He stood for everything she was against and he wouldn't be caught dead befriending someone like her, but when the worst happens and they find themselves in a similar situation, only then will they realize they need each other to discover the anatomy...
"So how's this going to work?" Santana asked from her place beside me on the hood of my car. We'd been here over an hour now, not really saying much, just basking in this new, yet terrifying sensation of fresh hope and anticipation.
I held her hand in mine, so tiny in my grip, but she held it back firmly. I'd feared for a second that she'd leave again, fickle in her decision, too rash to be real, but when she hugged me, when she leapt into my arms and held on tight, whispering, "You're so warm," into my neck—such a random thought passing through her lips to my ears like that first thing she ever said to me, "Your shoes are dirty," back when we were five and had no idea—that was when I knew she meant it. I was so giddy I laughed too loudly, a foghorn announcing to the world we were here, together. My heart pumped embarrassingly fast against hers as I held her so tightly to me. I was terrified she'd push me away and change her mind, so I held onto her for as long as I could. When we finally broke away, she was blushing, so I kissed her, and I kept kissing her until I ran out of breath. And when she kissed me back, sinking into it hungrily, I knew then too. And even now, when she refused to let go of my hand, I knew.
I sighed contentedly. "It's going to work 'cause it has to work," I replied. "I don't know how but it's gotta."
I felt her nod next to me.
"Are you sure you're okay?" I asked her.
"Caleb, I never thought I'd be okay again until your pretty face suggested a really stupid plan that went terribly wrong," she laughed.
I loved that sound. She had a summer's laugh, like the drizzle of rain on wind chimes, the way it sort of sang. At the sound, I felt a light had gone off in my brain, and I finally understood that there was no "their world" and "our world." It was just one big mess of a world which we all shared and one which we all had to try to make sense of. I turned my head a little and caught her staring up at the stars. Her nebulous eyes were glowing, smiling, and I couldn't help but fall right into them, wishing never to come up again. The purity I'd seen in Farrah was only a veil and whatever I thought Santana had of impurity had simply been wrong. This was love, and hell if I knew what to make of it, but here it was. I'd never felt like a bigger idiot than when I stood in front of her and told her all those corny lines, but I'd meant every one of them, deep in my bones, and I'd repeat them day in and day out if I had to convince her everyday of how much I cared. She was everything I'm not, and that scared the hell out of me, but there was no possible way I could go back to the way it used to be. Not ever.
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I didn't really know what to do with myself when I got home. It was after midnight and I'd just left the quarry. I'd watched Santana drive away in her little beat up car, wishing, like a dumb love-struck teenager, which of course I was, for her to turn around and come back, just as she'd done before. She, being the rational of the two, didn't turn back, and went home.
There wasn't much I could do now, except lie in bed and wait for the sun to take the moon's place in the sky, signaling another day, and another hour closer to the time I got to see her again. But as the shadows disappeared and the rays of the sun crept golden through my blinds, panic began to grip my chest like a cold hand. What-if's and but's replaced the daydreams that had been spinning through my brain all night and I didn't want to go to school anymore. I didn't want to see her. Last night had been a dream, perfect and illusory, and when I got to school today, she'd avoid me like she'd been doing before and everything would be the same as it was. Or she'd tell me it was a mistake, or just a kiss, the way she'd so casually dismissed our very first, and that seeing Jasper had made her act rashly. It was who she was after all: Rational, with sudden bursts of reckless and corrosive behavior. It was how she won me over, wasn't it? I couldn't expect her to change for me, so I wouldn't. I was willing to take what she offered, even if I wasn't ready for it.
