“If we are going to make out on the couch …” He pulls me up to stand and turns me around. “We are going to do it like we always did it.” He lies on the couch and pulls me on top of him, and I feel every single muscle he has.
“Oh, I like this a lot more than my idea,” I say, laughing. He captures my mouth, and we kiss until the both of us are literally coming out of our skin. “Will you stay the night with me?”
“Are you sure?” he asks, and I just look at him.
“It’s a birthday ritual,” I remind him, and both of us just look into each other’s eyes. The last time we celebrated his birthday before he left, he did it sliding into me at midnight.
“Sunrise,” he asks, “are you sure?”
“No,” I tell him honestly. “I’m afraid,” I tell him, getting up and looking at him. He sits now. “I’m afraid of tomorrow. I’m afraid I’m going to wake up, and you’ll be gone. I’m afraid that one of these days, I’ll come home, and you’ll be gone. I’m afraid that my love isn’t going to be enough to keep you here.” I give him all my fears. “I’m so afraid that I won’t survive this again.” I sob out. “I know I told myself not to get my hopes high. I told myself that I wasn’t going to count on you being here, but I have all the broken pieces that somehow glued together, just not complete.”
He gets up now. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure that you know I’m not going anywhere.” He kisses my hands. “Knowing that you have this fear breaks me. I want to put all your pieces back together again. Let me be your glue.” He kisses me. “Let me be the one who puts you together again.” I don’t have to answer him because he picks me up and carries me to my bedroom, holding me the whole time.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ethan
“Why are you crying?” I ask when she walks into the house on the last day of school. I walk to her and take her in my arms as she quietly sobs. “Sunrise,” I say, kissing her head. I had just finished in the shower when she walked in. Slowly, over the past four days, I’ve been leaving a lot more of my things here. I don’t have much stuff anyway, but most of it is here now.
“I’m going to miss them so much,” she says, and I get it now. It was the last day of school for her, and half of the students that she teaches are graduating. It’s been four days since we’ve woken up together, four days that I’ve made her dinner every single night. Four days of surprising her with a birthday surprise.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say. “You get to see them all tomorrow at the carnival.”
“What is going on here?” She finally looks around and notices all the balloons all over the place. “It’s the fourth birthday I missed.” She puts her hands to her mouth as she looks around, seeing a hundred balloons that I had delivered. “Oh my god,” she says, seeing the box on the table. “What in the world?”
“This is your fourth birthday gift,” I say when she walks to the table. I wrapped it with white wrapping paper, and there is a big pink bow on it. “Open it.” I smile at her, and she just looks at me. Her blue eyes light up now so much that I have no choice but to lean over and kiss her neck. She waits for me to stop kissing her before slipping the bow off and ripping open the paper. The box she gave me not too long ago sits in front of her. She looks at the box, knowing it’s hers and then looks at me. “Open it.”
She slides open the box except this time, it’s different. She picks up the shirt and brings it to her nose. “You washed it?” She laughs and cries at the same time. “I haven’t washed this in five years.”
“I know,” I say, and she throws her head back, laughing while she holds the shirt to her chest.
She puts the shirt down next to the box and takes out the first frame with a picture of us on the beach. “You put it in a frame.” She smiles through the tears, and then she takes the other one out. “You put them all in a frame.”
“I did,” I say. “I thought we could put them up around the house instead of keeping them in a box.”
She puts the picture down and then walks away to her bedroom, and I stand here in the kitchen waiting for her. She comes back with another frame, and I smile at her. It’s the picture I’ve kept in my wallet the whole time. “This one I want to keep by the bed.” She shows me. “And this one.” She picks up the one of both of us on the beach. “This should go on the mantel.”