We're standing near the back of the crowd and he's behind me slightly and when the lights come on, his free hand comes to rest on my shoulder and I lean back into him.
This is what grounded feels like from the inside.
I've been looking for this feeling everywhere and I found it in a mountain library and a reindeer enclosure and a sleigh ride in the dark.
Holly catches my eye across the crowd and her whole face lights up. She winks at me before she turns back to Justin without saying anything.
He takes me to the ridge overlook.
Not the route from the night walk, a different path, shorter, and when we reach the ridge the resort is below and ahead is just mountain and sky and the particular extraordinary dark of aColorado winter night with no cloud cover and too many stars to process.
"Say what you want to say," I tell him, because I'm not going to make him work up to it. I'm not scared and I want him to know that.
He turns to face me. "I've been watching you all week," he says. "The way you move through things. The way you get excited and forget to take care of yourself. How you jump in and act before giving it a single thought. The way you ask just the right questions and don't know that you're doing it." He pauses. "The way you stopped for the elk when everyone else would have driven around it."
"That was instinct," I say.
"That's my point." He takes a step closer. Not much, just enough to change the air between us. "You need someone who pays attention to the things you don't pay attention to. Someone who watches where you're going when you're too busy going to watch. Someone who —" he stops. "Someone who takes care of you. Not because you can't take care of yourself. Because you shouldn't always have to."
Oh.
Oh, that's it. Not someone to manage me or contain me but someone to be the ground under my feet so I can be as much of myself as I am without falling.
I've read it in books. I've understood it abstractly. But he's saying it to me, specifically, about me, with those dark eyes and that steady voice.
"I know what you're describing," I say.
"I know you do." And something in his expression tells me he knows exactly why I know. That he's been reading me all week the same way I've been reading him. "I want to know if it's something you want."
If it's something I want.
I've wanted it for longer than this week. Longer than I've let myself say.
"Yes," I say. No performance, no qualification, no deflection. "Yes. It's something I want."
Something moves through him, a settling, like a held breath released. “Will you be my little girl, Maya?”
“Yes, Daddy. I think I’m already your little girl.”
“We can figure out the details later.”
“Okay, just not too much later.”
He reaches up and brushes a strand of hair from my face and then his hand stays, cupped along my jaw, tilting my face up toward his.
"My good girl," he says.
Good girl. The words have been doing things to me all week.
And then he kisses me.
It's not rushed. Nothing about Anthony Rossi is rushed. He kisses me like he is sure of the decision, unhurried and certain, and I make a small sound I'm not embarrassed about and lean into it and his other hand finds the small of my back and draws me closer.
I've been kissed before. I've been kissed very well before. This is different. This is a kiss that knows what it is. It isn't asking a question, isn't trying something out. It's a statement. A claiming. He’s telling me that I belong to him. It’s my last first kiss. It’s the first kiss that bypasses my lips and lands in my chest and somewhere deep inside that I've been quietly protecting for a long time. A corner in my soul that has been longing to find my person, the one who completes me.
When he breaks the kiss, he keeps his forehead against mine, eyes still closed for a moment.
"Hi," I say, which is not what I planned to say, it just kind of comes out.
