By the time we’re well down the path, I’m delirious with happiness. We haven’t needed to fill the time or our steps with words. This is a place that transcends the need for language. It feels way more like we’re communicating with our souls. With soft blinks, little smiles, with our hands joined, and our bodies swaying together.
I want us to be forever. I think that started a long time ago, maybe even the day we met, but our time at the cabin and this walk are a thousand more steps along that path when I was only ever able to take a few faltering ones in that direction before.
We reach a loop in the path, and I swing us around to start the very slow amble back to the parking lot. I wish we had more time, but I’m aware that we left a little later than I wanted to, and after the long ride getting here, it’s already pastdinner. Esme will say that she doesn’t care, and while I want to stretch this out for hours yet, I don’t want her to be hungry. I’m not sure what she has planned, but we could come back tomorrow.
She seems content to let me take the lead and steer us where I will. We walk back even more slowly. I don’t take out my phone once. I want to frame all of this in my mind because a photo would never do it justice.
At the parking lot, Esme hedges a little at the bike. Thankfully, everything is still exactly as I left it. She takes off her sneakers and pulls on the motorcycle boots, then zips up her jacket.
“I booked us a bed and breakfast,” she says, so quickly that her words run together. “I might have got us the honeymoon suite. I just don’t want you to be surprised about that, if we get there and we’re greeted like a married couple. I… just wanted you to have everything to make this special. Flowers. Petals. Chocolate. Champagne. Strawberries. Breakfast in bed and a massive tub in the room. The full package deal. I didn’t know how to get that unless I got that package. But uh… you might have to play along. I’m sorry if that’s weird.”
I’m shocked. Not at the depth of thought she put into this, or that she wanted to make it special for me, but… I—I guess I’m not really sure what I’m surprised at. I’m happy surprised, though. I laugh, then take her hands. “I’m not mad. That sounds perfect.”
Half of me wants to protest that she didn’t need to shell out money for this. She insisted that she’d pay for the hotel. She didn’t tell me that it was a bed and breakfast and that she’d sprung for what is probably their most expensive package. Shedid that for me, forournight away. I’m not going to stand here and convince myself that I’m not worth it. It’s the fact that she thinks Iamthat bowls me over.
I bring my face to hers and kiss her thoroughly. It’s perfect. It tastes like tomorrow, like a promise, like a magical night together. Like moments that I’ll cherish into infinity. It tastes like her giving me the best of the past and offering up her whole heart clutched in trembling palms.
I kiss her until we’re both breathless, and even then, I can’t bring myself to let her go. We stand together, our bodies pressed up against each other. I know we can’t stand here all day, so reluctantly, I pull away. I kiss her forehead one more time before getting my phone out of my pocket.
I unlock it and pass it over. “Want to put in the address for me?” I have my earbuds so the phone can read off the GPS directions into my ear while I’m riding and I won’t need to look at it and get distracted.
She types something and passes the phone back.
I blink when I realize what I’m looking at. A blank notes page with text that blurs until I blink even harder, over and over, to clear my vision. She’s written everything she couldn’t say, but I was listening. I was paying attention to the subtext.
The park is amazing, but you look like the whole world. I can’t wait to take you for dinner and to spend the rest of the night with you and wake up beside you tomorrow morning.
I open my arms and Esme falls into me. I wrap her up tight. It’s another long while before I can bring myself to even think of detaching. She’s content to stand in the circle of myarms, and I’m more than content to hold her. That’s not even the right word. I’m so amazed, overwhelmed, and honored.
I don’t care if anyone stares, or if we look funny, or even crazy. I’m excited to get to our room too and have our time alone together, but it can definitely wait just a few more minutes.
You look like the whole world.
I can’t believe she wrote that. Aboutme. It’s exactly how I feel about her too.
Chapter 22
Esme
The bed and breakfast looks even better in person than it did online, and the photos blew me away. It’s a signature Victorian, a huge monolith that stands at the top of an elevated street. It seems to have been built on two of the three lots, including one that’s a corner, so there’s still room for massive trees to border the house. It’s all quaint cookie-cutter trims, pastel blue siding, white shutters at the windows, cedar shakes, and turrets rising straight up into the sunset. The cloud cover blew off and the sky is a myriad of burning purples, pinks, and blazing oranges.
I’d say that I’ve never seen anything more beautiful, but that would be a lie. Wizard’s face as he studies it all after we pull up to the sidewalk in front of the house, is a masterpiece. He has the whole world in his eyes when he turns to me. They’re glistening and amazed. His smile is so large that his eyes crease at the corners, crinkling adorably.
“This is it?” he asks, wonder threaded through his words. He blinks his coppery eyelashes. They catch in the golden sun, framing his eyes beautifully.
“It is.”
“How did you find this place?”
“I searched for bed and breakfast in and near Seattle. This one was one of my favorites. I liked the outside, but I also liked their rooms.” My face has been hot since we left the park, and I confessed to booking the honeymoon suite. “Iliked the flowerbeds too.” The air is scented with them. Peonies, geraniums, roses, poppies, pansies, petunias. They spill out of baskets hanging from the amber-hued wrap around porch, and spill from beds that run the length of the sidewalk that winds right up the front door.
Wizard turns to study the house again. The sunlight bathes his hair, showing the coppery undertones that I love so much. Golden rays ignite his freckles and caress his nose, the sharp cut of his jaw, and all the planes and cords in his neck. I want to put my tongue there, scrape my teeth down that strong column. I want to take his lips in mine, strip his shirt away, and spend the next few hours worshipping him. I want everything of him, with him, for always.
Soon.
I offer my hand. He takes it as he always does, so enthusiastically, with a tight squeeze, and interlocks our fingers.
He leads me up that flower bordered walkway, over the wooden porch, to the front door. He rings the bell and we’re greeted by an older woman.
