Finding It (Losing It, #3)(34)

I’d done plenty of adventurous things. I’d lived completely in the moment, exactly like I’d planned.

But when I thought back, trying to pick a moment for him as proof, each day kind of bled into the next. I mean, I’d met different people, and I’d gone different places, but the end result had always been the same. We ended up at a bar or a club. Drinking, dancing, and sex.

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t say any of those things out loud.

He continued, “Tell me this. Ignoring the fact that you’re in a different place with different people, have you done anything drastically different from what you would do back home?”

I swallowed. And I had to tuck my pride away to admit, “Not really. Not unless you count today.”

He smiled.

“The best parts of life are the things we can’t plan. And it’s a lot harder to find happiness if you’re only searching in one place. Sometimes, you just have to throw away the map. Admit that you don’t know where you’re going and stop pressuring yourself to figure it out. Besides … a map is a life someone else already lived. It’s more fun to make your own.”

I knew, logically, that he was right. As long as I was trying to force myself to be happy, I never would be.

“Don’t think too much,” he said. “Just decide on something you want to do. The first thing that pops into your head, and do it.”

I wanted to kiss him.

There was absolutely nothing I wanted more.

My eyes found his lips, and if ever gravity had been pulling me in one direction, that was it. I pulled up on my tiptoes, balancing a hand on his shoulder. Before I could even get close, he cleared his throat and took a step back.

Just do anything but that, apparently.





14


DAMN IT. WHY did I keep doing this to myself? That made twice I’d been rejected by him. Maybe more, considering I couldn’t remember half the time we’d spent together.

I could spend time with him without throwing myself at him. I could do that. Though, I didn’t particularly want to.

I sighed and looked away. Maybe a hundred yards away was a playground. He’d asked me what I wanted. And other than kissing him, that was what I wanted.

I wanted a way back to swings and slides and simplicity. A way back to when a butterfly could cheer me up, and a series of puddles could make my day. A way back to a time when happiness wasn’t something I had to search for … it just was.

So, I took off toward the playground, eyeing the swings and seesaw and merry-go-round. There were these bizarre ceramic creatures that were kind of like a cross between dinosaurs and Gumby. I made a beeline for the merry-go-round. I sprawled across the flat surface and waited for Hunt to arrive. He dropped both of our bags a few feet away and said, “This is what you want to do?”

I shrugged. It was option number two, but it worked.

“Well then, hold on.”

I gripped the metal bar closest to me, and he set me spinning. He pulled harder, and I spun faster. It was stupid and childish, but it definitely required no thinking.

“Faster,” I yelled.

Hunt gave one more big push, then jumped on the merry-go-round with me. It was moving so fast, he nearly missed, and he had to pull himself the rest of the way on. It was so strange to see him—masculine and reserved—struggling to stay on a merry-go-round. I burst out laughing. Once he managed to lie flat on his back, he laughed too. I lay back beside him, struggling to breathe through my hysterics. But every time I pictured him jumping onto that overgrown child’s toy, I descended into giggles again.

This funny thing happens when you graduate college. You hear so much about being an adult that you start to feel like you have to become a different person overnight, that growing up means being not you. And you concentrate so much on living up to the term “adult” that you forget growing up happens by living, not by sheer force of will.

Looking up at the tree branches spinning and spinning overhead accompanied by the pink and purple palette of the morning sky, I felt younger, or maybe just my age. We lay beside each other laughing at nothing and breathing in everything until the merry-go-round slowed to a stop.

His arm pressed again mine, and when I pulled myself up onto my side, I could feel in my gut that I knew what it was like to kiss this man. That I’d kissed him before. I couldn’t remember it. Not in images. But I could feel it. My body remembered.

Maybe the spinning had cleared my head a little too much because I said straight out, “You kissed me.”

“What?”

“Last night. You kissed me, didn’t you?”

He pushed himself up into a sitting position, resting his elbows on his knees. He gripped the back of his neck with one hand and said, “It was before I realized you’d been drugged. After that I didn’t … I wouldn’t.”

I knew it.

He grabbed one of the bars and slid off the merry-go-round. Without meeting my eyes, he looked around the playground and said, “What’s next?”

I let him change the subject, even though I wanted to push it. Instead, I let him push me on the swings, each touch to my back like a pulse of electricity.

We played on the seesaw, a physical representation of our time together if ever there was one. I gave Hunt my camera, and he took pictures of me sitting atop one of the huge ceramic dinosaurs. Carefully, I held onto the dinosaur’s head and stood up on its back.