Catch Me

Chapter 19

"What is going on here?"

"Mom...I can explain. But please don't be mad."

I try not to panic. Fiona still has her arm around my waist but moves to go to my parents and stands in front of them.

"Good morning Mr. and Mrs. McKinney. I am Fiona."

She shakes my parents hands and confidently continues.

"It is really nice to finally meet you. Olivia told me a lot about you."

Now not only Mom looks at her in shock but me too. Dad laughs.

"Only the good things, I hope. It's good to finally meet you too Fiona. You seem to be a good girl. But same things for you like it was for Ryan. If you hurt my daughter, I will hurt you, understood?"

"Dad!"

I walk to stand by Fiona and look at Dad embarrassed. But he keeps looking at Fiona with serious expressions and she keeps looking at him with the same face.

"Of course Sir. I would never intentionally hurt Olivia but if I accidently should, I am glad I can confide on you for proper penalty."

Dad nods and then his lips curl into a grin.

"I already like her, Olivia. Good choice. But Fiona, please call me Henry and this", he lays his arm around my mother, who looks at him in confusion. 
"This is my wife Helena."

"But..."
Mom starts with a tiny voice.

"What about Ryan?"
I sight but Dad talks before I can say anything.
"Helena, he wasn't the right one for our Liv. Now come on."
He looks at Fiona and me.
"Let's sit down in the living room and you can tell us all about you two."

After telling Dad and Mom, who soon got used to me dating a girl, the short and parent - friendly version of our relationship, we go up to my room and I fall on to my bed.

"Oh my God. I can't belive this just happened."
Fiona laughs and sits down on my bed right next to me and looks down at me.

"Well, it wasn't that bad, was it? She took it quite well. That she was in shock for a few minutes is perfectly normal. Think about how long you were shocked about it when you found out."

We both laugh and I pull her down to lay on top of me. Fiona snuggles her head in the crock of my neck and positions her arm over my waist where she slowly draws small circles with her thumb. Like that we stay for a while until we decide to go to the hospital. On our way there, we stop at Fiona's place to grab her and her grandfather some fresh clothes.

I can't help but stare at her bare back, when she pulls her shirt over her head and only the black and blue waves of hair cover the tattoos on her back. Slowly I make my way to her and impede her from putting on a sports bra by slightly touching her back and tracing the lines and dots of the tattoo. I can feel her shivering but she doesn't try to put on her bra again and stands compleatly still.

Her whole back, from the shoulders to the hips, is coverd in tiny black dots, some of them connected by very thin, dashed black lines and I remember them as star constellations.

When I trace the one on her left shoulder blade, which is about my own hands size, she starts to speak.

"It's the star constellation of Virgo. It was my mothers zodiac sign. On the right side, it's the Sagittarius constellation for my Dad. This way they are always with me."

She only whispers the last part. I carefully turn her around in my arms and see her fighting back tears. Pulling her chin up with my finger, I make her look me in the eye.

"Always since I can remember, my grandpa showed me the stars at night. He said, that Mom and Dad are there, sitting on their own star, waiting for us to be together again. And until than, they would take care of me from above like my grandmother does now too. And even if it sounds crazy, I belive in it."

She blushes but I shake my head.

"I think it's beautiful. Just like you are. Beautiful."

We become aware of her being naked and laugh awkwardly before I turn around. But not without secretly shooting a glance at her again and hope that she doesn't notice. But when I hear her giggling softly, I know that she did and I feel my cheeks heatening up.

Looking at the huge collage of pictures on her wall next to the door, I try to calm myself down and to think about something else than my naked girlfriend being only a few meters away from me.

Concentrating on different versions of Fiona, different ages, styles and persons she is with, I feel like taking a short trip through her life.
Pictures of a very cute baby, wrapped in a small blue blanket with her name embroidered on it, sleeping peacefully in the arms of an elderly woman.
Photos of little Fiona, on her first day of school, with other kids around her age playing in a pool, her reading a book, witch seems huge in contrast to her small body, under a tree, eating ice cream on a beach and maybe eleven years old Fiona, giving the photographer a thumbs up in front of the Palomar- Observatorium.

Different pictures of people I don't know but some of them I recognize from other pictures. Like the elderly woman, who grew older like Fiona did and a boy with blond hair and green eyes, always looking about a few years older than my girlfriend in the pictures. I notice an elderly looking man, who can be seen a lot and I look at him in surprise.

"The same eyes."

Fiona makes her way over to me and I feel her putting her arms around me and resting her head on my left shoulder to look at the wall with me.

"They run in the family. My Mom had them too but without the sprinkles in them. Grandma always said that, unlike me and Grandpa, Mom didn't go out to watch the stars at night, and so she wasn't able to get the sprinkles."
Fiona laughs a little.

"Because the stars scatter their stardust into the eyes of the persons, who really see their beauty and appreciate them. At least that's how my Grandmother used to describe the golden sprinkles - or the lack of them."

She laughs again and I lean back in her arms so my body is pressed against hers.

"Your family is really obsessed with stars, right?" I chuckle.

"Yeah. it's kind of our thing. Look, the pictures of me and my grandpa in our yard, laying on a blanket und looking up the sky. I have like a dozen of pictures like this one because whenever the weather was good enough to sleep outside, we did. Even Emmett attended a few times. He is my best friend since I we moved into this house. His family lives down the street and we used to go to school together in the morning. And at school he protected me when the other kids started to make fun of me because I was younger and ... different than them. We were inseperable ever since."

She pionts at a few newer photos of her and the blond guy. She had told me about Emmett before and I even met him a few times when I was at Fiona's place.

Suddenly a picture catches my gaze and I step closer and tilt my head to the side. A photo, I didn't even know excisted, was right next to an old one, showing a young couple with a baby in a blue blanket.

"I didn't know you took this photo."

"Well, I had to. You always look so peacefully when you are asleep."

Fiona turns around and walks to her desk on the other side of the room.

"By the way, this was the night when I realized that I love you."

She doesn't look at me when she says this but I can hear that she is smiling.

"I love you too."