Falling For Casual

Chapter 8

   A wedding. That was going to be our fourth date. Even though it was fake and just for fun—something I mentioned I wanted to do with him and he happily obliged—it felt like we were making things official. It was like this fake wedding signified something, a promise to each other that we couldn't get ourselves to say out loud. My heart throbbed heavily in my chest, imagining all the ways this false unity would go. What would he wear? Would he say vows or nothing at all because it wasn't real? Would this mean we were finally more than casual?

   'Looks like I'm a New Yorker this weekend,' he texted me on the first of April.

   'And all mine tomorrow.'

   'Casual wedding.'

   There it was, that word again. The two words didn't complement each other at all. How could a wedding be casual? I had to remember that it was just something fun to do and that it may not mean to him what it meant to me. We always joked about being the same person, but that wasn't really true. He wasn't as obsessive as I was, as secretive, as romantically starved. We may be similar, but we would never be the same.

   I traveled to the craft store, ready to buy things I hadn't in a long time: paint, brushes, paper—all things used to make him something for the big day tomorrow. I had the idea of making him water colored hearts on one side with a poem I'd written about him. The other side of the paper would hold as many kisses as I could fit into the square. I hadn't done something this intimate, this personal, in what felt like years. And who knows? Maybe it had actually been years since my hands felt this tingly and my brain was this wired with creating something for someone else.

   Delaney stood behind me in the kitchen, washing the dishes while I worked on the gift for Texas. I could see from the mirror how the edges of her lips turned down when she caught a glimpse of the pink hearts, their faint insides blending into their hard outline. The water-dipped brush in my hand ran over them, and I tried my best to keep my eyes down. I didn't want her feelings to bleed into this painting. I couldn't distract myself with how she was feeling. I had to focus on me, on him, on the potential of there being an us.

   Painting my lips red, I pressed them one, two, three times against the dense paper until my chin was covered just like the page. Finally, the part I dreaded came. The words that I wrote for him on my phone were about to be transferred to ink where I couldn't hide them anymore. He would know without me saying it that I wanted him more than he knew. Once his eyes skimmed over these words that my heart created, he couldn't run from them. I would be laying it all out.

   With a deep sigh, I opened my notes app and wrote the words around the water-colored hearts, making sure not to ruin them.

   They say when you kiss someone, a part of them stays in your mouth for an hour longer, but I want you to stay with me for days, weeks, maybe even months. An hour wouldn't be enough of you, and I want that serenity you provide with just your eyes to last a lifetime. If your kiss branded to me lasts for only one hour, I'd beg you to kiss me everywhere again and again at different moments so they never disappear. One second on my forehead, two seconds on my cheek, a minute on my lips, until I become a stopwatch filled with you...

   Always yours, A.

   I placed it gently in a little red bag and set it to the side for tomorrow, my hands sweating at the thought of his finally seeing my writing. I texted him to let him know I had a surprise for him. When he said he had the same, my palms started to soak all over again. I didn't know how much of this I could take. The wedding was already too much. Then the thought of him not knowing my name sprang on me with a heavy weight. And even heavier than that was the idea of him doing these things with someone else. My lungs began to tighten.