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And so when Russell asked me if I was okay—if I was sure—I nodded without hesitation.
I stretched up to kiss him, and gave him a smile. “I’m ready.”
CHAPTER 22 Monday
9:00 P.M.
Darcy.” I woke up and felt Russell’s arms around me. He kissed my bare shoulder and I smiled without opening my eyes.
“Hi,” I said, cuddling back into him. We were under my sheets—we’d tossed the blanket off at some point; I’m sure it was on the floor somewhere—fitted together like two spoons. I sighed and snuggled down deeper into my pillow. Sleep was just around the corner, and I was sure I could fall back into it in just a few seconds. And when I woke up, Russell would be there. How wonderful was that?
“I think we need to wake up,” he said, even though I could tell from his voice he’d only just woken up too. “We should probably get going?”
My eyes flew open—just like that, reality crashed down on me. It was dark in my room, and I sat up with the discombobulating feeling that comes with oversleeping—when you’re not quite sure where or when you are. I looked at the clock on the bedside table—it was nine at night. Which meant I only had half an hour, at most, before I needed to leave for the airport.
“Oh, god.” Russell was absolutely right that I needed to get up and start getting myself organized. But instead, I just lay back down and rolled onto my other side, so I was facing him. I twined my feet with his and just took him in for a second—he was right there, sharing my pillow, his hair sticking up in all directions from where I’d been running my fingers through it. “You’re right,” I said with a sigh. “We should go.”
“Yeah.” He ran his hand up and down my back, letting it rest on my hip. I somehow knew that the second we got up and had to start dealing with the world again—bags, car, airport—all of this would be gone. We were in a tiny bubble, a kingdom we’d made in my room. And when we got out of the bed, there would be conversations to have and things to decide and this magical moment would be over.
I reached across and stroked his cheek, and Russell smiled. “Remember this morning?” he asked.
“Vaguely.” I ran my thumb over his cheek, tracing the constellation of his freckles.
“I said I had a dream about you. And you asked me what it was.”
“Oh, right.” That was when it had seemed so incredibly intimate to see Russell in his bedroom, in his element. And now here he was in mine, with his arm around me and nothing between us. “So what was it?”
He opened his eyes and looked right into mine. “This,” he said with a smile, half disbelieving. “That we were just sleeping next to each other, and I woke up and reached out for you and you were there.”
I wound a strand of his hair around my finger. “That was the dream?”
“You sound surprised.”
“I guess I just thought it would be something more… exciting.”
He turned his head so that he could kiss my hand. “There’s nothing more exciting than this.”
We just looked at each other for another moment, our heads sharing a pillow, and suddenly I wondered—should we have done this just as I was leaving? It had seemed absolutely right and romantic a few hours ago—but was this the absolute worst timing? A beginning and an ending, all mixed up together?
“We should get going,” he said, even as he made absolutely no move to get up.
“Yeah,” I agreed, equally not moving, and he smiled. But then reality hit me like a wave as I looked around my room. My suitcase was half packed on the floor by my desk, and the sheer amount of stuff I had to do in the next half hour was suddenly overwhelming. “I still need to finish packing.”
“For college? You haven’t packed?” A second later, Russell shook his head. “Sorry—didn’t mean for that to sound judgmental. You haven’t packed!” he repeated, now making this sound like a fun idea.
“I guess I thought… if I didn’t pack, maybe I wouldn’t have to go?” I sighed, and grabbed my robe from where it had been flung over my desk chair. “It won’t take me that long.” I pulled open my closet, flipping through my dresses, looking for the warmest ones.
Russell pulled his T-shirt on and stood up, now—disappointingly—dressed. “Bathroom?”
“Just down the hall.” I pulled three dresses off their hangers, almost at random, and dropped them in my suitcase. I grabbed a pile of T-shirts and placed them in my bag, then pulled out pajamas, underwear, socks… with every item I tossed in my bag, it was like the reality of what I was heading to was getting sharper, and the dreaminess of what we’d just had was starting to fade away. The whole last day had been a respite from all of the reality that was now rushing toward me like a wave, all the more jarring because I’d been pretending it wouldn’t happen. But maybe, I reasoned as I threw in a Milligan Concepts sweatshirt and my favorite sweatpants, it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe I could even start to see it as an adventure.
“Can I help?” I turned to see Russell leaning against the doorframe, and smiled automatically when I saw him, like a reflex.
“I think I’m okay.” I took my makeup bag off the counter and added it to the suitcase, then grabbed two of my favorite Kelly Tipton novels from my desk and placed them inside too. “Nearly there.” He walked a little farther into the room and I raised an eyebrow at him. “I assume you’re already packed up?”
He shook his head. “You can’t in our house. The cats don’t like it when you take out suitcases, so we all avoid taking them out until the last minute.”
“What… do they do?”
