Even Angels Fall

Chapter 7

                                            ~~~~Christina~~~~

Thanksgiving came and went, as did Christmas. It was the best one of my life. Mike finally asked me to be his girlfriend on Christmas Eve. It was the most perfect day ever. He took me to see a live show of White Christmas, which was my favorite movie of all time, before we went ice skating on State Street. He dragged me to the very middle of the rink and stopped, pulling a small white box from his pocket.

"What's this?" I was surprised when he placed the box in my hand. We agreed to exchange gifts tomorrow.

"Open it." He smiled.

I couldn't help smiling back before I looked down at the box and pulled at the red ribbon to untie it. I opened the lid and my smile grew bigger as I realized what was inside.

"Mike, it's beautiful," I said, removing the silver charm bracelet. He found a little blue crayon, a ferris wheel, and an ice skate for the charms. They were completely perfect. "Thank you." I beamed up at him. "I love it." 

"Don't you want to know about the ice skate?" he asked.

"I just figured it was for today," I said. The crayon was for our friendship in grade school and the ferris wheel, our first kiss, but I couldn't think of anything the skate might be for, other than our date today.

He cleared his throat. "Well, yeah. But I was sort of hoping you'd remember it for when you became my girlfriend." He seemed nervous when he said it. Surely he couldn't think it was even possible that I'd say no!

"I'd love to." I smiled, reaching up to bring his face down to mine.

We pulled away after a few wonderful minutes and he clipped the bracelet onto my wrist. I admired it for a second before I looked back at him. "You know, you never did give me that box of blue crayons like you promised," I teased.

"I never said when, did I?" He smirked, pulling a Crayola box from his pocket, and handing it to me. I opened the top and inside was every shade of blue known to man. And only blue.

"You really did!" I giggled.

"I did promise," he said.

The rest of the day was kind of a blur. I know we skated for a while and then walked downtown before heading home, but I couldn't focus on much other than my new status as Mike's girlfriend and how completely wonderful he was.

"If you're gonna day dream." Mike interrupted my thoughts, pulling me back to the present. "I'm gonna have to forget about my promise to leave you alone." He smiled mischievously before he leaned over to kiss me.

Forsaking my notebook, I reached up and put my arms around his neck, allowing myself a few minutes of Mike time. He had a point. I wasn't accomplishing anything anyway.

After what was definitely more than just a few minutes, we lay twisted around each other, on Mike's bed, getting pretty intense.

At first, the idea of being alone in Mike's room made me really nervous. Not because I was afraid of him pushing me to do anything, but because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to stop myself once we got going the way we were now.

It turned out that it wasn't really an issue. I would usually get a little carried away, but I also had an extremely hard time turning my brain off, the way I always did. I couldn't seem to stop thinking about all the reasons we needed to stop sooner or later. And once I felt us approaching that line, all those reasons, along with my nerves, would be enough for me to stop. And Mike never pushed. He got carried away like I did, but he respected what I wanted and listened when I said no.