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“Okay.” I press my lips to his chest. “Now go have a shower. You stink!”
∞
Twenty minutes later, we sit in Oliver’s mum’s car in his driveway, seatbelts clicked into place. I squeeze his hand. “Are you ready?”
“Nope.”
“We don’t have to do this.”
He sighs. “Yes, we do.” He leans across the centre console to kiss me. As he goes to pull away, I suddenly have a crazy idea about how I can distract him from his bad memories of being in cars.
“Do you trust me?” I ask, biting my lip.
“With my life.” Oliver’s eyes search mine, wondering where I’m going with this.
I take a deep breath before unclicking my seatbelt and scrambling over the centre console into the backseat.
“What are you doing?” he asks, the corners of his lips turning up. “You can’t drive a car from the backseat.”
“I know that.” I roll my eyes. “Come here.” I pat the seat next to me.
Oliver’s eyebrows lift, and then he shakes his head with a chuckle. He unclicks his seatbelt and begins to follow me into the backseat, but halfway through he stops with a groan. “I’m not going to fit.” He reaches for his door, and climbs out of the car, shutting the door behind him. I grin as he opens the backdoor and scoots in beside me. “Now what?”
My hands cradle his face and I stare into his hazel eyes, watching as the honey and gold mix with the green. I swallow the lump forming in my throat and say quietly, “You are enough, Oliver Johnston. No matter what happens with footy, or your concussions, or anything else. You are enough for me.”
His mouth drops open in surprise, and I take that opportunity to crush my lips against his. His tongue dances with mine, and one of his hands tangles in my hair. The other drops to my waist, and he pulls my body so that I’m straddling his lap. Our kisses are feverish and hungry. Each of us trying to pour every inch of our heart and soul into the other.
“What did I do to deserve you?” he murmurs into my neck when we come up for air.
I tug at his hair gently, bringing his lips back up to meet mine for a quick peck. “I just wanted to show you how much you mean to me.”
Oliver cups my face and kisses my lips, the tip of my nose, then rests his lips on my forehead. When I pull back, he has a cheeky grin on his face. One of his hands drops down to the hem of my T-shirt, and he twists it around his pointer finger, while the others drag slowly over my stomach causing goosebumps to erupt over my skin. “So, how does this plan of distraction end, anyway?” I suck in a deep breath as his fingers dip under the waist band of my jeans. I can feel the bulge straining against his own, and it’s set every nerve in my body alight.
“Not like that,” I whisper, pressing my lips back against his. I laugh and smack his chest playfully as he pouts like a twelve-year-old girl. “It’s nine o’clock in the morning, and we’re sitting in your front driveway for everyone to see.”
He sighs and nods. “Fair point.” His eyes bore into mine and he brushes my hair behind my ear. “Do you think…” he runs his tongue over his bottom lip making me want to kiss him all over again. “Do you think we might be close to, I don’t know, maybe picking this up another time soon when we’re somewhere a bit more… private?”
My stomach flip-flops as his cheeks flush. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. This spur of the moment idea of mine, to try and help the boy I love, has taken our relationship to a whole other level.
I rest my hand on his chest, revelling in the way his heart is pumping erratically against my fingers. “I’m not sure I’m ready yet,” I say, biting my lip as I watch his face fall. I tip his chin up so he’s looking me in the eye. “But I want you to know, that when I am ready, I’m glad it will be with you.”
A grin breaks out on Oliver’s face and he catches my lips in one last kiss before lifting me off his lap and placing me beside him. “I’m glad it will be with you, too.”
We share a look of shared understanding of how important this moment was in our relationship, before climbing out of the back seat of the car and back into the front.
Oliver reaches over the centre console and takes my hand, lacing his fingers in mine. “Let’s go.”
I turn the key, and the engine starts. I glance across at Oliver as I slowly back out of the driveway. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
We don’t talk on the drive to GMHBA stadium. Oliver connects his phone and his footy pre-game playlist fills the car. His hand hasn’t left mine, but he’s not clinging to me, his touch is light and calm, his finger tracing lazy patterns on my warm skin.
At one point, a car in front of us cuts lanes too quickly to try and make their off-ramp. I tap the breaks, causing the car to jolt a little. I glance quickly over at Oliver, who’s eyes are squeezed shut. His chest is moving up and down rapidly and my chest tightens seeing him struggle. I offer to pull over, but he grunts out, “I’m fine,” so I keep driving, reaching over to give a reassuring squeeze to his thigh. A couple of minutes later his body relaxes again and he says, “I really am fine.”
When we pull into the packed car park, my heart clenches as I think about what it means for Oliver to have driven this far in a car, and how close he came to his dream of getting to play on an AFL stadium only to have it ripped away. I wonder if it’s crossed his mind, too. He gives me a small smile when we climb out of the car and squeezes my hand as we walk into the stadium.
“I survived,” he says into my ear, his warm breath sending shivers down my body.
