I don’t know how he does it. I don’t know how he makes me want to jump his bones and clutch him to my chest, at the same time. Butterflies are exploding inside my swollen stomach, even as my eyes are filling with water.
His exhale is huge and noisy. When he looks at me, I feel his stare fluttering over my skin. Every emotion that runs through the beautiful brown depths of his gaze is touching me, too.
“I love you, Pixie,” he rasps. “I’ve loved you for years but it’s nothing compared to how many years I’m going to love you. How every day I feel this… thing expand in my chest. It’s like watching you grow my baby – our baby – made me realize how fucking lucky I am. It’s like everything wrong in my world has been worth it. Every pain has been for this, and I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve this beautiful thing, because what the fuck am I doing to you. I’m making you sick. You throw up all the time. You can’t go to work. You can’t even eat your chocolate, anymore.”
I chuckle; it’s a combination of a sob and laughter. “I don’t care about the chocolate.”
“And that’s the thing, isn’t it? When will it stop? When will I stop giving you pain? Why the hell can’t it be easy? Why does it have to be so hard?”
“Because we’re making a life, Abel. Giving birth to a life is always hard. It’s always painful. Things crash and collide and explode. That’s why it’s called the big bang.”
We stare at each other for a while. I’m letting all my emotions show and so is he. He’s showing me how much he loves me, how afraid he is, how ecstatic. And I’m doing the same. Words are great, but after years, we don’t need them. We know each other inside out.
“I felt it, you know,” he whispers, like a happy little kid. “When I touched your stomach that day. On the bench. I feel it every time I touch it. The big bang.”
I smile. “Yeah.”
“Are you really going to be here. With me?”
“Yes. I was always going to come back to you, Abel.” I cover his trembling hands with mine. He calms down, then. His shivers stop at my touch. “I was always yours.”
His eyes go liquid and reddish. “I thought I lost you. I wouldn’t have asked you to stay. I’ve been counting down days till she comes into the world but I also wanted to stop time. Somehow, I wanted to keep you here.”
“You can keep me, you know. I’m yours to keep.”
Abel leans over and places a small kiss on my lips. This is the first kiss after I spontaneously, kissed him outside of the doctor’s office. This one is soft and feathery, with beginnings of an explosion of need.
It reminds me of our very first kiss. Up at the treehouse.
Abel rests our foreheads together, his palms now cupping my cheeks, simply breathing me in, savoring me. Savoring us.
“You can stop time again, Abel,” I whisper.
“What?”
“I bought something for you.”
He stills when my meaning dawns on him. He tries to move away, but I don’t let him. I keep his hands glued to my face.
“Pixie, I can’t —”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
Maybe it’s my tone, the tone I used when we talked for the very first time on that bus, but we’re thrown back to that day, both of us. I was so fascinated by him, so taken. I couldn’t stop thinking about him, not for a single second. Even then, I knew I was his and he was mine. I didn’t understand it but I knew it. I felt it.
I still feel that.
Fourteen-year-old Abel tried to scare me away. Now, I know it was the show of vulnerability. He wanted me too much but he was afraid of rejection.
Older Abel swallows and does the same. “What if I told you I bite?”
“Then I’d tell you that I’m still not afraid. Plus, I bite too, you know.”
His grip flexes on my face, as if everything inside him is too much to deal with. “I nearly destroyed everything with that.”
“No, we destroyed everything with what was inside us. Camera was just a tool. Camera’s what you make of it. You used it to hide before and then, we used it for revenge. But now, we’re going to use it to come closer. To capture moments. To have fun. It’s not going to rule our life, Abel. Nothing will.” I put my hands on his cheeks and press our foreheads together. “Do you hear me? We’re stronger now. We know better and I forgive you. I do. I have. This is our last burden. I want you to forgive yourself.”
“How’d you get to be so incredible?”