“There was this guy.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. His name was Fred and he was really cool.”
“Was he a nurse or something?”
“No,” I shook my head. “He was a drug dealer.”
“You befriended a drug dealer?” My dad asked from the front seat.
I nodded. “He was nice, Dad. He liked the birds.”
“A drug dealer who liked birds, huh?”
I nodded again. “Yeah, he was very cool. Hey, why didn’t Owen come to pick me up with you?” I asked. We were in the car on the way back home because my dad had just picked me up and signed me out of that mental hospital rehab place.
“He’s at home with everybody else,” He informed me.
“Oh right, because they’re throwing a party,” I sighed gruffly.
“Yeah,” My dad laughed. “Because they’re happy that you’re coming home.”
“It’s a good thing that they let me get dressed before I left, because then I’d look like a mess at my own party and that’d be very embarrassing.” I was wearing a pair of high waisted denim shorts and a lacy red crop top, but because the shorts were so high, none of my tummy was showing except for little glimpses from where the shirt was only lace and there was no fabric behind the red lace. I wore matching red flats because I didn’t take any heels with me to the rehab center- heels weren’t allowed in there at all.
“You’re very talkative, Dakota,” He observed with another laugh.
I nodded in agreement. “Yes, that’s the drugs, Dad. I have to take one in the morning and one right before dinner so that I stay happy because without the pills, I’m not happy. That’s what Dr. Baylin told me, at least. The good thing, though, is that I only have to take them for another week and then I’ll be normal Dakota again. They made Fred really talkative too, and it was really funny because he would always tell me about the birds. He really liked birds.”
“So it wasn’t all bad, right?”
“No, it was awful. They only had chocolate pudding cups on Thursdays and Tuesdays and then there was pizza on Wednesdays and Fridays but other than that, the food wasn’t very good at all. I ate though, at each meal, I ate the whole thing. Well, I ate the whole thing on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday, but not the whole time. Dr. Baylin said that it was progress. Dr. Baylin says that I’m not sick anymore.”
“That’s what she told me too,” He nodded in agreement. “That’s great news.”
“It’s superb,” I giggled. “And it’ll be even more superb when I’m off of these damn- oops! I meant dang- drugs because I feel like I’m on a freaking cloud or something and I don’t like it. Dr. Baylin says that it’s normal to be like this though, so I’m just going to go with it and then next week, I’ll be normal again.”
“Do you want to go back to school on Monday? You can have the week off if you want,” He offered, which was like magic because he always hated me missing school and I’d just missed three whole weeks (one in the hospital, two at the rehab center) and he would let me take another one off too.
“Oh no,” I said quickly. “I miss Nikki and Marnie so so so much. I want to go back to school ASAP. That means as soon as possible, Dad.”
“I know what that means,” He laughed. “I thought you weren’t talking to Marnie anymore?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“I don’t understand your answer,” He admitted as he pulled up in front of our house. I could tell that there were a lot of people there, because there were a lot of cars parked around the house parked on the curb and whatnot. “But we’re here, so go say hi to everyone and whatnot, I’ll get your bags.”
“You’re the best, Daddy!” I chirped as I hopped out of the car and hurried up to the house because although I wasn’t happy about this whole ‘party’ thing, I was really excited to be seeing my brother after two weeks and Nikki too, of course. And then I was also excited to talk to Braeden so that I could fix things with him as well. There was just a lot of excitement for me.
When I got inside, everybody was standing around talking so I don’t think anybody noticed me come in. It was basically just the whole baseball team and the whole dance team there in my living room.
“Dakota!” Somebody cheered my name, and I recognized that voice as Nikki. When she announced that I was there, everybody looked up from their discussions and began to cheer loudly for my arrival, which made me blush heavily just before Nikki found herself by my side and threw herself into my arms.
I hugged her back tightly because I really missed her so much. “I missed you so much,” I sighed, voicing my thoughts.
“Gosh, I’ve missed you too. How are you? You’re good and everything?”
I nodded in the confirmative. “Yes, I am good and ready to rock and roll.”
“Okay then,” She laughed.
“I’m still on the drugs,” I explained to her. “So I’m very happy right now.”
“Ah,” She nodded just as Owen, Levi, and John made their way over to where I was standing with Nikki.
“Hey, kiddo,” Owen chirped as I ran into him for a hug because like I said, I really missed my brother.
“Hey, kiddo,” I mocked him with a giggle as I hugged him like an anaconda trying to eat its prey. “You didn’t get any taller. I figured you’d get taller.”
“You were only gone for two weeks, you know,” He reminded me with a small laugh. “And I’m pretty sure that I’m done growing.”
I shrugged. “I don’t feel comfortable with technicalities.”
“What?” He laughed.
“She’s high on drugs,” Nikki filled him in.
I greeted Levi and John briefly before having some bonding time with people from the dance team like Karen and Alexis. Marnie was there and I decided that I should talk to her, but I didn’t want to today because the nurses had given me an extra dose of my antidepressants that morning for the trip home, so I was extra loopy that day. I was going to talk to Braeden later though, because I really had to talk to him that day, but I would just wait a little while longer so that I wasn’t so hyped up when I did so.
Todd wasn’t there, which was good, because I didn’t want to see him still. Braeden was there (looking as lovely as ever), though, he was just keeping his distance from me, like Marnie was.
“He thinks that you hate him,” Nikki informed me when she saw me looking at him from across the room.
“He does?” I whimpered.
She nodded sadly. “Yeah, because you’ve been ignoring him and whatnot.”
“No, I definitely don’t hate him,” I said quickly. “It’s more like the opposite type of thing.”
“What do you mean?” Nikki wondered, looking over at me curiously.
“I think that I… Um, I think that I love him,” I admitted sheepishly. “Is that crazy? That’s crazy, isn’t it?”
She giggled crazily for a moment before answering. “It’s not that crazy. And besides, isn’t love supposed to be crazy? You just have to tell him before he loses his mind or something, because he’s about to, I’m sure.”
“Do you think that he hates me by now?” I asked her with a voice full of concern, because I was seriously scared that maybe because I’ve been too scared to talk to him that he just decided to hate me.
“That’s the dumbest question you’ve ever asked me,” Nikki informed me. “Of course he doesn’t hate you- he loves you back, goofy.”
“Oh,” I sighed. “Well, that’s good.”
“You better hurry though,” She said, pointing towards the front door. I followed her finger to see that Braeden was walking towards the door and he was leaving without even saying hello or goodbye or anything. “He’s about to leave.”
I didn’t even think about it before I shot onto my feet and towards the door but by the time I got through the crowd of people in the living room, he was already out the door.
Once I found myself outside in the grass, he was halfway across the yard to his car that was parked on the curb.
“You’re leaving?” I called to him pathetically, because I didn’t know what else to say and I didn’t want him to leave before I could talk to him. That would be totally tragic for me because after the talk I had with my therapist, I’d decided that I had to talk to him again and straighten things out before our relationship is doomed for all of eternity.
He spun around to look at me with an unreadable mix of emotions. I was never good at reading facial expressions. “I figured that you wanted me to,” He muttered softly.
“Well, I um, I don’t,” I muttered back. “Unless you want me to want you to go, because I won’t stop you if you do want to.”
“What?”
“I get that a lot,” I sighed, noticing his confusion. “It’s the drugs.”
“You’re on drugs?”
“Only for another week,” I piped. “And then they’re gone. Fred says that they make him take both anti-depressants and then he has to do this thing and I don’t remember what it was called but it didn’t sound very fun at all, so I think I got off easy.”
“Wait, who’s Fred?” Braeden asked, taking a few steps closer to me so that he wasn’t all the way across the yard from me. That was good, because that meant that he didn’t think that I was a stinky human being… physically or personality wise, I hoped.
“My bird watching drug dealer friend. He’s nice,” I explained.
“Sounds like you had fun,” He chuckled dryly.
“No,” I mumbled sadly. “It wasn’t fun, but I made it out alive, so that’s nice I guess.”
“Yeah, that’s nice,” He agreed as he cleared his throat awkwardly, which reminded me that I should get to the point of what I wanted to talk to him about.
“I blame you though,” I choked out with a small blush. This was actually a lot harder than I thought it would be and I don’t know why. “Because you really helped me get through it.”
“Um, me?” He echoed in confusion. “How?”
“Well, I mean, there were times that I felt like I couldn’t make it and stuff,” I muttered, kicking my foot around in the grass with my eyes following that kicking foot so that I didn’t have to look up at Braeden, who I could tell was intent on looking at me. “And I’d feel lost and I’d feel really sad and sometimes I’d cry a lot in my room and it could get really bad. Anyway, the point is that whenever it would get bad like that, I would always think of you to get me through it. And it wasn’t like this long list of people that I thought of to make it easier- it was specifically you. Does that sound cheesy? That definitely sounds a lot cheesier than it did in my head. Creepier too.” I muttered breathlessly because I was just so nervous to be saying this to him all out of the blue and everything. Dr. Baylin said that I should just tell him honestly and openly though, so that was what I was doing and what she didn’t tell me about was the overwhelming sense of nervous embarrassment I was feeling.
“Why are you telling me all of this?” He wondered curiously, taking another step closer to me, but he still wasn’t all that close to me at all.
I shrugged sheepishly, continuing to look down at the grass that I was kicking. I could feel his strong gaze on me just as much as I could feel the sun beating on my bare legs, and it was all so intense but I was forcing myself to deal with it so that I could say what needed to be said. “I don’t know,” I finally admitted in a childish manner. “I kind of thought that you might kiss me if I told you that.”
“Wait, so it isn’t true?” He asked.
“No,” I said quickly, looking up at him then, just because of the insane accusation. “I-I mean yes? I don’t understand how to answer the question, but it’s true. I just-“ I really hated these drugs because they made me so incredibly emotional all the time so then I was fighting back tears. “This was so much easier to say when I wasn’t actually saying it. I mean, I’ve had this glorious, romantic speech planned out since Thursday and it doesn’t sound nearly as good as it was supposed to sound.”
“You’re confusing me,” Braeden admitted, and he actually sounded kind of amused, but I didn’t find anything about this humiliating conversation amusing at all.
“I’ll try again,” I sighed heavily. “Braeden Dunce, I’m so sorry that I didn’t tell you about my past. I’ll tell you everything, I swear. I don’t necessarily want to, but Dr. Baylin says that I need to be honest. And this is me being honest. I thought about you every dang day that I was in that prison and whenever I was sad, I thought about you and whenever I was happy, I thought about you. And when I was talking with Fred, I told him about you. I just can’t stand the thought of you treating me any differently just because of what happened a few years ago, when you weren’t even here, and now I guess it just happened again and I just don’t want you to give me that look that everybody else gives me. The ‘are you hungry?’ look or the ‘maybe you should eat’ look or the ‘do you want some of my food?’ look or any of the other looks that I get, because there’s a lot of them, I just don’t want that from you. You mean almost the whole wide world to me, as hard as that is for me to believe, I think it’s true, and I don’t want you to think those things about me that other people think just because of what has happened. And right now, I just really, really want you to kiss me because I’m a firm believer that the guy should make the first move by kissing the girl and I’m the girl so if you still want to, I think it’d be very nice if you did that.”
“Really?” He croaked with eyes wider than the moon.
I nodded, biting my lip in anxious anticipation. “I promise I won’t slap you this time.”
He laughed again and I was convinced that he really didn’t want to anymore and I had pushed him away too much and he was laughing at me and all my speech practice with Fred was for nothing because I was being rejected.
“Okay, well I’m gonna go inside now,” I sighed, now completely embarrassed and basically, I just wanted to die. Not literally, though, because I knew a lot of people who really did want to die in that rehab place and they were a lot more miserable than me.
“I thought you wanted me to kiss you,” He chuckled as I turned to go back into the house. He obviously found something a whole lot funnier than I did, because he kept laughing and smiling and I couldn’t figure out why.
“I thought you weren’t going to,” I called back as I continued for the door.
“No, I am,” He assured me quickly, stepping forward and gripping my wrist in his incredibly warm hand so that I stopped walking and turned to look at him. “But everyone is watching us through the window- including your dad. It’d be weird.”
I turned around and saw that he was very right and everybody was crowded around the large window in our living room with my dad being right there in the front so he was able to see everything.
“Oh, well then that was probably a good idea,” I muttered with an awkward nod, turning back around to face Braeden again.
“Yeah,” He laughed. “I’ll pick you up tonight, though, and we can go somewhere, yes?”
“L-like a date?” I stuttered with a blush creeping into my cheeks to make my face match my shirt.
“Not a date,” He denied with a shake of his head. “Dakota, I’ve fancied you for quite a while now, so when we really do go on a date, I’m gonna make it big. Like, really big.”
“Oh,” I squeaked with a giggle, which combined to make a really weird sound that I was embarrassed to make.
“C’mon, let’s get back inside,” Braeden grinned at me before we went back into the house and before we got in there, everybody kind of sprinted away from the window so we wouldn’t know that they’d been eavesdropping, which we obviously already knew.
I hung out with everyone for a while after that and eventually, mostly everybody left the house around dinner time. Nikki, Levi, John, and Marnie were still there. I wasn’t sure why Marnie was still there, but I was glad that she was, because since she was there and I was going to see Braeden tonight and I found out that I really liked Braeden, then I needed to look my best, and although Nikki is perfect for dating advice, she was going to go home with Levi soon, I could tell by the way they were all close and snuggly.
“So there really is a thing with Dunce?” My dad asked when everybody was sitting around the living room talking about a bunch of stupid stuff.
I shrugged. “I mean, there’s not an official thing yet, but it’s kind of a thing, I guess.”
“I saw it coming,” John nodded. “It was pretty predictable.”
“Dakota and Braeden?” Levi clarified. “I don’t think it was that predictable.”
“Okay, well you guys can have this debate all you want, I’m going to go get ready.”
“Ready for what?” Owen wondered as I started walking towards the stairs.
“He’s picking me up soon,” I sighed.
“You didn’t ask me if you could go anywhere,” My dad piped, but he was smiling, so I knew that he was just trying to tease me.
“I’m telling you know,” I giggled. I stopped walking when I was about to pass the couch, where Marnie was sitting beside John. “Do you wanna come?” I asked her.
“Huh?” She muttered, obviously shocked that I was even talking to her. I was sure that everyone was pretty shocked that I was initiating a civilized conversation with Marnie, but I was going to do it anyway. “Me?”
I nodded and acted as normal as I could. “Yeah, Nikki’s about to leave and I need some help.”
“But- Um, yeah, okay,” She stood up from the couch and then followed me up the stairs away from everyone else. When we got to my room, that’s when she decided to get to the bottom of my attitude change. “So are you like, forgiving me now?”
I nodded and went over to my desk where my laptop was sitting there, but it was closed. “Yes. Dr. Baylin says that I should forgive people because it’ll make me happier. Personally, I think that if I am happy without the drugs then I shouldn’t have to take them, but she also thinks that I still need the drugs to be happy. It’s kind of ridiculous to me, but she’s the doctor.”
“Do the drugs make you ramble too?” She asked with a small laugh.
I nodded again as I opened my laptop because I missed it so much, being away from it for three weeks. “Yes, they do. It’s really annoying. Well, it kind of works in stages, I guess. And the last stage before it wears off is the rambling. That’s good, because that means that when Braeden picks me up, I won’t be drugged up at all and that’ll be nice. I’m supposed to take another pill right now though, because it’s right after dinner but I’m just not going to take that one because I don’t want to be drugged up when I talk to Braeden. I told him that I’d tell him everything.”
“Everything?”
“Everything,” I confirmed. “I really like him.”
“He is pretty great,” She sighed.
“Do you still like him too?” I asked her curiously, because I thought that she was over her crush on Braeden a while ago.
“No,” She denied quickly. “I have a boyfriend now, you know, I just know that he’s a great guy.”
“You have a boyfriend?” I echoed.
“Yeah,” Marnie grinned. “Randy asked me out last week and he made it like, official and everything.”
“Congratulations,” I chirped.
“You too,” She sighed happily. “With Braeden and everything. Speaking of which, don’t you have a date to get ready for?”
“No,” I shook my head. “It’s not a date. He made it clear that it isn’t a date. He said that when- he didn’t say if, he said when- we go on a date, he’ll make it really huge and go all out, so this isn’t a date.”
“That is so cute!” She squealed loudly. “And you’ll have to excuse my excitement because it’s been forever since I’ve been able to talk to like, a girl, and I miss you so much, Kota.”
“I miss you too,” I admitted honestly. “And we’ll definitely have a girls’ night and catch up and everything, but I only have like, twenty minutes before Braeden gets here and my hair still looks like I’ve been a mental patient for the past two weeks.”
Marnie laughed and then started tapping on her phone crazily. “Queue the girly music montage of music.”
I rolled my eyes at her as Taylor Swift’s 22 started blasting through my room.
“Now, that outfit is seriously cute, so keep that on, and I’ll just find something to do with your hair.”
“In twenty minutes,” I reminded her.
“In twenty minutes,” She laughed. “Don’t doubt my skills.”
Twenty minutes passed with teen music flowing as our soundtrack before Marnie had my hair wavy in a half up- half down kind of style with a red bow that matched my shirt and shoes.
“I look like a Taylor Swift honorable mention,” I giggled.
“You look hot,” She corrected me.
I sighed, looking at my phone to see if Braeden had texted me, since he’d texted me earlier saying that he’d text me when he got there. There wasn’t any unopened messages though, so I just kind of sat there and stared at it and waited anxiously for the phone to bing with that much-wanted message.
“You’ll make a really great couple,” Marnie told me sincerely. “And I expect to hear all about it on Monday.”
I nodded with a shaky breath. “I’ll tell you everything. Just like old times.”
This made her grin so wide, I thought she might rip her face. “Yeah, just like old times.”
We shared a quick hug but it was cut short by my phone binging with Braeden’s ‘I’m here’ text. I shook away my nerves, even though it felt oddly good to feel nervous, because the drugs that I’ve been taking don’t let me feel nervous, so it was a sign that I was 100% Dakota now.
When I got to the living room, my dad had already answered the door, which was very creepy to me considering Braeden didn’t actually ring the doorbell or anything.
“Don’t be out too late,” He told Braeden as I approached from behind.
“Um, yes sir,” He muttered awkwardly.
“I told you it’s not a date, Daddy,” I sighed loudly. “I won’t be out long.”
“If you’re not here by eleven, I’m coming to get you,” He threatened seriously.
“I’ll be here by eleven,” I insisted. “You’re so embarrassing, you know.”
He grinned as I walked passed him to get out the door. “I’m your dad, it’s my job.”
I rolled my eyes at him and then we said our goodbyes before he shut the door and left Braeden and I alone.
“Does your dad ever get less scary?” Braeden asked me on our way to his car.
I giggled softly and shrugged. “I honestly don’t think so. I mean, I don’t think he’s scary because he’s my dad, but I think that John, Levi, and Todd are all still afraid of him.”
“Todd should be afraid of him, considering a while back, he made him run like, five times as much as everyone else.”
“That was after he found out that Todd cheated on me,” I informed him, recalling the incident that I heard about through Owen. “He’s very protective.”
When we got to Braeden’s car, he stepped in front of me and then opened the passenger side door for me.
“You don’t have to do that,” I muttered with a light blush as I slid into the car.
Braeden grinned a wide grin and I think that’s the moment that I decided that I was for sure in love with Braeden Dunce, with the way that he had just smiled at me. Maybe it wasn’t a special smile made just for me, but it was an amazing smile and just looking at that Braeden Dunce Original type of smile, my heart tripped over a beat and I let out a squeak-like cough. “I do recall informing you that I can be very romantic when I want to be,” He reminded me just before shutting the door and then making his way over to the driver side.
As we drove towards his house, I decided that I should be the one to talk, because I didn’t think that either one of us were entirely sure about what was going to happen tonight. “I didn’t take my happy pill,” I started. “So I’m like, 100% me.”
“What does that mean?” He asked curiously.
“Well, my therapist- her name is Dr. Baylin- she gave me these anti-depressants but they make me really loopy, so I just didn’t take one before I came. It’s okay though, it’s not going to like, make me go suicidal or anything. She gave them to me because the thought that they’d help me ‘cope with the real world’ which is ridiculous,” I explained, trying to be as descriptive and honest as I possibly could.
“You’re sure that it’s okay to not take it?” He questioned.
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m positive. Sometimes Fred wouldn’t take his and he’d be just fine. I mean, he got yelled at a lot, but since I’m not there anymore, they can’t yell at me, so I’m fine.”
“Fred, the drug dealer?”
I nodded again. “Yeah, he was a bird watcher too.”
The rest of the ride to his house- which is where I assumed we were going- I told Braeden about Fred and a few of the other patients that I’d met at the rehab place. When we got to his house, we went out back, because not only did he have a pool, but he also had a trampoline, and those are my second favorite outdoor activities, behind swimming, and I obviously didn’t have a bathing suit with me.
I only jumped for a few moments before we were laying down beside each other on the spring-like surface, looking up at the bright sunset.
“So you want to know everything?” I asked him quietly, still looking up at the sky.
“I want to know whatever you want to tell me,” He assured me softly.
“I thought you wanted to know,” I muttered.
“I do,” He nodded. “But I want you to want to tell me.”
“Oh, well you better be a good listener, because it’s a long story.”
“That’s okay,” He said in a hushed tone.
“Okay,” I sighed, trying to think of where I should start.
“I guess it really started during sophomore year. I had- and I still have- a really good life. My dad is amazing, my brother is amazing, and my friends are amazing for the most part. We have a stable amount of money and I have good grades and I’m not ugly, I don’t think. I know that I have a good life, but there’s just something inside of me that just makes me feel so alone a lot of the time. If somebody gets close to me, I just kind of cling because then I don’t feel as alone but when somebody like, leaves or something, I just feel really terrible about myself. I know it’s ridiculous, I really do know, I just can’t stop feeling incredibly pathetic and dumb and just a lot of terrible things. So, sophomore year, which was when Derek left town with his wife. They had been married for years before that, but he actually left town during that year. My mom left when I was two, so that kind of played a part in it, but mostly, I just felt really alone. Owen and I weren’t very close back then either, he’d always be with his baseball friends and going to parties and whatnot, and Marnie couldn’t really spend a lot of time with me either because of her strict mother. Like I said, I just felt really alone all the time and it took me to this really dark place. Nobody was really paying that much attention to me, so they didn’t notice when I stopped eating.
“I would starve myself for days at a time and when I did eat, it wouldn’t be a lot. I got sick, like what you saw a few weeks ago. My stomach started to hurt and I’d get really heavy dizzy spells. Nobody thought anything of it until I crashed the car into a pole. It didn’t do any major damage to the car or to me, but they still took me to the hospital as like, a precaution, and they found out that I didn’t have enough of anything in my system. They determined that I was anorexic and then sent me to this mental hospital rehabilitation place, which is where I just went, and they made me better.
“I can’t really tell you why I do it, starve myself, because I don’t know. I don’t know why I can’t just eat like a normal person. I don’t do it for a attention, I can tell you that. I don’t want people to look at me and think of me as the anorexic girl, even though I know that some people do. Dr. Baylin says that I do it for revenge on myself. When something bad happens- like my brother leaving town or my boyfriend cheating on me- I think of myself as worthless and useless. Starving myself is a form of self-punishment. It’s kind of funny that she knows my mind better than I do.
“I know you said that you want to kiss me, but I just want you to know how much work that entitles. I’m constantly going at war with myself. I might not show it and it’s not always severe, but it’s always there. I don’t know if I’ll ever be completely normal, but I know that I’m never gonna go to that place again, where I stop eating and things get that bad. And when Todd told you that I used to be anorexic, I got so scared. I was just… I don’t think I’d ever been so terrified. You mean so much to me that it’s ridiculous, and I was so incredibly afraid that you’d start treating me differently. I don’t want you to treat me differently just because of what’s happened. I don’t want anything to change because I don’t need to be reminded about it all the time, you know?
“So, yeah, I know that I have a lot of problems and I know that it’s a lot to take in and everything but I really want us to work. So yeah, I guess that’s the end of my sad and embarrassing story.”
There was a long silence as I stared up at the sky that was now pitch black and twinkling with stars.
“So I’ve probably scared you off now, huh?” I added a little while later.
“No,” He said quickly and then cleared his throat. “I just don’t really know what to say, I guess. I’m pretty positive that there’s about nothing that you could ever do to scare me away.”
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I pleaded, trying to get some insight into his thought process at the moment.
“I mean, nothing’s changed at all. I’m really glad that you told me, though, it really means a lot to me,” He admitted.
“Nothing’s changed?” I repeated. “So like, you still want to…” I trailed off, not knowing exactly how to phrase it without making things awkward.
“Yeah,” He laughed, moving his hand so that it was holding mine as we laid there looking up at the sky on the trampoline. “I still want to.”
“Cool,” I sighed heavily. “That’s really cool. But you gotta promise me something first.”
“Anything,” He agreed. “What is it?”
“Just promise me that you won’t leave. I mean, obviously if you aren’t happy anymore, then break up with me, but don’t leave, if that makes any sense at all.”
“You mean like Todd,” He mentioned.
I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I fell in love wrong one time, I don’t think I can do it again.”
“How do you know that you’ll fall in love with me?” Braeden asked curiously.
I shrugged, but he was still looking up at the stars, so he didn’t see it. “I, um,” Just say it, Dakota. Say it. “I think I already have.”
“Wait, seriously?” He muttered in shock.
“Is that bad? That’s so bad, isn’t it?”
“No,” He chuckled softly, lifting himself up on one of his elbows so that he was facing me. I looked over at him, even though he was practically invisible now since it was so dark outside. “It’s not bad, that was just unexpected.”
“Oh,” I squeaked.
“And mutual, you know,” Braeden added. “The feeling’s mutual.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I love you too, Kota.”
“I think,” I croaked. “That this is when you’re supposed to kiss me.”
“Yeah,” He laughed, inching closer to me. “I think so too.”
And so that’s what he did, he kissed me. It was truthfully the best kiss that I have ever had in my entire life. That’s seriously saying something too, considering how much I adored Todd’s kissing abilities, but he had absolutely nothing on Braeden.
Oh man, I could feel the heat radiating off of him in waves and that firework feeling that I’d only read in books- I actually felt that feeling. It wasn’t just a kiss, it was a passionate awakening and it was love and it was so incredible that I never wanted it to end. I was so addicted that I could be okay with kissing him like this on his trampoline forever. And that was just a small, no-tongue kiss that we were sharing. I would have been trembling if I wasn’t like, laying down or anything, and it was so intense without being intense at all.
The mood of the kiss kind of took a 180, though, when he trailed his tongue shyly along my bottom lip, asking for entrance into my mouth. Eagerly, I accepted by opening my mouth slightly just as an involuntary moan escaped me. That’s when the kiss went from slow and sweet and magical to fast and intense and equally as magical. There was moaning and groaning and grinding and I felt like this was exactly what I needed after the crap-tastic month or so I’d just endured. I needed hope, which was exactly what he was giving me with that kiss- hope.
I tangled one of my hands in his curly brown hair as he rolled over on top of me so that we were comfortably laying there, just kissing for the longest time. One of his hands was on my bare thigh, right below where my shorts were, and his other hand was on my waist while my hand was still playing in his hair and my other one was crawling its way up his shirt, feeling every single one of his glorious abs.
“Dakota,” He panted into my mouth. “We gotta stop now.”
“Why?” I breathed before I could even stop myself.
“Because,” He laughed. “It’ll be really hard to stop soon.”
“Oh,” I mumbled, suddenly understanding what he meant because I could feel it poking into my hip. I was about to agree with him and then I’d fix my hair and put my shoes on (I took them off to get on the trampoline) and I’d go home because it was getting about that time. I was about to do all of that responsible stuff when I realized that I didn’t want to. I didn’t know if it was the three H’s of the drugs still settling inside of me or if it was really me, but no matter, I still made the decision to not be responsible at all. “Let’s do it,” I said quickly.
“Let’s do what?” He wondered, furrowing his eyebrows in the cutest way I’d ever seen.
“Bake cookies,” I replied sarcastically. “What do you think?”
His face flashed with recognition as well as shock. “Oh, you wanna do that?”
“Do you?”
Braeden nodded. “Yeah, but-“
“Let’s do it then.”
“Really?” He muttered in a dumfounded kind of way.
I nodded with a breathless giggle. “Yeah.”
And the grin he gave me in that moment was one of those grins that made me sure that this was the beginning of my happy ending. I was sure of it.