You've Started the Fire in My Heart
You've Started The Fire In My Heart
Set the scene:
Sunlight filters through streaky windows and past half-pulled blinds in a dusty haze as she stretches to meet a new day. To meet this new day. She gets out of bed and folds the covers down to expose pale blue sheets to the morning. To this morning.
Tripping down the stairs, she rushes out of her room and grabs her breakfast on the go, running out in the clothes she slept in. Brushing past her dog, she pats him on the head and feeds him a piece of toast “Good boy Jamie”. She blows a kiss to her mom and sprints to the waiting yellow school bus. She steps up and slides into her usual seat. This usual seat.
“Hey Josh”
“What’s up Hayley?”
He looks up from his book to acknowledge her existence with a half smile and a single shoulder shrug.
“Not much. Hey! Trade me seats will you? I don’t like the aisle seat.”
“Sure”
He stands, lifting his stuff and she slithers under his outstretched arm to press herself against the side of the bus next to the window.
She pulls a taped up CD player out of her tote and presses “play”, rubbing her fingers over the nicked screen and setting it on “shuffle”.
She feels a gentle hand pushing into her side and she looks up. Pause.
“What are you listening to?”
“Something new.”
“Hmm…”
He returns his eyes to his book and she frowns. Hmm.
Play.
***
Set the scene:
Track 4 - Her fingers are grasping at the cool steel siding and the bass of the song pounds heavy in her ears. Her heart beats in unison, her blood pumps in unison. This heart, this blood.
Track 7 - She’s humming along and she huffs out a final breath to the ending note as she leans back into the scuffed leather seat and glances over at Josh. This seat, this boy.
Track 2 - It feels like they’re backing up and rewinding to yesterday, and the day before, and last month, and last year, as the bus wheezes it’s way into the usual spot. With one final groan, it sputters, it squeaks, it stops. This noise, this stop, this place.
Stop.
She tucks her CD player into her tote and follows Josh off the bus and into the school, winding her way through the crowds. To her first class.
***
Set the scene:
It’s fourth period and she sits in the third row, drumming her fingers in time to the beat left over in her mind, stuck from the bus ride. She presses her pencil into the soft fibers of the paper and watches the graphite grind down into dust instead of puzzling and guessing her way through the Geometry in front of her. Ms. Macklin walks past and she turns away from her pencil dust and drifts her finger along a line in the workbook, mouthing words, faking her way through paying attention.
She scribbles an answer down as Ms. Macklin drifts past for a second time and receives nodded approval. She puts her pencil and her head down and stays that way for the last 3 minutes and 19 seconds of the period.
Fast forward.
***
Set the scene:
The hallways are crowded as she pushes her way through them, dodging people, a petite red headed force of nature.
She shudders to a stop inside the cafeteria, narrowly avoiding a collision with the school’s 1st string varsity quarterback. She sidesteps him and makes her way to the lunch table she shares with Josh and his friends from basketball and her friends from…well, she picked ‘em up somewhere, she just can’t recall.
This seat, this boy. Again.
It’s strange how her life seems to revolve around him.
She waves at him with her fingertips and digs into her bag for the three quarters hanging out at the bottom with the tissues and erasers and broken pencils.
She darts her way once more through the heavy crowd, the packed lunch room, all the way to the pop machine that sits next to the heavy door that leads into the office. The door that swings shut on you at inopportune moments, the one that smashes your hand if it’s in the way, you know the one.
She pushes the quarters into the slot one, two, three and presses the button marked “Root Beer”. The electronic display screen flashes “Vend” and she listens for the metallic thunk of the pop falling into the tray. She grabs the soda and heads back to the table, where her spot is saved by her handy, dandy, butter yellow tote bag. She pulls if off the seat, sets it beneath her feet and sits down, cracking open her root beer and taking a sip.
Rewind.
And she’s back in the school bus from that morning, feeling a little bit hurt. Because, y’know, he didn’t care enough to ask about it’s newness or if she was enjoying it so far. So, yeah.
***
Set the scene:
It’s the end of the day and she’s back on the bus. Same bus, same seat. She beat Josh to the bus and she’s fiddling around in that bag of hers again, going over her massive amount of homework and considering which of it she would get in the least trouble for skipping and trying to remember which teacher she’d just told a couple days ago that she had “forgot” her book at home and could she please bring her homework in tomorrow? Pretty please, it wouldn’t happen again?
As she thinks this, Josh sits down beside her, and it’s a repeat of this morning, yesterday afternoon, yesterday morning, back, back, back, rewind to eons ago.
This seat, this boy, for the third time that day.
Again, she ponders her earlier realization that her life seems to revolve around him.
She kind of wonders how she never seemed to notice it before.
She shrugs it off and smiles up at him from behind fiery bangs, from her burrow into her bag.
He tells her, “You know, maybe if you actually worked during class, you wouldn’t have so much homework.”
She whips her head up and gapes at him, wondering if maybe he is psychic or can like, read minds. Because that wouldn’t be so good.
She gulps the shock back down and clears her throat.
“Well, maybe if I understood the subject matter I could work during class.”
“Well, maybe if you read the chapters assigned you would understand the work. Hmm? Wouldn’t that be something?
Y’know, doing your assignments?”
He grins at her and she sulks down into her side of the seat until her legs up to her knees have disappeared under the seat in front of her, gobbled up by some invisible monster.
She plugs back into her CD player and cues up track 11, turning it all the way up so she can drown out the smirky Josh sitting next to her. He pulls out the same book he was reading earlier and glances at her, sideways.
Prodding her in the side with just the tip of his index finger, she wriggles around and scowls up at him.
“What?!” she says way too loud. Pause.
And then turns off her CD player.
“What?” she says quieter this time, more a sigh than a question.
“Are you enjoying ‘something new’?”
After this, she’s starting to actually believe in the power of mind reading and wonders if maybe he’s using it one her
right now. She’s feels her head tingle and hopes she’s just imagining it.
Nevertheless, she tries to clear her mind of any thoughts that had to do with him…and pretty much everything else that’s not the answer to his question.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes!” she says, exasperated, “Yes, I’m enjoying ‘something new’, okay?”
“’Kay.”
He turns back to his book, smiling again, and she turns back to her player, riding in silence all the way to her stop.
***
Set the scene:
The first day she realizes she likes Josh is the day of his 12th birthday party. It was the first birthday of his that she had been to that included girls besides herself.
Needless to say, she was kind of jealous.
***
Set the scene:
The second time she thinks about it is when he’s 14 and there’s a dance at their school.
She wasn’t expecting him to ask her to the dance, but she definitely wasn’t expecting him to ask Bridget Laval.
She kind of thought they would stay home and watch movies, and just…y’know, hang out. Together.
Needless to say, she was pretty jealous.
***
Set the scene:
The third time she feels it is when she’s 15 and he comes over to her house to pick up the CDs that he lent her, and he brought his girlfriend. Yeah, his girlfriend.
Pretty, blond hair, green eyes, and great fashion sense. Basically, everything she wanted to be.
Well, not blonde with green eyes, but you get it. She wanted to be the kind of girl Josh wanted.
Needless to say, she was jealous.
Way too jealous for it to say anything but “Wow, I like Josh.”
***
Set the scene:
Fast forward to the silent bus ride. Fast forward to the bus pulling up to her stop. Fast forward to her putting her key in the front door and unlocking it, then trying to slam it behind her, only to have it caught by someone standing awfully close to her.
Fast forward to her screaming. Shrilly. Bloodcurdlingly so.
Fast forward to it just being Josh, and him falling down laughing on her front doorstep as the Mormon kids who lived down the street stopped and stared.
Fast forward to her beating Josh with her bag until he finally shut up and stood up, brushing off his jeans and following her into the house.
***
Set the scene:
He’s in her house now, not that that’s unusual, but they didn’t have any plans.
That she remembers.
She gets him a pop and snags one for herself from the fridge and sits down across from him at the oak table in her dining room.
Jamie comes up behind her and nudges her with his nose until she dips her fingers into her soda and holds them out for him to lick all the drops off. She’s pretty sure that she’s probably one of the only people out there who has a dog that likes to drink root beer. Too bad she’s not allowed to give it to him in his water dish anymore.
He whines at her and bumps his head against her hip until she gives up and stands to grab a bowl to pour Jamie his own can of pop. Too bad about that rule.
Josh sits in silence and sips at his pop and watches her.
She stands and stares back at him until she has to give up and look away cause it’s just so awkward.
“So…, so…”
“So?”
“So, why are you here?”
“Are you saying you don’t want me here?”
“No!”
God, he’s so aggravating.
“That’s not it. I’m just making sure I hadn’t forgotten any prearranged plans or whatever.”
“Nope, that’s not it.”
“Then what is it?!?!”
His eyes are laughing at her because now she’s standing there with her hands on her hips and her soda is dripping out of her can and onto the floor, and all of a sudden Jamie’s at her feet lapping it up, and she’s really, really, really trying to look angry, but it’s kind of hard when she wasn’t angry in the first place, just tired and exasperated and maybe trying to flirt with him.
In her own weird Hayley way.
She gives up and sighs, looking down at the dog at her feet, and nudging him away with her stocking clad toes.
Then she walks into the living room and turns on the TV, leaving Josh in the kitchen to fend for himself, what with the soda-pop loving, begging dog and all.
***
Set the scene:
So, she finally found out from a bored, channel-flipping, remote-hogging Josh that he had come over to help her with her homework, seeing as how he didn’t have any of his own and she was such a “whiner and all that he didn’t want to have to deal with even more of her complaining the next day.”
Secretly, she had kind of been hoping he just wanted to hang out with her.
Guess not.
That’s why Hayley’s mom came home to find her and Josh huddled over the coffee table in the living room, sitting on the floor with their legs touching, Josh’s hand over her’s trying to explain to her that “no, that was not how size changes and slopes worked out”.
That’s why when Hayley’s mom came home with takeout and asked Josh if he wanted to stay for dinner, they both sprang up and Josh explained how he really had to get home, his ma was expecting him, but he appreciated the offer, and maybe he could take her up on it some other time? Thanks anyway Ms. Williams.
***
Set the scene:
Spring forward five days and Josh is over at her house again, but now they are taking a break, and they are in the kitchen.
They’re trying to make popcorn for the movie they are about to watch, but really, more is ending up in their mouths, and in their hair and on the floor, than what is making it into the bowl.
Spring forward and they are 45 minutes into the movie and they reach for popcorn at the same time and their hands brush.
And as much as she knows this is a cliché, maybe she can’t help it that her palms get sweaty, and her nerves kind of jump up into her throat and they are bouncing around in there: sproing, sproing, sproing.
And maybe she can’t help it, but now that she think about it, she feels kind of sick, and maybe she should stop eating popcorn.
Maybe.
***
Set the scene:
Jump forward a whole freaking month and she and Josh have been hanging out more.
A whole hell of a lot more.
And she’s kind of starting to feel like this is a sign. One of those big billboard-like signs that tells you what to do in
mile high, imposing letters.
In her case, this one is saying:
“JUST TELL HIM ALREADY!!!!!!!!”
Notice the capital letters and excessive amounts of punctuation.
That’s pretty much what it looks like inside her mind.
So she puts off for another month.
***
Now, she tells herself that she’s waiting for a perfect moment, but she’s begun to realize that that’s not going to happen with Josh. Not anytime in the near future. Y’know, when she’s supposed to be telling him.
So she puts off for yet another month.
***
And now, when there are sitting inside, on her floor, watching their third movie of that rainy Saturday, and each are on their 6th pop at least and Hayley, she’s finally done waiting.
Cause this is the closest she is going to get to a perfect moment, without like, lighting candles. Which would totally tip him off.
And she’d probably accidentally burn down her house.
As the movie ends, she looks over at Josh and tries to think of a good way to put this.
Got it.
“So, Josh, I like you and I think we should go out sometime.”
She stands up and heads to the kitchen with her glass, a quarter full with splintery melting ice, and puts it in the sink.
She walks back out and sits down, not in her original spot though, cause that was right next to Josh and well, he hasn’t said anything yet.
“Okay,” he pauses, “Yeah, that would be good. I like you too.”
And now he’s sitting next to her on the floor, and she doesn’t know if he moved or if she did, but it doesn’t really matter because HE LIKES HER TOO!!!
“Okay,” she breathes out in one long whisper.
“Okay,” and long, delicate fingers that don’t belong to her plow a gentle, sweeping path through her hair.
“Okay,” as he leans in close and their breaths mingle until they’re sharing the same one, and her breath is warm on his skin as she clutches at his shirt front, and she’s breathing her scent onto him. The smell of antibacterial hand soap, green apple shampoo, root beer, and those chocolate cinnamon things she loved. A scent that totally smells way better than it sounds.
“Okay,” he whispers, as his fingers snake around her wrists and pull her in close.
***
Stop
Sunlight filters through streaky windows and past half-pulled blinds in a dusty haze as she stretches to meet a new day. To meet this new day. She gets out of bed and folds the covers down to expose pale blue sheets to the morning. To this morning.
Tripping down the stairs, she rushes out of her room and grabs her breakfast on the go, running out in the clothes she slept in. Brushing past her dog, she pats him on the head and feeds him a piece of toast “Good boy Jamie”. She blows a kiss to her mom and sprints to the waiting yellow school bus. She steps up and slides into her usual seat. This usual seat.
“Hey Josh”
“What’s up Hayley?”
He looks up from his book to acknowledge her existence with a half smile and a single shoulder shrug.
“Not much. Hey! Trade me seats will you? I don’t like the aisle seat.”
“Sure”
He stands, lifting his stuff and she slithers under his outstretched arm to press herself against the side of the bus next to the window.
She pulls a taped up CD player out of her tote and presses “play”, rubbing her fingers over the nicked screen and setting it on “shuffle”.
She feels a gentle hand pushing into her side and she looks up. Pause.
“What are you listening to?”
“Something new.”
“Hmm…”
He returns his eyes to his book and she frowns. Hmm.
Play.
***
Set the scene:
Track 4 - Her fingers are grasping at the cool steel siding and the bass of the song pounds heavy in her ears. Her heart beats in unison, her blood pumps in unison. This heart, this blood.
Track 7 - She’s humming along and she huffs out a final breath to the ending note as she leans back into the scuffed leather seat and glances over at Josh. This seat, this boy.
Track 2 - It feels like they’re backing up and rewinding to yesterday, and the day before, and last month, and last year, as the bus wheezes it’s way into the usual spot. With one final groan, it sputters, it squeaks, it stops. This noise, this stop, this place.
Stop.
She tucks her CD player into her tote and follows Josh off the bus and into the school, winding her way through the crowds. To her first class.
***
Set the scene:
It’s fourth period and she sits in the third row, drumming her fingers in time to the beat left over in her mind, stuck from the bus ride. She presses her pencil into the soft fibers of the paper and watches the graphite grind down into dust instead of puzzling and guessing her way through the Geometry in front of her. Ms. Macklin walks past and she turns away from her pencil dust and drifts her finger along a line in the workbook, mouthing words, faking her way through paying attention.
She scribbles an answer down as Ms. Macklin drifts past for a second time and receives nodded approval. She puts her pencil and her head down and stays that way for the last 3 minutes and 19 seconds of the period.
Fast forward.
***
Set the scene:
The hallways are crowded as she pushes her way through them, dodging people, a petite red headed force of nature.
She shudders to a stop inside the cafeteria, narrowly avoiding a collision with the school’s 1st string varsity quarterback. She sidesteps him and makes her way to the lunch table she shares with Josh and his friends from basketball and her friends from…well, she picked ‘em up somewhere, she just can’t recall.
This seat, this boy. Again.
It’s strange how her life seems to revolve around him.
She waves at him with her fingertips and digs into her bag for the three quarters hanging out at the bottom with the tissues and erasers and broken pencils.
She darts her way once more through the heavy crowd, the packed lunch room, all the way to the pop machine that sits next to the heavy door that leads into the office. The door that swings shut on you at inopportune moments, the one that smashes your hand if it’s in the way, you know the one.
She pushes the quarters into the slot one, two, three and presses the button marked “Root Beer”. The electronic display screen flashes “Vend” and she listens for the metallic thunk of the pop falling into the tray. She grabs the soda and heads back to the table, where her spot is saved by her handy, dandy, butter yellow tote bag. She pulls if off the seat, sets it beneath her feet and sits down, cracking open her root beer and taking a sip.
Rewind.
And she’s back in the school bus from that morning, feeling a little bit hurt. Because, y’know, he didn’t care enough to ask about it’s newness or if she was enjoying it so far. So, yeah.
***
Set the scene:
It’s the end of the day and she’s back on the bus. Same bus, same seat. She beat Josh to the bus and she’s fiddling around in that bag of hers again, going over her massive amount of homework and considering which of it she would get in the least trouble for skipping and trying to remember which teacher she’d just told a couple days ago that she had “forgot” her book at home and could she please bring her homework in tomorrow? Pretty please, it wouldn’t happen again?
As she thinks this, Josh sits down beside her, and it’s a repeat of this morning, yesterday afternoon, yesterday morning, back, back, back, rewind to eons ago.
This seat, this boy, for the third time that day.
Again, she ponders her earlier realization that her life seems to revolve around him.
She kind of wonders how she never seemed to notice it before.
She shrugs it off and smiles up at him from behind fiery bangs, from her burrow into her bag.
He tells her, “You know, maybe if you actually worked during class, you wouldn’t have so much homework.”
She whips her head up and gapes at him, wondering if maybe he is psychic or can like, read minds. Because that wouldn’t be so good.
She gulps the shock back down and clears her throat.
“Well, maybe if I understood the subject matter I could work during class.”
“Well, maybe if you read the chapters assigned you would understand the work. Hmm? Wouldn’t that be something?
Y’know, doing your assignments?”
He grins at her and she sulks down into her side of the seat until her legs up to her knees have disappeared under the seat in front of her, gobbled up by some invisible monster.
She plugs back into her CD player and cues up track 11, turning it all the way up so she can drown out the smirky Josh sitting next to her. He pulls out the same book he was reading earlier and glances at her, sideways.
Prodding her in the side with just the tip of his index finger, she wriggles around and scowls up at him.
“What?!” she says way too loud. Pause.
And then turns off her CD player.
“What?” she says quieter this time, more a sigh than a question.
“Are you enjoying ‘something new’?”
After this, she’s starting to actually believe in the power of mind reading and wonders if maybe he’s using it one her
right now. She’s feels her head tingle and hopes she’s just imagining it.
Nevertheless, she tries to clear her mind of any thoughts that had to do with him…and pretty much everything else that’s not the answer to his question.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes!” she says, exasperated, “Yes, I’m enjoying ‘something new’, okay?”
“’Kay.”
He turns back to his book, smiling again, and she turns back to her player, riding in silence all the way to her stop.
***
Set the scene:
The first day she realizes she likes Josh is the day of his 12th birthday party. It was the first birthday of his that she had been to that included girls besides herself.
Needless to say, she was kind of jealous.
***
Set the scene:
The second time she thinks about it is when he’s 14 and there’s a dance at their school.
She wasn’t expecting him to ask her to the dance, but she definitely wasn’t expecting him to ask Bridget Laval.
She kind of thought they would stay home and watch movies, and just…y’know, hang out. Together.
Needless to say, she was pretty jealous.
***
Set the scene:
The third time she feels it is when she’s 15 and he comes over to her house to pick up the CDs that he lent her, and he brought his girlfriend. Yeah, his girlfriend.
Pretty, blond hair, green eyes, and great fashion sense. Basically, everything she wanted to be.
Well, not blonde with green eyes, but you get it. She wanted to be the kind of girl Josh wanted.
Needless to say, she was jealous.
Way too jealous for it to say anything but “Wow, I like Josh.”
***
Set the scene:
Fast forward to the silent bus ride. Fast forward to the bus pulling up to her stop. Fast forward to her putting her key in the front door and unlocking it, then trying to slam it behind her, only to have it caught by someone standing awfully close to her.
Fast forward to her screaming. Shrilly. Bloodcurdlingly so.
Fast forward to it just being Josh, and him falling down laughing on her front doorstep as the Mormon kids who lived down the street stopped and stared.
Fast forward to her beating Josh with her bag until he finally shut up and stood up, brushing off his jeans and following her into the house.
***
Set the scene:
He’s in her house now, not that that’s unusual, but they didn’t have any plans.
That she remembers.
She gets him a pop and snags one for herself from the fridge and sits down across from him at the oak table in her dining room.
Jamie comes up behind her and nudges her with his nose until she dips her fingers into her soda and holds them out for him to lick all the drops off. She’s pretty sure that she’s probably one of the only people out there who has a dog that likes to drink root beer. Too bad she’s not allowed to give it to him in his water dish anymore.
He whines at her and bumps his head against her hip until she gives up and stands to grab a bowl to pour Jamie his own can of pop. Too bad about that rule.
Josh sits in silence and sips at his pop and watches her.
She stands and stares back at him until she has to give up and look away cause it’s just so awkward.
“So…, so…”
“So?”
“So, why are you here?”
“Are you saying you don’t want me here?”
“No!”
God, he’s so aggravating.
“That’s not it. I’m just making sure I hadn’t forgotten any prearranged plans or whatever.”
“Nope, that’s not it.”
“Then what is it?!?!”
His eyes are laughing at her because now she’s standing there with her hands on her hips and her soda is dripping out of her can and onto the floor, and all of a sudden Jamie’s at her feet lapping it up, and she’s really, really, really trying to look angry, but it’s kind of hard when she wasn’t angry in the first place, just tired and exasperated and maybe trying to flirt with him.
In her own weird Hayley way.
She gives up and sighs, looking down at the dog at her feet, and nudging him away with her stocking clad toes.
Then she walks into the living room and turns on the TV, leaving Josh in the kitchen to fend for himself, what with the soda-pop loving, begging dog and all.
***
Set the scene:
So, she finally found out from a bored, channel-flipping, remote-hogging Josh that he had come over to help her with her homework, seeing as how he didn’t have any of his own and she was such a “whiner and all that he didn’t want to have to deal with even more of her complaining the next day.”
Secretly, she had kind of been hoping he just wanted to hang out with her.
Guess not.
That’s why Hayley’s mom came home to find her and Josh huddled over the coffee table in the living room, sitting on the floor with their legs touching, Josh’s hand over her’s trying to explain to her that “no, that was not how size changes and slopes worked out”.
That’s why when Hayley’s mom came home with takeout and asked Josh if he wanted to stay for dinner, they both sprang up and Josh explained how he really had to get home, his ma was expecting him, but he appreciated the offer, and maybe he could take her up on it some other time? Thanks anyway Ms. Williams.
***
Set the scene:
Spring forward five days and Josh is over at her house again, but now they are taking a break, and they are in the kitchen.
They’re trying to make popcorn for the movie they are about to watch, but really, more is ending up in their mouths, and in their hair and on the floor, than what is making it into the bowl.
Spring forward and they are 45 minutes into the movie and they reach for popcorn at the same time and their hands brush.
And as much as she knows this is a cliché, maybe she can’t help it that her palms get sweaty, and her nerves kind of jump up into her throat and they are bouncing around in there: sproing, sproing, sproing.
And maybe she can’t help it, but now that she think about it, she feels kind of sick, and maybe she should stop eating popcorn.
Maybe.
***
Set the scene:
Jump forward a whole freaking month and she and Josh have been hanging out more.
A whole hell of a lot more.
And she’s kind of starting to feel like this is a sign. One of those big billboard-like signs that tells you what to do in
mile high, imposing letters.
In her case, this one is saying:
“JUST TELL HIM ALREADY!!!!!!!!”
Notice the capital letters and excessive amounts of punctuation.
That’s pretty much what it looks like inside her mind.
So she puts off for another month.
***
Now, she tells herself that she’s waiting for a perfect moment, but she’s begun to realize that that’s not going to happen with Josh. Not anytime in the near future. Y’know, when she’s supposed to be telling him.
So she puts off for yet another month.
***
And now, when there are sitting inside, on her floor, watching their third movie of that rainy Saturday, and each are on their 6th pop at least and Hayley, she’s finally done waiting.
Cause this is the closest she is going to get to a perfect moment, without like, lighting candles. Which would totally tip him off.
And she’d probably accidentally burn down her house.
As the movie ends, she looks over at Josh and tries to think of a good way to put this.
Got it.
“So, Josh, I like you and I think we should go out sometime.”
She stands up and heads to the kitchen with her glass, a quarter full with splintery melting ice, and puts it in the sink.
She walks back out and sits down, not in her original spot though, cause that was right next to Josh and well, he hasn’t said anything yet.
“Okay,” he pauses, “Yeah, that would be good. I like you too.”
And now he’s sitting next to her on the floor, and she doesn’t know if he moved or if she did, but it doesn’t really matter because HE LIKES HER TOO!!!
“Okay,” she breathes out in one long whisper.
“Okay,” and long, delicate fingers that don’t belong to her plow a gentle, sweeping path through her hair.
“Okay,” as he leans in close and their breaths mingle until they’re sharing the same one, and her breath is warm on his skin as she clutches at his shirt front, and she’s breathing her scent onto him. The smell of antibacterial hand soap, green apple shampoo, root beer, and those chocolate cinnamon things she loved. A scent that totally smells way better than it sounds.
“Okay,” he whispers, as his fingers snake around her wrists and pull her in close.
***
Stop
♠ ♠ ♠
Title belongs to Remember Maine, this is 100% fake, I don't own anyone. Please be kind, this is the first fic I ever wrote (and while I've written many more, this one is my soft spot) and it did pretty well on LJ so I wanna see what you guys think. Thanks for reading!