Chasing Blue

#44: Shy.

Present

Isabella

There are different ways to say I love you. 

Of course, there are the common three words. Warning; when said can make butterflies arise, as beautiful as springtime hummingbirds. There's the subtle I love you, it makes sure that you get home. It's the key that lets you in carefully hidden under a garden gnome. There's the chaotic I love you. Exclaimed after one too many drinks. It doesn't exactly say it, but, honestly, any party without you stinks. There's the warm I love you, it holds you when you cry, it heats up the leftovers, and serves extra ice cream with pie. There's the peaceful I love you, it's the breathing change when they sleep. How it's the first time they're comfortable and you have to look away to not weep. There's the overwhelming I love you, you miss them when they're gone and it terrifies you to feel like this because what if you have to move on? But then there's the lasting I love you, it builds a home in your heart; even if you're not together, you could never be apart.

It's mystical to make out the kind of I love you Austin Cooper whispered to my heart after repeatedly showing me all the ways two people can love in. 

I tighten the wrap of the blanket around my bare body to do the maximum it can to shield me from the whisks of the young night. Sitting on the balcony of his room, wrapped inside his blanket and his arms, hearing every rhythmic beating of his heart and feeling every minuscule of his breath on my neck felt warmer than most of the Disney movie happy endings. 

We'd spent the choate of the night trying to test my fears and phobias out of my system. As much as I'm aware right now, Austin literally chased every last ounce of fear back into space. 

His fingers laced through mine, planting chills all the way they grazed on. "It's a real mystery." 

I scoff, "What is?" 

"No matter how much I say I love you, I always love you more than that." He kissed the side of my head. 

It's little things like this that he knows how to say which makes me feel like I don't do justice in telling him how much I love him too. It's just, verbally impossible to express. 

He knows he's made me speechless. I sense that superiority in his laugh. 

"It's okay, you give me feelings I can't put into words either," he says it with his lips planted on the side of my head. 

I groan. "That's it. How do you know what to say all the time?" 

"I say what I feel all the time." 

I lean in the front to eye him, "You're saying you feel this poetic all the time?" 

He glances at the lake, "Around you, yes." 

I grunt, brushing my hair behind my ears and moving away from his arms so I can completely turn around and watch him as I talk. "Austin, I need like five minutes to understand these lines when I read them off books. How can you just get them in your head?" 

"You're the only one I know to love, Izz. So yes, I love the person I become when I'm around you. You bring out the best in me." He takes my hand in his and begins to caress it. "Okay, I have a naked truth." 

"Go ahead." 

"I used to sing from when I was young. But I started to write after I met you. You brought out most of my songs." His cheek bones popped when he blushed. 

It is one thing to have someone sing for you, but it's another entire multiverse of emotions hitting you in the face when someone writes about you. He's made me speechless before, but this is the kind of speechless I'm not accustomed to either.