The Blonde Choch Next Door

Chapter 49 - Dear Logan (Pt. 3)

*FLASHFORWARD*

Time is frozen.

When I say that, I don't mean in the literal sense. The milliseconds still turn to seconds still turn to minutes still turn to hours—I just don't notice. I don't notice the presence of time, because it's background noise compared to what's inside my head.

You're standing on a rooftop helipad up several stories—I don't know how high exactly—but you're so close to the sky, you look as if you could leap up and touch the horizon. The sunset lies below you, a dark-orange tinge that swells behind the nearest building; bright beams of pale yellow linger past the tops of the roofs and around the edges of the reflective glass. You're above it all, a ball of energy and passion and light, greater even than the sinking sun behind you.

I'm watching you, alone in my room. A single tear falls from my right eye, winding down my cheek, under my chin, and down to my neck. I'm not trying to cry, it just happens. I watch you soaring on top of that helipad: carefree, valiant, strong, fearless, unstoppable. My heart is swelling with pride, because I can see: you're on top of the world.

My iPhone is sitting next to me on the nightstand; I don't check it. I don't care what time it is—not on the lock screen on my phone, or the clock in the kitchen, or the watch on my dresser. I'm watching you on the TV mounted to my wall, and it's like nothing else matters. Not the laundry I'm supposed to be doing, or the TV show I could be catching up on, or the chores I forgot to do yesterday. None of it. For the first time this year, I'm not wondering about what presents there are under the tree, or what's in my stocking, or obsessed with the ornaments and the lights and the frosting on the cookies. I'm not counting down the hours until Christmas. There's only you on my mind, and that's when I know. That's when I really know: I have fallen in love with you.

The thing is, most people would tell me there's a simple answer to that. Most people would tell me it's because you own a 6.5 million dollar home in one of the wealthiest parts of LA, that it's because you've got a couple of fancy cars and everything else that comes with a luxurious Hollywood lifestyle. But I loved you when you still lived in that rented apartment downtown, boxes everywhere, more than you knew what to do with in such a small space.

Most people would tell me I'm enamored by your fame, by the screaming girls that gather outside your door. That I'm in love with the attention, the grandeur, the cameras that follow your every move in the streets, hell—even around the country. But I love the power you hold to touch all those people, to bring joy into their lives. That's what touches me.

See, I'm in love with the boy who kisses his Mom on the cheek, the boy who used to landscape for a living, who took pictures of flowers just because he thought they were beautiful. I'm in love with the boy who's not afraid to dream, who flirts with the absurd, who bends the line between danger and thrill. I'm in love with the boy who, when the words fall from his lips, "The theory of yes, but no: where everything is possible until it's not. And even then, it's still possible..."

Time is frozen.

........

I keep coming back to that one gut-wrenching line.

"It's so crazy because, the scary part is, the part that most people don't understand—I'm just getting warmed up."

It gives me chills just reading it, except you got one thing wrong.

It's not just you that's getting warmed up. Not even close.

The whole, entire Logang—millions and millions of us who challenge ourselves everyday, who push ourselves beyond our boundaries, beyond our limits, who chase our wildest dreams, who seek the bigger parts of life, who take the time each day to really live, who choose, no matter what, to be standing on your side, who you've built to become something greater, something stronger, something passionate and positive and powerful...

we're just getting warmed up too.