Puddle Jumping(29)

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

And then my anxiety kicked in.

What if it was a bad move?

I could be so, so, so bad at it.

I was panicking.

He just took a few moments to accept his answer and after a couple deep breaths he looked into my eyes for a second. Then he nodded and we were quiet as we moved from the front seat to the back.

I was intimidated a little.

Okay, a lot.

“Just tell me if it’s too much, or if it doesn’t feel good, okay?”

I knew he would be honest. That wasn’t an issue. The issue was that I’d never done it before.

I took my time but he was shaking, his eyes half closed and lips trembling slightly below reddened cheeks. His chest rose and fell in erratic rhythms and I braced myself for him to ask me to stop. But he didn’t.

After a few minutes I got worried and looked up again to see his face scrunched up anxiously. So I stopped.

“Should I do something different?”

He closed his eyes and brought his fists to his forehead in distress. “Too much,” he breathed. “I can’t . . . I can’t . . .” And that was about the time he started to get upset. I hadn’t seen him freak out about much before, except for Christmas Eve, but this seemed larger. He choked out words about the way it felt and how his body was reacting, that it felt good but it didn’t and it wasn’t the same as any of the other stuff we did.

“It’s okay,” I told him, pushing aside the feelings I was having at listening to him. “We can stop. We don’t have to.” I promised him.

The truth was that I felt like a failure.

But it wasn’t about me.

He was becoming increasingly agitated, shaking his head back and forth, squeezing his eyes shut and pushing his fists into the roof of the car. The words coming out of his mouth were all over the place but I could understand what he was conveying was that he just wanted to do the same stuff everyone else could and he was frustrated that it was so hard for us.

“It’s not this difficult for other people.” His eyes were open and staring out the window, his hands pressed against the ceiling as he breathed heavily.

“So what? So what if other people do this stuff? I don’t care.” I was reaching for his face and fighting back the tears threatening to show themselves again. Because he had tears in his eyes, too. “I don’t care what other people do. Because none of those other people are you.”

He closed his eyes.

“I only want you, no matter what, okay? Only you and me. The rest doesn’t matter.”

It was true. With everything he and I had experienced physically, I couldn’t say doing that particular activity would be a deal breaker. He had so much more to offer than just that.

I crawled into his lap and wrapped my legs around his sides, tucking my arms behind his head and pressing my forehead to his. There was about a minute of silence before he stopped shaking. Before his hands rested against the outside of my legs and he pressed them harder to his body. I flexed my thigh muscles and squeezed them against his hips, listening as a rush of air escaped his lungs.

And then, slowly, he opened his eyes. “That makes the noise disappear.”

“Yeah? When I squeeze you like this?” I did it again.

He nodded, letting his lids close.

“I’ll remember that,” I whispered, kissing him firmly on the forehead.

His hands started to roam up my back and under my shirt and he breathed out long and slow. “You’re my quiet, Lilly.”

Shaking my head, I mumbled, “I’m the one who got you worked up in the first place.”

His fingers traced the sides of my waist. “For as long as I can remember, you’ve been the one to calm me down.”

“How’s that even possible? When we were kids, I almost died every time we were together. I’m a mess. I’m chaos.”

“No,” he whispered. “You’re my beautiful Lilly. The one who makes everything right in my world.”

That day I felt like we saw each other in exactly the same way.





Then there was prom.

I watched a movie once where the lead actor said prom was an important rite of passage for teenagers. That it shouldn’t be missed. And I guess that’s a pretty true statement because I’ve heard of ladies who missed going to theirs and it scarred them for life. Like, they ended up being crazy and losing their minds, writing their memoirs from behind bars and linking it all back to the night they missed their prom.

Seriously. Watch an episode of Snapped.

Anyway, with as much as it was supposedly this big deal, I wasn’t quite sure I agreed. It was just another dance with people from school. Except, the dresses were more expensive and it was being held in a hotel instead of in the gym.

I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be excited about these things. That they’re defining moments we cannot miss out on because they’re once in a lifetime. While I think memories are good to have, the buildup is usually better than the actual event.

Maybe if we stopped trying to achieve movie standards of greatness, we’d be happy with what we have.

I wish I’d had that mindset for prom when it came around. I should have expected it wouldn’t turn out the way I’d hoped.