In Your Dreams (Falling #4)(84)

But I also kind of think it’s the girl.

I would do anything for this girl. And if the time came where I could no longer make her smile, I would want someone else to try. I’m not sure what that is, but I have a feeling.

Her bare feet glide across the carpet as we walk to her bedroom, our bellies sick with rich chocolate cake—the best I’ve ever had. I was greedy and took a second piece, and when I couldn’t finish it, Lane slid it from my plate to his. He said I was like family so germs didn’t count. Family.

This is some family. And Murphy is some girl.

I watch her fold up her guitar case, tucking a few loose picks inside along with her familiar notebook.

“Were you playing?” I ask.

“I started to, while I was waiting for my hair to dry,” she says. I love the way she’s looking at me with sideways glances—bashful, the memory of last night fresh in her mind.

“Something new?” I ask.

She shakes her head no, but I bet there are a lot of ideas hidden in there. She’ll show them when she’s ready.

“Can I open my card now?” she asks, pulling it from her back pocket where she had it tucked during dinner. I shrug, a little embarrassed at how silly my gesture feels now. If I’d had time, I would have done something more—given her a better gift. This was all I could think of at the moment though.

She slides open the envelope and pulls out the thick stack of notebook paper stapled at the seam. Quirking a brow, she moves so she’s sitting on her bed, holding the makeshift booklet in her lap, and I sink to my favorite spot on her floor and begin pressing my hand into the carpet just like I did the last time I sat here.

“Senior year,” she reads, and I look up, pulling my hat from my head and resting it on the floor next to me. Our eyes meet, and I urge her silently to keep turning pages.

She laughs lightly, folding the paper down and turning it to face me so I can see the round circle with bright red lips and yellowish brown hair.

“You don’t have to show me; I drew it,” I say, smiling on one side of my mouth.

“Am I going to get more dirty pictures?” she jokes.

I give her a tight smile and our eyes meet and pause for a beat before I shake my head no.

I watch her flip each page, and I can tell from her expressions where she’s at in the book—her giggle at my sad attempt at drawing the basketball team and the hand she puts over her heart when she gets to the page I drew of my favorite picture of her. I wish I drew better, because Leah’s silver crayon could never do those eyes justice. In the margins around each picture, I wrote kind words from made-up people all saying how amazing she is, how beautiful and how they know she’s going to be a star.

When she reaches the final page, her fingers turn it slowly, and my heart races so fast that I have to lie down, my hands folded over my chest while I watch silently as her eyes scan back and forth reading. Eventually, I close my eyes and picture the words, having memorized them the moment I wrote them on the page.

Some will adore you.

They will be captivated by your voice and fall for you because of your kindness.

Others will envy you.

They’ll yearn for your talent, want your success, and covet your spotlight.

The world will know you. For all of the best and right reasons.

Time will prove me right.

But in the meantime, I will simply wish for you.

I’ll wish on stars, on pennies, on candles at half-birthday parties.

I’ll wish for you because wanting you isn’t enough and having you is too fleeting. And should we find ourselves apart, I’ll wish twice as hard, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be lucky enough to run into you in one of our dreams.

~ Casey Coffield

“It’s stupid, and corny, I know, but…” I stop, running my hands over my face as I stare up at her ceiling. I roll to the side and watch her finger tracing over the purple crayon-written scribbles I wrote six times, still not satisfied in the end that my words were right or enough.

“I love it,” she says, flipping through the pages again from the beginning.

“You can hide it in the cabinet, with the mug,” I joke, and she laughs, but it fades quickly as her head lifts and her eyes find mine.

“That’s how I should have signed your yearbook,” I shrug, reaching forward and grabbing her smallest toe between my fingers and tugging gently. “If I weren’t such a juvenile prickwad, I would have noticed you a lot sooner.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head and moving to her knees, to the front of her small bookcase where she slides her new book in place. “I wouldn’t have wanted you to. You showed up exactly right.”

“Yeah?” I ask.

She rests back on her legs, her palms flat on her thighs, and looks at me, a thick braid of purple over one shoulder and the neck I love to kiss bare on the other side. Her smile is quiet and still, and it lasts for minutes yet seems to constantly change and say something new. She’s the Mona Lisa.

“Do you want to go somewhere with me?” she asks, a glimmer in her eye as if she’s gone back to that girl she was—the innocent one still in high school—and that girl is giving me a chance to see what would have been.

“I’d love to, birthday girl,” I say, letting her stand first and hold her hand out for me.

I wait while she slides her bare feet into a pair of black tennis shoes and reaches for her guitar case. I follow her down the stairs and remain quiet and still in her kitchen while she whispers in her father’s ear. There’s nodding, and a quiet conversation with her mother next, and soon she’s holding her keys and is linking her free arm through mine to guide me out the door.