Dunk

Half Court Press

Maybe it was somewhere in between the syrup fight or her struggling to find a place where I was ticklish, or maybe it was somewhere in the middle of ribbing her for her extremist views when it came to the colors navy and brown together, but the smallest moments all combined into something so extreme and tangible the breath caught in my throat just like the beats in my heart had earlier. 

I didn't just want moments with her. 

I wanted memories and hours and days and weeks and months with her—I wanted fucking years with her. 

Reaching over the console I gripped her hand in mine so tight she stopped her loud scream-singing for a moment, but at the mischief I knew was dancing in my eyes she kept on, and I joined right in there with her. 

After a while an ad started playing and I released her hand to turn the volume down as curiosity peaked in her eyes. 

"So, where exactly is it that you're taking me?"

Pulling off the interstate, I could only throw her a quick wink. 

"You'll see soon enough."

"You sure do love keeping a girl in suspense, don't you?"

"Only the ones I love."

Her mouth pulled ruefully into a smile seemingly before she could even stop it, but something at the blush lining the apples of her cheeks and the way she turned her face down so that I wouldn't see it made me glad that I hadn't held back and made it known how I felt about her. 

The feelings had never changed, not once. 

She hadn't said it back, but I wasn't expecting her to. 

She'd said it before, but that was before, well, everything. 

Pulling off to the trail that would lead to the foot of the smaller mountain, Gracie's eyes widened as she turned her attention to me. 

"We're going hiking?"

"Only a little bit.  There's a super easy trail that only takes about thirty minutes, but then we'll get to the place I really wanted to show you."

"I should be pissed you're making me do anything athletic at all.  You should know by now how uncoordinated I am at pretty much anything."

It was true, unfortunately for her.  

She tripped pretty much every time she walked up the stairs, she ran her elbows into doorframes, and almost always caught her finger in a door or stubbed her toe on something. 

It would be adorable if it didn't have the opportunity to actually hurt her one day. 

It was my mission to get her into the gym to start working on some balance building exercises to help her lose her clumsiness in her everyday life, at least when it came to walking up and down the stairs, but that was a story for another day when her pure hatred for exercise wasn't completely front and center. 

"Oh, I'm aware, but you have to do it.  For the view."

"Yeah, yeah.  You're lucky I don't have anywhere else to be right now."

Even despite the fact that she was right—she did have nowhere else to go except to be there with me, I still smiled.  

Hand in hand, we trekked up to the dirt trail and there was something about the simplicity of it all—how easily her dainty little fingers fit into mine, the softness of her skin a smooth balm to the fact that it wasn't all that simple, not really, but just this once maybe it could be. 

Maybe we could pretend our parents hadn't sent us both on a wave of destruction before we could ever make our own executive decisions about our own lives.