"You will survive and you will find purpose in the chaos. Moving on doesn't mean letting go." — Mary VanHaute
I t had been a blast skating around the rink with my friends, though my feet were killing me, so I decided to sit on the sidelines for a quick breather. A slow song came over the speaker, “I’ll Never Break Your Heart” by the Backstreet Boys. I watched the skaters pair up to skate to the song. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I felt a chill come up my spine as Emmett, my older brother’s best friend, took the place next to me.
“You didn’t want to skate with anyone on your birthday?”
“I needed a break.” I shrugged, never taking my eyes off the skaters. “That, and umm…no one asked me.”
Emmett tilted my chin to his face with his forefinger and thumb and looked at me in a way he never had before, or maybe I just hadn’t noticed. It was strangely comforting. “Danielle Kathryn Jacobs, will you skate with me?”
I felt the breath rush out of my lungs as I tried to find the words to answer him. A simple yes, and I couldn’t even find that. My brain wasn’t working, so all I could do was nod. Did Emmett really just ask me to skate? Maybe he just felt sorry for me. He reached his hand out in front of me and threaded his fingers with mine as he escorted me from the wall to the ice.
As the song continued to play, we skated around the rink. His hand remained in mine, and the smile never left his face. When the song came to an end and his hand hadn’t moved from mine, I looked at him nervously and began to pull away from him. “Well, thanks for the skate. I’m sure there were plenty of other girls to skate with than me, so I appreciate you humoring the birthday girl so ugh…I didn’t look super pathetic.”
As I went to turn to skate in the other direction, he tightened his grip on my hand. “Woah, Dani, I didn’t ask you to skate because I felt sorry for you. I asked you to skate with me because I wanted to. If I wanted to skate with someone else I would have, but I only wanted to skate with you. I just wanted you. Don’t you see that?”
I could feel my cheeks instantly flush. “I…I…” Again I couldn’t find the words to say anything, so I just kept looking into those baby blues. I’d had a crush on Emmett since before I even knew what crushes were, but could he, in fact, have a crush back? People continued to skate around us, but all I saw was him. “I don’t understand. Really?” I asked him when I finally found the words.
He inched even closer to me and brushed a stray piece of hair that had fallen out of my beanie, behind my ears. “Yes, you really didn’t know?” he asked with a confused look.
I shook my head.
“I thought it was pretty obvious, but if you don’t like me like that, then I get it. I’m just your brother’s best friend—or your best friend’s brother.” Emmett took his bottom lip between his teeth; he wasn’t the usual confident Emmett I had always known. It was my turn to surprise him.
My own confused look turned to a smile as I took my other hand to his cheek. “Em, you have never been just my brother’s best friend or best friend’s brother.”
He covered my hand with his own as his dimple appeared with his wide grin. God, I loved that dimple. I had tried for years to do things to always make him smile so it would appear. “Good, because I wanted to know if…”
He looked down at his feet nervously.
“If what, Em?”
His baby blues met mine again. “If you would be my girlfriend.”
My eyes grew big. Oh my God! Pinch me. I quickly felt a pinch and realized that I had actually said that aloud. I began to flush again but then giggled. “I didn’t mean to say that aloud.”
Forgetting we were in the middle of the ice rink, we were quickly brought back to reality when we heard my brother, Zach, skate up to us. “Will you just give him an answer already? Mom said we had to wait for you to get off the ice to eat cake!”
I quickly turned to my brother and gave him the death stare. “If you would leave, dummy, then yes, I would.” I turned back to Emmett as Zach skated off, rolling his eyes at us and flipping me the finger.
With both of my hands now in Emmett’s, I smiled at him and nodded. “Yes, Emmett Adam Hanks, I would love to be your girlfriend, although, I don’t really know what that means. I think this may have just become the best birthday ever.”
There it was—that dimple again. There was something in the way he was looking at me, as if I had just made him the happiest boy on the planet, maybe even the galaxy. That look ignited something in me that I didn’t know what it was just yet, but I couldn’t wait to find out.
“Well, for starters, I get to do this.” He put his hand behind my neck, pulled me closer to him, and kissed me gently on the lips.
“Wow! Yep, this is definitely the best birthday ever,” I managed to say as we broke apart. His grin went all the way to his eyes.
“Yeah, no kidding. I never thought my first kiss would be that…perfect.”
Wait, did he just say that I was his first kiss? I had dreamed of my first kiss for like, forever, and I had hoped one day it would be with Emmett Hanks, but I figured that was about as likely as getting kissed by Justin Timberlake. Hey, can’t a girl dream? But, he just admitted that I was his first kiss too.
Emmett looked up and began laughing. As I turned to see what was so funny, I saw my brother making kissy faces at us just before he lost his footing on his skates and fell on the ice. That made me laugh hard.
Emmett turned to me as he began to take the lead, skating me toward the exit. “Well, I guess we better get over there so you can make a birthday wish and he can feel better by shoving cake in his mouth.”
As everyone sang Happy Birthday to me,
I tried to imagine a wish that was better than the reality that happened today. Emmett Hanks had asked me to be his girlfriend. Was I sure I wasn’t dreaming? Emmett leaned in to my ear and whispered, “Make a wish, beautiful.”
I looked over at him, smiled, and knew my wish was that we could have our happily ever after just like Cinderella and her Prince Charming. Closing my eyes, I made my wish and blew out my candle.
Emmett and I sit on the swing on my parents’ front porch with my feet in his lap, rocking back and forth. End of summer in Maryland is my favorite time of year. Yes, the weather can sometimes be temperamental, perfect one day, like today, the next super hot. But the leaves are getting ready to change, and there is a smell in the air that lets me know fall is just around the corner.
There is a light breeze passing by as Em runs his fingers over the dolphin anklet he gave me for my thirteenth birthday. It has a turquoise gemstone, my birthstone, in the center of the dolphin. It was that birthday that Emmett had given me my first kiss and changed my world.
I find myself lost in the memory of that day—the way my hand fit in his, the way his lips brushed against mine, and the look on his face as I opened his present. I’d started to cry because it was so beautiful, and knowing he had bought that prior to even asking me to be his girlfriend and admitting his feelings made my heart swell with emotion.