why not?

chapter 17: the rings of love

(as a new years special, I'll post my favourite chapter so far a little early. I was going to make you wait, haha)

chapter 17: the rings of love

He looks adorable, even whilst wearing a too small white shirt and long pyjama trousers. I keep forgetting that he's twenty three, way older than I am. He acts my age and....god he's had a longer time to develop those muscles....hmm.

"Hello" I call to him, flushed and excited. He looks just as excited, but nervous.

"Right, how are we going to do this?"

"Open it at the same time?" I suggest.

"No, then I won't focus on your reaction, and you won't to mine. You open mine first" he says, all in a rush. His present in small, in his hand like mine. He holds it out to me and I wrap off the newspaper wrapping to find a small blue velvet jewelry box.

"No way" I gasp, "Are you asking me to marry you?"

"Not yet, silly" he laughs aloud, "Not yet"

"Then what's this?" My heart is racing. He must be lying. This has got to be a wedding ring!

"Open it" he urges.

I do, and find a simple silver ring. Or is it metal, or platinum or...? It's definitely not a wedding ring. I notice there are miniscule grooves.

"Is there writing on it?" I ask.

"Yeah, you might not be able to read it, but you will when we get back inside" says Tristain, gently taking the ring from me and sliding it on to my ring finger, like one would do in a wedding. I hold my breath, watching his long fingers carress my hand and push the ring on.

I hug him, with loss of words.

"It's lovely" I whisper into his neck, "It's...brilliant! I love it!"  I'm amazed that we both got each other rings! What a coincidence.

We hug for such a long time, and I love it. Hugs are intimate, very intimate. I feel that my lungs have inahled every essence of him and that my heart is beating to his breath.

The feel of his solid body against mine, wrapping around me, is the best feeling in the world.

"Where's my present?" asks Tristain in a fake whinging tone.

"Don't get your knickers in a twist" I smile, "Hang on, I dropped it over there..."

I pick up the little box, which I had wrapped up in magazine paper, and held it out to him. When Tristain was 13 and I was 7, we had been wrapping presents for his charity thing and ran out of wrapping paper. So we looked through the bins and found newspapers and magazines and used those instead. I found it amazing that we decided to honour our past with the paper.

"It couldn't be" Tristain gasps dramatically, "It couldn't be a ring as well?"

He rips off the paper and meets a cream coloured box.

"Open it open it!" I jump up and down. Tristain decides to be painfully slow in opening it though. He touches the velvet, and then shakes the box beside his ear. He even bit it.

"For God's sake Tristain!" I beg, "Open it up!"

"Alright" He sighs loudly and then pops the lid open.

He stares at it, his face expressionless. I start to get worried.  Even though he got me a ring, maybe guys don't want these types of presents. I should've gone with a  video game or some hardware or something. Ahhh. I feel terrible until Tristain looks up with a smile in his slightly wet eyes.

"Are..are you crying?!"

"Yeah" he admits, "I love this. 'Love has no limits'"

"You can read it? It's so dark!" I'm an idiot. I ruined a perfectly romantic exchange.

"I have good eyes" he smiles widely, that hot smile, "Put it on for me?"

I take great effort in putting the ring on perfectly, sliding it and trying not to hurt the bumped joints in his fingers. He holds is hand out and flexes his fingers. And then I'm in his arms, and he's kissing me passionately. I sink into it and put my worries aside until we pull away.

"How do we explain this to the parents?"

"We don't"

"If they ask?"

"We tell them the truth" He's kissing my neck as we speak, and I find it so distracting.

"But...we can't! We've only got a week left until you leave for Canterbury again" (city in south England)

He pressed his huge lips against mine as says, "You're right. But let's just let what happens happen, right?"

"OK"

We snog until we're both left damn tired. We sluggishly go back to the cabin, where Eric and Liam are fast asleep. The parents are still out.

"I call top bunk" I whisper. My lips are learning how to speak again, throbbing and aching from so much snogging.

"No I get top bunk" Tristain whispers back.

"Why?"

"Beause I'm older, now move" He climbs in to the top bunk and I'm furious. Back to the old Tristain, eh?

"Hey! No...no fair! I called it first!"

"Nah nah, I can't hear you"

I climb up the bunk, and because it's so small, I sleep on top of him.

"Ha" I grumble, "I win" We hear the bed creak dangerously, however, and I leap off with fright.

"Nevermind"

He laughs and I go to sleep, still mad. But then I look at the ring in my hand. It says something...I get up to turn on the light.

"Oi!" Tristain groans, "My eyes!"

"Shut it, I want to read what you wrote on the ring"

It reads "LP+TR i love you"

My heart melts into a puddle of gushy goo. The organisms in my body try to sweep it up, but the goo is as hard to get rid of as hardened wood glue.

I forget that I'm angry at Tristain at all for stealing my top bunk space.

"Tristain come down" I order.

"Why?" he asks suspiciously.

"I want to snog you senseless"

"Oh...okay"

I do snog him senseless, though we try to keep the noises down because of Eric and Liam.

"I love you too" I finally say. The whole time while we were snogging, I double checked to make sure it was true. That I can't live without him, that every morning I think of him and that he's the man I love. I double checked with my erratic heart as well, after my mind approved.

My saying this prompted Tristain to kiss me even more. My lips ache and they're probably bruised. My whole body hurts (Tristain has me up on a wall again. He loves doing that) but I don't really care. We nestle together in the bottom bunk, with my sleeping on top of Tristain.

Somewhere in the distance, I hear and feel his chest hum a lullaby. It's the one he sung to me when I had a high fever when I was six years old. It's the same one he sung to me when I was in the hospital with a sprained ankle and I was falling asleep.

I love Tristain, the man that was there for me my whole life and whether I knew it or not, he was always there to protect and take care of me, hiding his true intentions with harsh words and a teasing, lofty attitude.

Soft music makes me fall asleep.