Hey hey, don’t you forget
The way I moan your name or
The taste of my lips.
~ Romeo’s Quest
After school, I headed straight to the library and stayed there until late into the evening reading. I found a table that no one ever traveled by in the back corner of the library. It was slowly becoming my personal safe haven.
I didn’t always read though. Most of the time, I wrote out reasons why Daniel and I could somehow make it work. Why, if we started as friends, by the time school let out, we could transition into more than friends. There were only about one hundred and twenty-some days left in the school year.
One hundred and twenty-four to be exact.
Not that I was counting.
So mainly I wrote out my dreams. Fantasies I wished would someday come true. I was stuck with only my creative daydreams and hopes of something more.
After picking up a few new books, I headed home. I should’ve worn a sweater over my teal sundress. I was freezing. It was clear that autumn’s warmth of Wisconsin was slowly being taken over by a chilled winter. The streetlights were shining bright, and the sky was slumbering.
While walking past the cemetery on May Street, I paused when I looked through the gated area. First I saw his car parked all alone in the parking lot. Then I saw him. My heart skipped a beat, yet it felt as if it were beating faster, too. Daniel made my once fixed heart do crazy things.
He was standing there alone, staring down at two gravestones.
Still a new kind of hurt.
“Oh…” I whispered to myself, placing my hands on my chest.
He looked like he had just gone for a workout in his shorts, plain black shirt, and running shoes. Was he a runner? I wished I knew. I wished I knew so much more about him.
He bent his knees, lowering himself closer to the stones. His lips were moving, and he brushed a finger across his upper lip before he chuckled. He laughed, yet it looked like he was frowning, too.
Those were the most painful—the sad laughs.
I glanced down the streets to see if anyone else was watching him. They weren’t. Of course they weren’t. Why would anyone watch someone standing in a cemetery? My hands twitched and I started rubbing them against my new book.
I should’ve kept walking. I should’ve pretended I hadn’t seen him.
But I had seen him.
No one should have to stand in a cemetery alone.
Especially Daniel.
Within a few seconds, I was standing by his side. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d even arrived next to him. It felt like floating, my feet gliding me his way. He made me soar.
“Hey,” I whispered, making him turn toward me.
“Ashlyn,” he said, surprise in his tone as he looked up to me. I almost forgot how much I loved how he looked at me.
I blinked and shook my head. “I’m sorry to bother you. I just saw you standing here and thought…” Thought what? “Thought nothing,” I muttered.
“Nobody ever really joins me out here.”
“I’m nobody,” I whispered.
He studied my face for a few seconds before he lowered himself down to the ground and the tiniest smile found his lips. “You look like somebody to me.”
I looked back and forth, noticing the darkness surrounding us. I wasn’t sure if I should stay or go. But my feet were telling me that they had no plans to backtrack.
“Why do they call you watermelons?” Daniel asked.
I smirked when he looked up at me. I took it as an invitation to stay. Lowering myself down, I sat next to him. I glanced down at my chest and laughed. “Is that a serious question?”
The corner of his lips turned up. “No, I get it. I do.” His fingers ran through the blades of grass surrounding us and he picked up a few strands. “Your body is beautiful. That’s not a secret. But how are they compelled to pick up on that small detail of you and not talk about those damn eyes? Or that f*cking incredible brain of yours?”
I looked down at his hands, which were rolling the grass through his fingertips, and I didn’t reply.
He continued. “I get so pissed off whenever someone looks at you wrong. Or says the wrong thing to you. Or posts pictures all over your locker. Or if they smile at you. Or call you beautiful. Or…anything!” He released a breath and took a deep inhale. “Anything they do to hurt you or make you smile makes me want to attack.” He exhaled. “And that doesn’t really make for great ethics.”
My teeth ran across my bottom lip. I was uncertain of what to say to him.
He noticed the look in my eyes and ran his hands across his face. “I’m sorry, Ashlyn. I shouldn’t verbally say the crap that runs through my mind.”
“I’m working on my friendships,” I said, turning so I was facing him straight on. I reached into the inside of one of my books and pulled out a piece of paper. Placing it in his hand, I smiled. “I did a little research on Wikipedia.”
He unfolded the paper and read it out loud. “Four important foundations to making a friend.” He stopped reading. “You’re such a nerd.”
He wasn’t wrong. “I’m a nerd-stud. What can I say? Keep reading.”
“Number one. Proximity, which means being near enough to see each other or do things together.”
I puckered my lips up and rubbed underneath my chin. “Well, seeing how I sit in your second row during third hour, that’s kind of being in the same proximity, right?”
He narrowed his eyes on me and moved on to step number two “Repeatedly encountering the person informally and without making special plans to see each other.”
“Holy crap. That’s like, I don’t know—running into you behind the bar. Or running into you at school. Or…running into you in a cemetery. It wasn’t planned at all. I have to admit the last one is kind of a downer.”
The way his smile stretched made me think I was somewhat charismatic, even though I just felt silly. “Number three, opportunities to share ideas and personal feelings with each other.”
“Hmph. Well, to be honest, I think we’re still working on that one. What’s the last one?”
“Ashlyn,” he groaned, reading the final step. “Wikipedia said this?” He raised an eyebrow and I nodded. “Promise, promise?”
My smirk reappeared as I bit my bottom lip. “I’ll promise, but no double promises. Come on, just read it.”
Clearing his throat, he sat up straight. “Last but not least, number four. Be named Daniel Daniels and Ashlyn Jennings.” He folded the paper and placed it back inside my book.
“What?! It says that?! Well, crapballs. That’s three out of four steps we have. I think that’s pretty good.”
“But it’s not perfect,” he argued. His fingers ran through his hair, making it a bit messy. He didn’t look like Mr. Daniels anymore. Just Daniel. Just handsome, talented Daniel.
“Humans weren’t made to be perfect, Daniel. We were made to screw up, f*ck up, and learn new things. We were made perfectly imperfect.”
He narrowed his eyes and moved in closer to me. His fingers brushed my hair behind my ear. The small touch awakened anything that might have been sleeping within me.
“Why did you have to be my student?”
A smile crept on my face. “Because God has a sick sense of humor.” My eyes moved to the flowers Daniel must have bought for his mom. They were a bouquet of daisies. My favorite flower. “I love those ones, too,” I said, gesturing toward the flowers.
“Mom would have liked you a lot. I just know it. Dad would have thought you were too smart for me.”
I grinned. “He sounded like a wise man.”
I shivered a bit from the chilled breeze and he frowned. “You’re cold.”
“I’m okay.”
He took my hands into his and started rubbing them, warming me up. I wondered if he knew how much his touch meant to me. How much I missed that touch.
“Can I tell you a secret without this getting weird?” I whispered as I watched his chest rise and fall with each breath he took.
“Yes,” he muttered.
His face softened, and when he turned to look at me, I felt my heart set on fire. Those undeniable strong feelings of desire, those evident urges I had… All I wanted to do was kiss him. I wanted to kiss him so much that if it never led to anything else, I would be fine with that. His lips alone had the power to make me live forever. How could I never be more than your friend?
“I like holding your hand,” I said. “I really like holding your hand. It makes me feel…important.”
“You are important.” His words were so raw that it made me almost shatter into a million pieces.
His thumb started circling the inside of my palm and my brain went into shutdown mode. I felt his hands travel under my legs, and he lifted me, placing me in his lap. My legs wrapped around his waist.
I fit perfectly against him. So perfectly that I was almost certain that we both had been created for one another. He was my missing puzzle piece. Our faces remained so close that I couldn’t tell if our lips were connected as one or not. His words made love to the air as he repeated himself.
“You are so f*cking important.”
I wondered if he knew how he controlled my heartbeats.
A breath released from my lips. I placed my hands on his chest and laid my head against his shoulder, where I lightly kissed his neck. I felt his hands around my back pull me even closer. He rested his chin on the top of my head. His heart beats increased against me. I loved the idea that I made his heart race.
“Tell me about them, friend.”
A deep inhale was felt against him. “Mom was a music teacher. Dad was an English professor.”
“You’re a mix of both.”
“I’m a mix of both.”
“I know what happened to your father…but what happened to your mom?”
He lowered his shoulders and took a deep inhale. “She was murdered.”
I gasped. I looked up and ran my fingers through his hair, and then I stilled myself. “I’m so sorry.” I said, not knowing what else could be said.
He gave me a sad smile and shrugged. His blue eyes made love with mine and I placed my mouth against his full lips, giving him a gentle peck.
“I think you’re beautiful,” I whispered, echoing what he’d said to me in a text message many weeks back. “And I don’t mean your looks. I mean your smarts, your protectiveness, your brokenness. I think that’s beautiful.”
His hand wrapped around my neck and he pulled me closer, his taste covering my lips, his body heat warming every inch of my body. “I don’t want to be your friend,” he said. We breathed in together and exhaled in harmony. “I want to be yours, I want you to be mine, and I hate that we can’t be us. Because I think we were meant to be us.”
“How is it that we never get to spend time together, but I feel like you know me better than anyone? How is it that I keep falling for you?”
The look of wonder in his eyes was beautiful. It was as if he had been wondering the same thing about me. “I don’t know. Maybe because when hearts are set on fire, no complications can extinguish the flame.”
“It can be a secret,” I softly promised. “Our secret—one hundred percent ours.”
His lips pressed against mine, and everything in the world shut up. Everything in the universe stopped. He brought me to a place of pure emotion, lifting all sadness and replacing it with comfort.
His lips were softer than I remembered yet filled with more passion, more intensity. My hands ran across the hem of his shirt and I slid it up, feeling his tight physique under the cotton material. “Ash,” he muttered. His tongue parted my lips and began to become well acquainted with mine.
My mouth gaped opened as my breaths sped up. His mouth traveled to my neck, where he began sucking and running his tongue in a circular motion. I felt my nipples harden under my dress as a breeze brushed across our bodies and he laid his mouth against mine again. His fingers slid to my spaghetti strap and he lowered it off my shoulder, giving me gentle kisses all the way down. I felt his hands cup my breasts through the dress, and I moaned lightly, loving the way he held me, the way he touched me, the way he knew me.
“We shouldn’t,” he warned, but I wasn’t certain if he was warning himself or me.
I covered his lips before he could try to stop it from happening. I’d never been so sure about anything in my life. I couldn’t pinpoint why, but I’d never felt as safe as I did right there in the darkness with someone who was hurting just like me. Whenever I was near him, there was a profound sense of security and comfort. Daniel Daniels felt like home.