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“I highly doubt he’d catch us, Charles. He’s probably in bed right now with–” the front door clicked shut behind them, cutting off the rest of Maddie’s sentence.
Penelope and I looked to each other then, both gaping, before we erupted in laughter.
? ? ?
I ran my fingers down her spine, noticing the way her hair splayed across her back in a messy tapestry. She had the sheets pulled down to her waist as she laid on her stomach next to me. She must’ve woken up a while before I did, but she was significantly farther into the fourth book of the mystery series I’d bought her than she was last night.
She liked to read early in the morning, though it wasn’t often that she woke before I did. She didn’t say anything when I began to stir, and that was at least fifteen minutes ago. She had the book propped against my shoulder, her arms crossed and her chin resting on her hands as she read. She must know I’m awake now since I’ve been rubbing her back, but she still hasn’t said anything.
Which is fine. I’m content to watch her read.
Sometimes I wished I was the painter out of the two of us, because this moment could be a painting. I wish I could transition it to canvas and keep it forever. Her perfect skin, and her hair reflecting in the morning light. Her brow furrowed in concentration on the book in front of her. Mesmerizing, intriguing, beautiful.
I never think about anyone else when I’m with Penelope. She is the being at the forefront of my mind. But as I run my hands up and down her spine, I allow myself to think about every other woman I’ve done this to. Every other pair of lips that have been pressed against mine, every mouth I’ve tasted. I think about the skin I’ve touched and the laughs I've heard.
The all-consuming thought raging through my brain is that none of them are remotely comparable to this. To the simple feeling of my hands against her skin. Not even the way it feels to kiss her, or be inside her, or bare myself to her– mind, body, and soul.
No, just to touch her. Just to be in her presence, to know her name. That alone outshines every other experience I have ever had. My chest, my stomach, and my heart swell at the mere thought of spending my life with her. I realize that I have nothing to compare this feeling to. I’ve never seen it reflected in a book, or a movie, or heard it spoken about by another person.
“How would you describe what it feels like to touch me?” I asked.
She let the book fall closed, thudding against my shoulder before it rolled onto the bed next to me. Propping herself on her elbows she looked at me, brushing my hair off my forehead. “To touch you?”
“Or, just– I don’t know. I can’t describe it. Yeah, to touch me. To lay here, like this. How would you describe the waythismakes you feel?”
She considered it for a moment, as her pointer finger ran down the side of my face and into my neck, until her palm laid against my bare chest. “This loving you feels like flying and falling at the exact same time. Drowning but also floating. Being in outer space but feeling my toes dig into the ground. Like, so much adrenaline that my heart is leaping out of my body, but so much comfort and calm that I could also fall asleep.” Her lips clustered to the side of her face. “That doesn’t make sense, but… yeah.” She shook her head and laughed.
I think she feels the same way.
She perked up a little. “Like I would find you in every lifetime. That’s how it feels. It feels like nothing has ever been a coincidence, and you know I strongly believe in coincidences. I refuse to believe that there was ever any good reason for my mother dying.
“But, being with you makes me feel like maybe if shehadto die, if she’s out there somewhere able to see me, maybe she played a role in all of it. She pulled some strings with whoever it is that calls the shots. There is a reason our dads are best friends. A reason your dad met your mom, a reason my parents adopted me. A reason we grew up as neighbors. There are a million reasons, and a million more benefits for all of those coincidences, but I don’t care about any of them as much as I care that I met you.
“That’s how it feels to be next to you. To touch you. To love you. There is a reason for everything, even the bad things. And that I have to appreciate you so much that it almost hurts because for all the bad in the Universe, there is a lot of good too, and you are proof of that. And just this lifetime with you isn’t enough to appreciate all of it, so I have to make sure I find you in all of them– that I know you in all of them. And if I’m really, really lucky, I’ll get to love you in all of them too.”
I knew exactly what she was saying. What she was trying to express indirectly. How she was able to put it into words, I didn’t know. I was beyond words, beyond coherent thoughts. I could only feel her. As if what I felt for her extended beyond language, beyond bodies, beyond minds.
I didn’t have words for it, but I tried to find them anyway.
“I love you, Mahina.”
She smiled. “Aloha, ko’u la.”
She remembered how to saymy sunin Hawaiian– well the closest thing to it, the direct translation being closer to ‘day’. She remembered that aloha did not just mean hello or goodbye. That it was a spirit in and of itself. That it could also mean,I love you. I felt that swelling in my heart puncture completely. I was painfully aware of how truly insignificant the two of us are in the grand scheme of things but knowing that she’s my moon and I’m her sun made it feel like the entire Universe orbited the two of us alone.
I dipped my head between her arms and kissed her. I bound from the bed and pulled on a pair of sweatpants. It was Sunday, and Sunday was the one day a week that she and I had decided to set aside for each other alone. We didn’t make plans, we didn’t run errands, and we didn’t worry about anything outside these walls.
She turned sideways and watched me quizzically as I dressed and sat down at my desk. “Keep reading, Pep. I’ve just got a project I’m working on here.”
I’d taken one mixed media class at a community college back in Hawaii a few years ago, but it had never been something I’d dabbled in extensively. Though, imagining Penelope in a painting was something my mind wouldn’t let go of. I knew I couldn’t ask her to paint a portrait of herself, and even if I did, I don’t think she’d capture herself the way I see her.
I logged into my computer and began sorting through the photos I took of her that day at Opal Creek. I was going to try my hand at something new. She’d inspired me.
She was my muse.
My Aloha.
Chapter Twenty Five
