Taste (Scomiche)

Everything

Scott: Happy One Year Anniversary, babe! I know we've had our ups and downs, and we've been on again, off again, but the reason we're always on again is because I can't go two days without you. I love you so much, Mitchie. This has been the best year of my life.

"I have chalk! And I have a pocket knife!" Scott exclaimed, showing up on my doorstep.
I stared at him, very concerned and confused. "Well, that's an odd combination."
He chuckled, but I went on. "I can see the headline now. CHILDHOOD ACTIVITY TURNS TO FATAL STABBING!"
He grabbed my hips, laughing and pulling me close to him to peck my lips. "Happy one year," he mumbled against them.
"Happy one year," I reciprocated, kissing him, arms sloppily thrown around his neck.
"You ready for our date?" He questioned.
I nodded, pulling back to shut the front door and patting my pocket to make sure my phone was there. "Yup."

The radio blasted as we drove down the streets. Scott was probably speeding, but neither of us cared. He only slowed when we entered the city, parking at the very outside edge of it.
"Scott, what are we--"
He silenced me by shoving a container of twelve different chalk colors in my hand. "Let's go."
I exited the car and trotted over to him, asking with my eyes what the hell I was doing with a box of chalk.
"Okay," he sighed. "The object of this game is to write a heart with S+M in the middle of it on every building in the city. You count how many buildings you get, I count how many I get."
My eyes lit up. I loved competition. "What if I accidentally mark a building you've already marked?" "Ah yes, the other thing. You have to mark it by the front door, so we can look and see it. If it's a glass building, mark it on the sidewalk in front."
"What if a cop sees us? Will we get in trouble for defacing a building?"
Scott shrugged. "Good luck." Amusement burned in his eyes. "We meet back here at 3:30. Sharp."
I did a firm nod. "1... 2... 3... GO!"
We raced. Starting with the nearest skyscrapers, we each did the most careless, messy hearts with S+M in the center. We worked our way through the city, hurriedly claiming every building as our own. People gave me annoyed glances and lingering stares as I sprinted down the sidewalk, sketching on every building I came across. I was at thirty-two buildings when I checked the time. Being pretty deep into the city, and only having ten minutes to get back to the car so I wasn't disqualified, I darted down walkways, making it to an awaiting Scott in the nick of time.
"Aaaaaaaand.... 3:30! Okay, so how many did you get?"
Out of breath from dodging people, I answered, "Thirty-two."
Scott's eyes went from a regular look to a squint. "No. I got thirty-two."
A shared look had us both running, trying to find the nearest building we hadn't written on. But every building I saw, we'd already drawn on.
So when Scott screamed "THIRTY-THREE!", my heart almost stopped beating. Did he just...
"HA! I beat you!" He laughed maniacally, rubbing in the fact I had lost when I am so competitive. Scott began dancing around in a circle, making an absolute fool of himself. Irritated people passed.
"Well... I... I let you win!" The obvious lie floated through my lips.
Scott teased, "Ooh, mhm, okay. Right. You the most ruthless, cutthroat being on Earth let me win? Nice try, buddy."
"Scooooottttttt."
He giggled, poking me in the stomach multiple times. "Mitchie loooooost."
I glared, trying to keep my cool with him. He was only doing it to get on my nerves.
"For once, Scott Hoying is better than Mitchell Grassi. Huh. Funny."
"Scott," I warned.
He chuckled good heartedly and slipped his hand in mine, swinging it on the way back to the vehicle. "Come on, we still have things to do."

Scott drove me out of town, and into an entering of the woods. I asked him a bunch of times if this was how he was planning my death.
"For the thirty third time," he laughed, making a sore reference to the fact he'd won with the thirty third building, "I'm not going to kill you."
"Says the person with a knife."
"It's a pocket knife. What damage can I do?"
"You're taking me into the middle of the woods and you have a knife. What do you expect me to think?"
He didn't answer, just shut off the car and led me through the woods expertly. We wandered through a maze of trees, and finally, ended up at the river. We sat down by the base of a large ash tree. The river current was slow and peaceful, and the four o'clock sun made the water shimmer. I was perfectly content with the silence between us, but Scott hated silence. He felt too alone. He needed constant noise to keep himself sane, and apparently the chirping birds weren't enough.
Scott dug out his pocket knife.
"OH GOD. OH NO. THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS. TELL MY MOTHER I LOVE HER. TELL MY SISTER NOT TO CRY. TELL PAPA I'LL MISS HIM. STAB ME IN THE HEART. IT'LL BE QUICKER." I fell sideways into the grass dramatically, shouting my last wishes.
He hit my shin with the back of his hand, chuckling. "Get up, you dork."
I sat up, staying a safe distance away from his withdrawn knife. He took a peeling piece of bark away from the tree, so only the smooth, sandy colored layer underneath was showing. I gasped, but he gave me a 'stop being ridiculous' look. Then, with his pocket knife, he carved a huge heart. In the center he wrote "S+M 4ever". I was smiling like an idiot, just because anything Scott does I smile at. He crawled over to meet my lit up features, kissing and laying me down. His lips tasted like the strawberry lip balm he always wore.

Every single time I had kissed him, it was pure strawberry. It became a comfort for me, a constant. I always knew what I was getting when I kissed Scott Hoying. Strawberries.

"I love you," I murmured, breaking the kiss.
"One year down, many more to go," he smiled. When he smiled, it wasn't just with his lips or his teeth. He smiled with his eyes, his face, his heart. It was contagious. "I love you so much."
I reached up, pulling his face down to mine and looking in his eyes before linking our lips once again.
We stayed at the river for what seemed like ages, strings of laughs and stories escaping our mouths. Eventually, Scott left me stranded as he made his way back to the car to fetch a picnic basket and presents. I promised him that he'd get my gifts for him at the end of the night, for they were sitting on my kitchen counter at home.
Scott settled across from me, setting the wicker basket in the blades of grass. He waved a small cloth around to unfold it and laid it down, then placed our dinner upon on it. Slices of already baked cheese pizza, apples, and suckers were thrown on. I giggled as he explained his logic of each.
"I brought pizza because that's good hot or cold. I brought apples because it's a side dish and it's healthy. And I brought suckers because they're like a mini dessert."
We devoured our meal, then leaned against the tree trunk, sucking our lollipops, staring at the ripples as evening draped across the sky. Time had flown by.
Before it became too dark, Scott insisted I opened his presents. He shoved the dinosaur wrapping paper at me, an object inside. Slowly, I tore it apart, rambling on about how a gift wasn't necessary.
The first gift was an abundance of different candies. I had been raving about my sweet tooth for about as long as he had known me. Included were Skittles, Dum Dums, Jolly Ranchers, butterscotches, Warheads, and a bunch of different chocolates he prayed didn't melt in the car. I thanked him tremendously, and was about to embrace him when he slid another gift to me. I assumed it was a poster because it was something rolled up. But as I unwrapped and unrolled it, I discovered it was much more than that.
It was a map of the whole world. It was dotted with stars.
Each star signified a place we had talked about visiting with just off-hand comments. But he had remembered them all, and marked them down. The only things I said were like: "Ooh yeah, I'd love to try actual food from Thailand" and "I bet Moscow has an amazing downtown; I'd love to travel there one day".
It touched me that he had done this. Mapped out every spot I had mentioned. There were a few places he had told me about as well.
I didn't let him stop me this time. I pounced, hugging him tightly.
"Mitch, wait," he laughed. "There's one more."
I eyed him in disbelief. From beside him, clenched in his fist, he held a small cat statue. A hairless cat statue. The cat I had been talking about getting for years. A squeaky gasp came out of my throat as I snatched it from his palm.
"Thank you" was the only thing I could mumble from the mild excitement and shock coursing through me.

We laid under the stars, staring up at the ever-expanding universe. They scattered the sky in all of their glory.
"Scott?" I asked quietly, his strong arm holding me close.
"Yeah?"
"Do you ever think that there's more to this world than we can imagine?" The grass was poking my back, but I was so content, I didn't care.
He removed his arm from under me and flipped onto his side, staring at my eyes in the darkness that was the night. "Well, you're my world. If there's more to this world, you are that to me as well. You're my everything, and I will love you until clocks stop ticking and hearts stop beating."

I climbed into bed later that night, but couldn't get my eyes to close.
That boy meant everything to me.