The sky remains still as we stand there together, the rustle of the trees and our gentle breathing the only sounds in the night. I feel like my eyes are as wide as they can possibly get, unwilling to miss a single thing. Beckett’s hand squeezes at my wrist, the other dipping into the collar of his sweatshirt to press against warm skin.
“Watch,” he says again, a whisper. I feel his smile against my ear and just like that—magic.
I see something streak across the sky, so quick I almost miss it. A burst of light and a bright flare of gold followed by green, like a spark catching into flame. My breath hitches and Beckett’s grip on me tightens.
I watch as another appears. And then another. Another—a cascade of light dancing across the sky above us.
“Ask me,” Beckett says suddenly, his voice low in my ear.
I tip my head back until I can see his face, a backdrop of a billion stars haloed behind his head. Another meteor flares in the night sky above him and I make my wish on that one, exactly like this, wrapped up in Beckett with my hands clinging tight.
I look at him looking at me, out here in the field where he kissed me like it was the very first time. I shake my head, my hair catching and pulling against his shirt. “I don’t need to.”
Because I feel it every time he brings me a mug of tea on the porch, or slips a thick pair of his socks over my cold feet. In every handwritten note and pot of coffee and touch against my bare skin in the stillness of night. In the drives we take down the dirt road that leads to the farm, all the windows down and my hair in the wind. In every familiar face we pass on the way into town, a call of my name and a happy wave, Beckett’s hand warm and comforting in mine.
In the tiny tattoo of a lime on the inside of my forearm—the very same place he licked a line of salt from my skin the first night we met. A birthday present that made him laugh so hard he fell out of his chair.
In the tattoo of some poorly drawn tulips, just above his heart.
I don’t ask, because I don’t need to.
He found his happy in me.
Like I found mine in him.
In us.
In this.
THE END