paper rings (l.h.)

29

My Mother agreed gleefully to babysit my Grandmother for the next two weeks once I got the courage to ask. She came down a day or two early, said she wanted to spend some time with me as well. It was nearing the end of September, my birthday was tomorrow. We will be settled in his apartment by then.

Once the suitcases were packed, and the room was tidied up, Luke stood at the other side of my mattress as I braided my long hair down my back. "Are you excited?" Luke asks me, reaching into this pocket to throw his keys onto the mattress.

I nod, moving the long braid down my shoulder and down my side. I couldn't help but notice as his keys fell off the bed instead, and onto the ground.

As he reaches down to find his missing car keys, I sit with my back facing him with my pair of converse in-hand. They were beaten up, but comfortable. I didn't look like the latest fling of a rockstar typically would, but Luke didn't seem to mind anyway.

"Mary's collection of poems, 4th edition-"

I couldn't help but steal the book out of Luke's hands before he got the chance to open its cover. He scoffed as I held it in my hands, examining the cover as if I was trying to recognize the face of an old friend.

"I didn't know I was in the presence of a poet," he pauses, and I look up at him with one shoe on, the other half-hanging off of my foot. "Fourth edition?"

"Yeah," I nod, rolling my eyes and tossing the poorly-bound book and hand-drawn cover towards him. I wrote it back in high school, when I had fallen in love for the first time and got in trouble for drinking with my friends in some dude's basement.

"Can I?" He asks, nodding towards the book with the year 2016 scribbled across the top.

"Sure," I shrug, turning around to continue lacing my shoe. I feel his body go silent as my Mother's voice echoes throughout the home as she goes about her soft conversations about the upcoming autumn and the first few pumpkins to show up at the market downtown.

"These are beautiful, Mary," he says under his voice, my body falling back onto the mattress, and my head on his lap. I felt his hand instinctively begin petting my head, my eyes fluttering closed as he reads my most inner thoughts of my high school days. "Some of them are so sad."

"Who wasn't sad in high school?"

He smirks, lowering the book and tossing it on the bedside table. "They'd make beautiful songs," he says after a pause. "Don't you think so?"

"As long as you stay far away from my middle school ones, I don't care," his body lays back on my pillows, the ceiling fan covering us in the air that we crave on a hot summer day such as this. The sun still burned through the curtains.

"It's a deal," he nods, sliding my book into his carry-on.

Our goodbyes were a few minutes longer than we had wanted them to be, my Mom waving us goodbye until my neck hurt from reaching my head out the window to watch as she disappeared. Luke didn't mind, though, I wish I had the family you have, he had said once, I was half-asleep, barely listening but I remembered anyway. I had responded, in my sleep, they're just as much yours, as they are mine.

Although we were running very far behind the others, that didn't stop Luke from pulling over and buying us both snacks and coffees from the gas station a mile out of town. I sat watching how he chit-chatted with the cashier, and how a bag full of things he had noticed I enjoyed came swimming towards me once his driver's side door opened.

The drive was an hour away from our town, eventually I settled back while my book sat on my lap, Luke stealing quick glances in my direction as I chew on whatever snack I could reach first.