A Thousand Boy Kisses(39)

Making to stand up, my legs felt unsteady. The tears had stained my cheeks, grated my throat to soreness, and the grief, the surreal revelation about the pain of Poppy’s illness … it had left a residual numbness in my body. Every inch of me broken, patched back up with Band-Aids—Band-Aids over open wounds.

Temporary.

Futile.

Useless.

I toed off my boots, then climbed onto the bed. Poppy shifted to lie on her natural side of the bed, and I, awkwardly, lay on mine. In a move so familiar to us both, we turned onto our sides and faced one another.

But it wasn’t as familiar as it once was. Poppy had changed. I had changed. Everything had changed.

And I didn’t know how to adjust.

Minutes and minutes of silence ticked by. Poppy seemed content to watch me. But I had one question. The one question I had wanted to ask her when the contact stopped. The thought that had burrowed inside of me, turning dark for want of an answer. The one thought that made me feel sick. The one question that still had the potential to rip me apart. Even now, when my world couldn’t shatter anymore.

“Ask me,” Poppy said suddenly, keeping her voice low so as not to wake her parents. Surprise must have shown on my face, because she shrugged, looking so damn cute. “I may not know the boy you are now, but I recognize that expression. The one that’s building up to a question.”

I ran my finger over the sheet between us, my attention focused on the movement I was making. “You do know me,” I whispered in reply, wanting to believe that more than anything. Because Poppy was the only one who ever truly knew the real me. Even now, buried under all this rage and anger, after the distance of two silent years, she still knew the heart underneath.

Poppy’s fingers moved closer to mine in the neutral territory between us. The no-man’s-land that separated our bodies. As I watched our two hands, straining for each other, but not quite reaching, I was engulfed with the need to get my camera, a need I hadn’t felt for a long time.

I wanted this moment captured.

I wanted this picture. I wanted this moment in time, to hold onto forever.

“I know some of your question, I think,” Poppy said, pulling me back from my thoughts. Her cheeks blushed, deep pink spreading over her fair skin. “I’ll be honest, since you’ve returned, I don’t recognize much. But there are times that there are glimpses of the boy I love. Enough to inspire hope that he still lies in wait underneath.” Her face was determined. “I think, above anything, that I want to see him fight through what has him hidden. I think seeing him again is my biggest wish, before I go.”

I turned my head away, unwilling to listen to her talk about leaving, about the letdown I was, about the fact that her time was running out. Then, like a soldier’s act of courage, her hand breached the distance between us and her fingertip grazed over mine. I turned my head back around. My fingers opened at her touch. Poppy ran her fingertip along the flesh of my palm, tracing the lines.

The hint of a smile came on her lips. My stomach sank, wondering how many more times I would see that smile. Wondering how she found the strength to smile at all.

Then, slowly retreating to where it had lain before, Poppy’s hand grew still. She looked at me, patiently waiting for the question that I still had not asked.

Feeling my heart race in trepidation, I opened my mouth and asked, “Was the silence … was it only about … your illness, or was it … was it because…” Images from our final night flashed into my brain. Me lying over her body, our mouths pressed together in slow, soft kisses. Poppy telling me she was ready. Us losing our clothes, me watching her face as I pushed forward, and afterward as she lay in my arms. Falling asleep beside her, nothing left unsaid between us.

“What?” Poppy asked, wide-eyed.

Taking in a quick breath, I blurted, “Was it because I pushed too far? Did I force you? Pressure you?” Biting the bullet, I asked, “Did you regret it?”

Poppy tensed, her eyes glistening. I wondered for a minute if she was about to cry, confess that what I had feared these past two years was true. That I hurt her. She put her trust in me and I hurt her.

Instead, Poppy rose from the bed and knelt down. I heard her pulling something out from underneath. When she rose to her feet, in her hand was a familiar glass mason jar. A mason jar filled with hundreds of pink paper hearts.

A thousand boy-kisses.

Poppy carefully kneeled on the bed, and tipping the jar in the direction of the nightlight’s glow, she opened the lid and began to search. As her hand swilled around the paper hearts, I tracked the ones that traveled past the glass on my side. Most were blank. The jar was coated in dust—a sign it hadn’t been opened for a long time.

A mixture of sadness and hope stirred inside me.

Hope that no other boy had touched her lips.

Sadness that the greatest adventure of her life had come to standstill. No more kisses.

Then that sadness cut a hole right through me.

Months. She only had months left, not a lifetime, to fill this jar. She would never write the message on a heart on her wedding day like she wanted. She would never be a mamaw, reading these kisses to her grandchildren. She wouldn’t even live out her teens.

“Rune?” Poppy asked when new tears fell down my cheeks. I used the back of my hand to wipe them away. I hesitated to meet Poppy’s eyes. I didn’t want to make her feel sad. Instead, when I glanced up, all I saw on Poppy’s face was understanding, an understanding which quickly changed to shyness.