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If I weren’t sitting, I’d probably have collapsed and fallen flat on my nose by now.
“Your home is beautiful,” I said, looking around the terrace. “It’s the kind of place I’d have loved to grow up in.”
“Was it hard?”
I met his gray eyes with my own. I knew what he was asking. I just didn’t have any one response.
“It was... all kinds of bad weather,” I finally replied, twirling a strand of spaghetti on my fork.
“I knew I had to get by, so I did. Plus, I had a pretty amazing best friend. Mom had her good days. She was really nice to me sometimes. She baked the best cakes.”
She made me understand that sometimes, love works best when it happens from a distance.
That I could be in this corner of the world right now, and I’d still love her, and that was far healthier than being around her and wanting to scream and shout and watch her break.
“June was the one in charge of the oven.” Elijah ladled a spoon of the heady, aromatic, and delicious sauce he’d made to go with the noodles.
“I love cooking, but if you put me near an oven, you’re guaranteed to get a burnt dish.”
I chuckled. “You’re helping eaters burn calories at the source. A true family man.”
“How do you do it, Rory?” he suddenly asked. His irises pierced into mine with the depth of his question. I waited for him to finish it.
“How do you stay so strong in the face of everything you’ve gone through? Doesn’t it all feel too much at times?”
I considered my answer for a minute.
“Oh, I stumble all the time. I keep making a fool of myself. Just the other day, a barista shouted at me because I took time to get some change. I spent the whole morning making up scenarios in my head. What I coulda, shoulda said. You know.”
“I do know.”
“I guess... when you’re still here, in spite of everything that’s gone wrong—and shit will go wrong because that’s life—you owe it to yourself and those who love you to live.”
Something shifted in his eyes. Like a paradigm. I saw it—the reverence, the desire, the...
No, it was too soon for that. I was feeling it already, but Elijah had years on me. He—
But what if? What if he felt the same way?
“You are the most amazing woman,” he breathed.
“You make me feel so alive, Aurora Sullivan. Your presence undoes me and your words make me whole. I think it’s a darn privilege to be around you and get to know who you are.”
If I could go any redder, I’d become a baboon’s behind.
“Elijah, I—”
“And it may be too soon to feel all the things I’m feeling. But if I didn’t say this now, I wouldn’t be half the poet I think I am.”
Oh, my God.
My lips began trembling.
“Aurora, I think I’ve fallen in love with you.”
How could I see an ocean, a storm, and summer in the gray of someone’s eyes? How could I see their whole soul in there?
But in that moment, I knew I felt the same way.
