I Love You to Death(56)

This time Luke bends down and presses his lips to mine.
This time, Luke kisses me.
And this time, I kiss him back.
I am floating.
∞

"Tell me again Grandma!" I ask, wriggling further under the covers as she walked towards my bed.
"Again?" She says, a smile on her face. "Aren’t you sick of this story yet?"
"No!"
She sat down on the side of my bed, her hand gently brushing the hair back from my face. "Alright Ash, I’ll tell you again, then it’s time for sleep okay?"
"Okay."
Smiling, she began my favourite bedtime story. The one I never got tired of hearing, the one she told me over and over again, no matter how many times I asked, she always kept telling me. The story I adored, the story I wanted for my own.
"I first met your grandad when I was about nine years old. I guess I was about your age. He had just moved with his family to the house next door and I remember sitting on the front veranda watching the workers unpack their house. This took all day, but not once did I move because I wanted to watch all of their furniture spill from the truck and be taken inside. I liked to try and imagine where each item was going, to what room and where in that room it would be put. We had known the previous owners and I had been in the house many times. Then sometime in the afternoon, your grandfather walked up to our front porch bearing two glasses of lemonade. With a very serious look on his face, he handed one of the glasses to me and said, ‘this is for you, it’s thirsty work this move, so I thought you might need it,’ before he turned and walked back towards his house."
She is smiling now as she continues.
"I couldn’t believe it, a boy, a new neighbour was handing me a glass of lemonade! Of course that was only the beginning. The next morning he came and knocked on our door, asked if I would like to come and play. I did of course, I didn’t want to seem rude, but more than that I wanted to find out where all of their furniture had gone inside the house! Then a few weeks later when school started back, he came and he walked me to school. Every morning he’d do this and then every afternoon, he would walk me back home. This continued on for years and years, every morning he would be waiting on the front porch and every afternoon I would find him at the school gates. My girlfriends teased me mercilessly, but he never stopped and deep down I secretly enjoyed it. By the time we were sixteen and going to local dances he would ask if I would accompany him. I always said no, because young girls didn’t go out alone with young boys back in those days. But I did allow myself to dance with him, every time he asked. He asked at every dance, for every song. Then one day we suddenly found ourselves at nineteen and everything changed."
I could feel my eyes starting to shut as sleep pulled me in, but I fought to keep them open because I knew my favourite part was coming up.
"It was July, late in the afternoon and I was sitting on the front porch reading a book. There was music playing in the house and it was drifting out the windows because the air was still very warm and they were all open. The sun was just going down and I was thinking I would need to head in soon because all of the light from the day would soon be gone and I wouldn’t be able to see the words on the page. Just as I was standing up from the porch swing, from the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of your grandfather leaning against the car in his drive. I didn’t know it, but he had been watching me as I sat there reading. When I asked him this, he said yes and when I asked why, he simply said, ‘I was trying to work up the courage to come and ask you to dance.’ Oh well, I remember I blushed a furious shade of red then, my cheeks must have been as red as the setting sun in the sky. Eventually I managed to say, ‘what here?’ And at that, your grandfather pushed off the car and walked towards me. As he came up the steps to our porch, he didn’t once take his eyes off of me and as his arm went around my waist and he pulled me towards him, he simply said, ‘I would dance with you anywhere.’ And it was at that point that I fell in love with him, or maybe I just finally realised how much I had always been in love with him."
Grandma’s hand was on her heart now as she told me this part and even in the darkened room I could see the smile on her face, the glisten of happy tears in her eyes.
"And the rest Asha, as you know, is history."
I giggled then, loving the story, no matter how many times I heard it.
"Now time for sleep young lady," Grandma said, leaning over to kiss me goodnight. "Tomorrow we’ll have a proper bedtime story."
"No Grandma, this is my favourite," I remember saying.
She laughed then, because she knew she would be telling it to me again tomorrow night, before switching off the bedside lamp and whispering, "Alright then the same story tomorrow night. Sweet dreams my beautiful girl," and walking quietly out of my room.
I fell asleep floating into a land of happy endings, of my own prince charming and a love slowly creeping up on you when you least expected it, until one day whilst dancing on the front porch to music as the sun set slowly in the sky, colouring it brilliant shades of red and orange and gold, you finally realised, it had been there in front of you all along.



A perfect ten, that which is utterly flawless
∞

Playlist:
1. Alibi – 30 Seconds to Mars
2. All you wanted – Sounds Under Radio
3. Just the way you are – Bruno Mars
4. Her song – Luke Taylor (BONUS TRACK)
∞

Being in love is the strangest and most exhilarating of experiences. Strange; realising you’re unintentionally, so totally under the control of someone else. That you would give up anything and everything for that person. That they are all you think about, night and day. That you just want to spend every second with them and you miss them when they’re gone. That just being around them is enough, but to smell, touch, taste is so much better.