like I was a bug under a microscope glass. In reality, I was a nervous wreck when she was near. It was both annoying and exhilarating. It was nice knowing I was alive and not emotionally dead inside, like I was made fun of by family members. The running joke is that I bay lay the cliffs and mountains to feel something, and at the behest of my mother, I guess I like the adrenaline. The fact that I would rather do risky things than get too close to Natalie is the most telling thing about how afraid I am of how I feel about her.
When your parents and close friends joke about your lack of dating life, you start to wonder. But the truth of the matter is that the only girl who caused my facade to slip was the one who was so close to pressing her leg into mine as she leaned into the eyepiece, gasping softly.
"This is so cool."
"I wish we were able to see more of it, but..." I pulled my phone out, typed in my code, and showed her the map I had been looking at to see when there might be a chance to witness something great. If not a little great, it was still great. She leaned, her knee pressing into mine, and squinted into the phone's low glow, and I saw her pucker her lips in concentration.
"How do you even begin to know these things?" She whispered, looking up at me. She's so close to me that I can smell her light citrusy perfume that I liked so much and the shampoo she used before we left the house. I had heard her humming in the shower as I utilized the dresser to organize my things.
"In between working, I research random things," I say simply, but in reality, I dug deep on this one. When I discovered the possibility of seeing even a sliver of an aurora Borealis during our time here, I did more than a little research.
"Smarty pants." She chuckles and leans back on her arms, looking up at the sky and off into the distance where the aurora Borealis was. "This is surreal."
"The sky or the entire situation?" I ask, generally wanting to know because it felt like a dream to me sitting in a deserted field with her so early in the morning I'm sure we were both thinking of sleeping in.
"The sky," she pauses, tilting to the side to bump my shoulder with hers, "the entire situation, too. Everything. All of it."
I lead back on my arms to match her and bump my shoulder into hers.
"It's nice," I whisper up at the sky.
"It's magical, Rowen." Her voice was soft but so emotionally packed that I looked her way, fully expecting her to be crying.
It wouldn't be the first time I've seen her cry when she experienced overwhelming emotions.
"I'm not crying." She glanced at me, whispering quickly.
"I wouldn't judge you if you were."
"Even if you did, it would be worth every teardrop."
I grin as we settle into the stillness and the sweet serenity perfumed lightly by the not-so-far-off lavender fields. I wish my mind wasn't traveling at the speed of light because being in this moment was everything I'd been waiting for. This sacred alone time was the first time when our hectic schedules restricted neither of us. It was nice to press pause, but I didn't know how to sit in this moment correctly and not want to reach out, speed things along, and just see if we had something more. 
"Can I ask you something?" I wasn't expecting to hear her voice, so when she turned and whispered, I looked over and nodded, hoping she could see me. "Do you think I'm too dark?"
"No." I don't even pause and just breathe it out. She's quiet, looking at me a hair longer before leaning back and looking back up at the star-scattered sky above us. "You're unique. Not very many people know how to handle unique personalities."
"You think I'm unique?"
"Yeah, I also think you're fishing for compliments." I chuckle, and I see her teeth as she smiles.
"Maybe a little. I was called out for being a freakshow at dinner, so I needed to ease my wounded ego. Thank you for your help." She's joking, but I also know she laces her jokes with the hurt she experiences; there's a twinge in my throat that makes me want to reach out, and I tap my fingers on the grassy land beneath us. 
"Well, I'm weird too. My weird acknowledges the weird in you." I lean and smile at her.
"And we unite in mutual weirdness." She leans toward me and forces a goofy smile. 
With our legs outstretched in front of us, I lift and tap her tennis shoe with mine in some kind of reaching-out motion that doesn't involve the touching I desperately want to do. 
"Unite?"
"I mean, you know, hanging out, doing weird stuff. Together. But not like, together together, because..." I hear the soft nervousness behind her rambling as she trails off, and I wish I knew how to fix her and tell her she didn't need to be so nervous around me, yet I was nervous around her, so I guess here we were—mutual weirdness and nervousness.
"I feel like I make you uncomfortable." I chose to keep looking forward when I felt her look over at me. I guess I was going there, there was something about sitting in the dark, high on a few hours of restless sleep, a cross country jaunt, and a glass of wine that really jabbed you in the honesty bone. 
"It's not that. We haven't been alone very much. I think this is the longest time we've spent one on one." She's back to fidgeting; she lifts a foot to rub against her other leg. She not wrong.
"Nervous?" I ask.
"Yeah." She responds softly, and I take a deep breath, then let it out through my nose, rolling my head so I can look at her.
"You kind of make me nervous, too. So I guess we're even."
If I had known earlier that that admission would cause her to relax visibly, I would have said it sooner. I watched her shoulders fall past her ears, and her hands flatten out, and even in the dark, I could swear her face relaxed from the nervous ball she had just a moment ago.
"I make you nervous? I don't believe you."
"You don't have to believe me, but it's true."
"Why is that, you think?" She sounded curious, and I shrugged because even though I admitted it, I didn't want to admit out loud, on our first outing together, that I could see a future with her. Shit like that, said at the wrong time, caused potential love interests to bolt.
Mike was the prime example here. He opened up, laid everything out on the table, and she ran.
But she also offhandedly admitted to liking me, so there was also that.
"Devine, cosmic, intervention I think," I say instead. I vote to keep things light because I don't want to ruin a good thing with feelings.
"I actually like that." She chuckles up at the sky, taking a deep breath.
"Me too."
The thing was, that was how I actually felt, because how do you explain the instant chemistry started by close proximity without sounding like a lunatic? They call it love at first sight, but that's not what this was. When we were chest to chest, heart to heart, her face in my neck, with our arms wrapped around each other, we connected on some other level, and it took many nights lying, sleeplessly in bed, wondering what in the world had happened in that moment to cause such a shift in everything I knew and thought I knew. And why, at that point, at that very moment, our easygoing friendship became laced with something more intense, and neither of us knew how to act after that. If she looked at me and found me looking at her, she'd quickly look away, fidget, and find something else to do. If she did the same, I would find myself looking the opposite way and probably doing my own form of fidgeting. 
After that, even with that awkward high school crush feeling, I wanted to remain close to her, but in a less creepy, stalkerish way.
Now that I was given the chance, I hoped the universe was still on our side and that I would not find a way to completely fuck this up.