“I like silly.”
“But it’s really silly. Like extra silly.”
“That’s my favorite kind of silly.”
She giggled again, and fuck me, I loved that shit.
She then turned her back to me and rolled the top part of her tube top down. I wouldn’t have minded if she rolled it down even more.
I tilted my head as I stared at it. “A string of flies on a stick of butter with butterflies floating away from it?” I questioned, confused as ever.
“Yeah. It’s silly, and you might not remember it, but when we were kids, you mentioned loving these things you called wordlets.”
“Words within words.”
She nodded. “You drew me a picture of this, and I swore one day I’d get it tattooed on my skin.”
My mouth smiled, but my heart was grinning even harder. “Butterflies.”
“Yeah.” She glanced over her shoulder at me and nodded slowly, the warmth returning to her cheeks as the sun began to set over the Chicago skyline. “Butterflies.”
Oh, shit.
Fucking butterflies.
I shook my head in disbelief. “You got my art inked on your skin?”
“Yes.”
“Karla...” I whispered, still shaking my head. She did that even after I’d disappeared after all those years? Why? Why would she want a reminder of me resting against her skin? Would she want the real me against her skin now? Would she like the person I’d grown to be? Would she mind if my fingers slowly traced the ink on her back? Would she care if my touch slightly lingered?
Why did I crave the opportunity to touch her? To touch her skin... to feel her warmth. And why did she keep my mind spinning with thoughts of who we once were, what we could have been if I wasn’t so scared all those years prior?
Would we have still been in love if I hadn’t let her go?
She pulled up her tube top and then turned to face me fully. The smile on her lips was still there, but it held a hint of something else in it. Curiosity, maybe?
She hugged her knees into her chest. “I go to the cemetery every Sunday evening. For a long time, I’d imagine you showing up to talk to your dad and brother. I’d hoped I’d randomly run into you.”
“You go every Sunday evening?”
“Rain or shine.”
“That’s funny... because I go every Sunday morning.”
Karla’s eyes widened. “So we’ve been missing each other every single Sunday for years?”
“I guess so.” I lowered my head. “I check in on your mom every time, too.”
She smiled. “I check in on your father and brother, too. I ask them to look over you.” My heart was doing that newish thing it’d been doing since Karla came back into my life—beating faster.
Dammit, stop beating faster...
As I stared at her, I felt fear building in my chest. We hadn’t even spent much time together. It made no sense how she managed to make me feel.
Then again, that was what it was like when we were teenagers, too.
I felt so much toward her from reading the letters she wrote to her mother. I felt so much toward her before I even knew her name.
