“What happened?” His voice was a low rumble, and I could feel his unease. I could feel anger sifting through him, shaking out and taking hold.
I eased down onto his chest and laid my ear against the soothing thrum of his heart. I wasn’t sure I could look him in the eyes when I made this confession. Distractedly, I traced over the tattoo on his arm and shoulder, whispering the words into the dense air.
“I’d had a crush on this boy for as long as I could remember . . . middle school at least.” It was almost sorrow that formed on my mouth, though it was brittle with hurt. “I never thought he’d look my way, then one day . . . one day he asked me out.”
“You want to grab a bite Friday night?”
I stood behind the long counter at my gramma’s diner, looking behind me, around me. Was Aaron really talking to me? Every one of the butterflies in my stomach held their breath. My heart shook so hard I was sure everyone in the diner could hear it.
“Rynna?” he prodded.
Mouth dropping open, I stared blankly at him, my tongue not cooperating. “You . . . you want to go out with . . . me?” I finally managed to stutter around the shock.
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?” He shrugged a muscular shoulder, and my wide-eyed gaze got transfixed on the motion. This had to be a dream, right?
“So what do you think?” He angled his face down to capture my attention. “Don’t break my heart, Rynna.”
Don’t break his heart? Oh God. Oh God. This was really happening. “Um . . . yeah . . . yes. Definitely. I definitely want to go out with you.” I nodded frantically.
He grinned and those butterflies scattered, a frenzy in my belly. He smacked the counter before pointing at me. “Pick you up at seven.”
I tried to keep the tears out of my voice while I let the story bleed free. “God, I was so excited, Rex, that this boy actually liked me.”
A growl stalked his throat. I could feel it, hear it all the way to my soul. He tightened his hold on me. As if he didn’t want to hear it but needed to, the same way I needed to tell him.
“I was on cloud nine. He picked me up and took me out. He kissed me right across the street in front of my gramma’s door. It went on like that for three weeks. The two of us together. Kissing and touching and me feeling like I finally was important.” A sob threatened at the base of my throat, words hitching as I forced the last out. “That I wasn’t invisible.”
“Rynna.” It was a shaky breath that blew between Rex’s lips.
I angled up so I could look down at his face. “I was so tired of being invisible, Rex. Of feeling stupid and unattractive and unlovable. So tired of being alone. But I should have known. God, I should have seen it coming a mile away.”
I stood at my full-length mirror, twisting this way and that, looking at myself from every angle, trying to convince myself that the dress I wore looked good. That my rolls didn’t show. That Aaron liked what I looked like, and it didn’t matter if they showed, anyway.
It was my birthday.
My eighteenth birthday, and I was so finished being scared. Finished with all the doubts and insecurities that threatened to explode and send me cowering under the covers of my bed. I was going to live this life, and live it to its fullest.
That was what Gramma had always taught me to do.
It was time to start embracing it.
Hurrying out of my room and downstairs, I bounced into the kitchen.
Gramma turned away from the new recipe she was testing by the stove. “My, my, look at you, child. All grown up.”
In the center of the old kitchen, I spun around in my dress. “Thank you for buying it for me, Gramma.”
“Of course. Every girl needs a dress to celebrate their eighteenth birthday. You’re a woman now, and as gorgeous as ever, if I say so myself.”
I felt the blush climb to my cheeks. Because after tonight, I really would be a woman. In every sense of the word. “Thank you, Gramma, so much.”
She looked at me softly, and I gazed back. Love spun through me with the intensity of the sun. “I hope you know everything you mean to me, Gramma. I hope you know I appreciate every single thing you’ve done for me. Everything you sacrificed. That you raised me. That you’ve loved me the way you have. I know you always worried it wasn’t enough, but I could never ask for anything more than you.”
Moisture shined in her grayed eyes, and she smiled. Smiled a smile that encompassed the meaning of both of our worlds. She reached out a weathered hand and twisted one of the curls I’d ironed into my hair. “We’ve made quite the team, haven’t we?”