“Here,” he said and reached up for the hat. I quickly shot my hand out to grab his wrist and lower his arm again.
“Keep it, it does look better on you.”
He leaned in and kissed me again. It was one of those kisses that could’ve lasted a lifetime, if only we weren’t interrupted.
“Riker!”
Riker pulled away from me and looked around until he spotted Jake, Jermain, Mark, and Mason.
“You’re timing is incredible, Jake,” I said sarcastically.
“We all know you can kiss him whenever you want. Can we borrow him long enough for the photo booth?” Jake asked.
“Yeah, why not,” I said. Riker handed his free stuff to me before following them into the photo booth.
It didn’t take them very long, but as I stood there waiting all I could think was how I hated every second I spent without him by my side. Somewhere, somehow, along the lines I had fallen so hard for him my heart literally ached the second he walked away from me these days. We weren’t codependent. No. He just had a part of my heart with him and the part of my heart that remained in me yearned for it whenever it got too far away. I never asked him how he felt about it, but I suspected it was similar though.
My heart practically jumped for joy when he came back out of the booth, laughing with his teammates. A smile spread across my face before I even realized it was happening.
“Hey Jake, you guys mind waiting and holding our stuff for us for a few minutes?” I asked.
“That depends on why, I guess,” he said curiously.
Riker was already looking at me questioningly.
“I think I need to beat Riker through that obstacle course,” I said, nodding towards the blow-up course not far away.
“Ah. Yeah, hand over the stuff. This will be fun to watch,” he said. He and Jermaine took the stuff from my hands. Riker just looked at me like he was completely unsure if this was a trap or not.
“Go get him, Riker,” Jermaine said and gave him a little shove until he was stumbling forward and I was slowly walking away forcing him to follow. It didn’t take him long to catch up to me and slide his hand into mine.
“Is this some sort of challenge or something?” Riker asked.
“No,” I said.
“I feel like I’m missing something here,” he muttered.
“No, Ri, you didn’t miss anything. It’s a giant blow-up obstacle course. I thought your inner child might enjoy it, and I enjoy chasing you, so it’s a win-win for both of us. We don’t have to do it though if you don’t want to,” I explained.
“Oh no, we’re doing it. The guys are expecting it now, but don’t think for a second you’re going to win.”
“We’ll see about that, but seriously, Ri, do you want to do this?” I asked stopping just outside the obstacle course.
“Of course, I want to do this. My inner child is screaming with excitement. I just wasn’t sure why you wanted to do this. Mechanical bulls are your thing, not so much running and climbing over things.”
“Like I said, I like chasing you.”
He smiled shyly at me for a moment, before shaking his head and laughing softly.
“Alright, let’s go then.” He took my hand that time and pulled me up to the volunteer in charge of the course. She sent Riker to the left lane and me to the right. There was a whistle blow, then we both took off running. I weaved through pillars, jumped over hurdles, and dove through rollers as fast as I could, but by the time I reached the bottom of the climbing section he was already halfway up. Seeing him ahead of me spurred me on. I climbed as fast as I could, and gained some ground, but I reached the top just as he was starting his slide down. I slid down and climbed back up to my feet a little breathless and aware that Riker wasn’t standing right there at the end of his slide anymore. I moved towards the exit, more confused when he wasn’t just outside it either. Looking around, I finally caught sight of him leaning against the side of a light pole and smirking. I ran the last couple feet to him, stopping a few inches short.
“Caught me,” he said.
I reached out, grabbed hold of the front of his shirt, and pulled him into my arms.
“I love you, Ri.”
“Love you too, Kit.”
I held him for a few seconds longer before saying, “Come on, let’s go get our stuff back.”
Chapter 42 – Riker
March 4th, 2017
“Ri, you had fun, didn’t you?” Kit’s voice broke through the comfortable silence, snapping me out of a daze I had slipped into. I blinked a few times until I was fully back to the present.
“Yeah, as much as I hate to admit it, it was fun. Thanks for dragging me out there.”
“Good, I hated the idea of leaving you here bored.”
I let out a fond breath and watched as his hair blew around a little. “I am capable of entertaining myself.”
“I know. It’s just.” He paused and let out a big breath. “Maybe I just hate the idea of leaving you anywhere. It hurts being away from you, even short term.”
For a few seconds, I was acutely aware of him. Of his back resting against my chest, his stomach rising and falling underneath my hand that had snuck under his shirt to rest over his belly button. His legs stretched out in front of him.
“Can I ask you a question?” He said suddenly, dragging my attention away from how he fit perfectly against me.
“Yeah,” I said, drawing small circles on his stomach with my thumb.
“How do you feel whenever we are separated?”
I didn’t even have to think about that answer. “Like my heart is going to break out of my chest trying to get back to you.” It was a feeling I had every day, even when he was simply in the kitchen and I was in my room.
“Sometimes, I feel like we have each other’s heart in our chests instead of our own. It’s the only thing that explains how we feel when we’re apart,” he said.
“You’re getting deep on me here, Romeo, what’s going on?” I asked.
He tilted his head up to look at me for a few seconds before lowering it again and saying, “Nothing, I think I just realized today how much I never want to live without you.”
I smiled and planted a kiss in his hair. “I know the feeling.”
Suddenly he said, “I talked to my boss. I can stay on full-time at the diner next year as a cook.”
“What?” I said. He had completely caught me off guard. He had the dream job offer in Houston. I told him to go to Houston. Why was he talking about staying at the diner?
Part of me was ecstatic that he wanted to stay here and not move away, but another part of me couldn’t let him give up on Houston that easily. He would regret it somewhere down the line, and I didn’t want that for him. “Kit, you can’t. You’ve worked too hard for this to just stay at the diner.”
He sat up then and moved until he was sitting in front of me and looked me in the eye as he started explaining. “I can’t live that far away from you. I love being here, with you, sharing a bed when we want to, waking up to you. I love when you come home from away games all keyed up and bouncing from wall to wall. I love coming home to you blasting music and your inability to cook anything. I can’t give that all up, even if it’s only until you graduate.”
“Kit, that job is offering you more than most recent graduates can even dream of. You might never get an offer that good again,” I stated simply.
“It doesn’t give me you though, and I want, need, you more than anything else.”
It hit me then that when Kit had first told me about the job offer I may have told him to go and take the job, but I had been so distant and short about it that I had unintentionally put it in his head that it wouldn’t work, and if it didn’t work he’d be alone again, and that was his greatest fear.
“You wouldn’t be losing me. You’d still have me,” I reassured him.
“Would I? We both know long-distance would destroy you,” he said.
“I’m not sure I like how you sai
d that. Yes, I would struggle, yes it would be hard and absolutely unbearable for me at some points just wondering what you were doing and if you were telling me everything that was happening to you. It would be hard, but maybe I’d be strong enough to get through it, because it was for you. I’d deal with it for you, I will still deal with it for you.”
“But I don’t want you to have to go through that for me.”
“And I don’t want you to sacrifice that job for me. You’ve done a lot for me. It’s time for me to do something for you.”
“Ri, I don’t care about who has sacrificed more for who. I care that I watched you fall apart once, and I won’t let that happen to you again.”
I took his hands in mine, resting in between the two of us on the couch. “You pieced me back together though, and you’ve been holding me together ever since. But Kit, sooner or later you gotta let go and trust that I can take care of myself when I have to.”
“You don’t have to though,” he said, his voice breaking a little.
“I do, maybe not in this moment, but eventually I have to. I want it to be this moment, for you, for both of us. Maybe it won’t work. Maybe I won’t be able to hold it together, but maybe I can. You need to chase your dream, and I need to prove something to myself.”
Kit looked down at our joined hands and quietly said, “I don’t want to lose you, Riker.”
I looked at his bowed head, the way he was sitting on the couch with his feet folded up under him, his hands in mine, and for the first time ever I thought he looked small. Kit never looked small. He looked strong, and steady. Suddenly, I felt bad about how I had been acting since our first conversation on this topic. He wanted this job, he wouldn’t have bothered applying for a long shot job he didn’t expect to get if he didn’t want it, and instead of being happy for him like I should have I had made him feel guilty. I had been in such a bad mood about it for days, bad enough that he was willing to give it all up and stay at a mediocre grueling job at the diner to make me happy. He couldn’t do that; I wouldn’t let him. No, I didn’t want him to go, but I didn’t want to stand in his way. I wanted him to be happy, and he wouldn’t be if he stayed at the diner.
I held his hands tighter and said “If you are ready to give up your dream job for me now, then if you really love me, you’ll be ready to give it up later too. You can go, we can try this, and if things aren’t working, if you think I’m not handling it well then you can choose to give it up then. But don’t give it up now. Please don’t give it up, not because of me.”
“I do really love you.”
“I know. I really love you too.”
He looked up at me again finally and said, “Promise me you won’t resent me for going.”
“You want this job, right?”
“Yeah, I do,” he admitted for the first time.
“Then I promise I will never resent you for taking it.”
He smiled faintly. “Thank you.”
“For you Romeo, I’d do anything. You know that, right?”
He leaned forward to press our foreheads together. “Yeah.”
For a brief moment we stayed like that, just letting the weight of the conversation sink in. Then he moved to kiss me, and I kissed him back. We kissed, long, deep, and open. We were picking up where we left off at the festival, this time without interruption. His hands reached around and up and under the back of my shirt, slowly trailing up and down. One of my hands stayed on his neck, holding him close, and the other slid up to tangle in his hair. By the time we finally pulled apart, we were both breathless.
He smiled and lowered himself back down on top of me, chest to chest this time and pushing me back into a reclining position again. He kept his arms around me and nestled his head onto my shoulder. And for the first time all week the uncomfortable tightness that had seemed to settle around my heart lifted.
Chapter 43 - Riker
March 11th, 2017
A call from Jake woke me up that morning. There had been yet another change of plans. Spring break was starting to look a little bleak. Which was why I had positioned myself outside Kit’s door waiting and listening for his alarm. I never exactly woke up before him, so I had no clue when it was going to go off, but if it wasn’t sometime soon, I was just going to wake him up on my own anyway. Actually, that sounded like a much better idea, way more fun.
I cracked his door open and stuck my head in. “Kit?” I called out until he rolled over onto his back, cracked his eyes open and groaned, “What, Ri?”
I smiled a little devilishly then I launched myself onto the bed right on top of Kit who let out an oof but laughed and put his arms around me anyway. He yawned. “Are you my new alarm clock?” Another yawn. I caught his lips in a kiss at the end of one of those yawns.
I laid my hands on his chest and propped my head up on them, “I have a very important time sensitive question to ask you.”
“Ask away, then.”
“Come with us to the beach?”
“What now?” he said, probably not entirely sure I was asking him this again.
“Mark had a family emergency so him and his girlfriend can’t go, and Jermaine’s girlfriend finally broke up with him, and Mason is really homesick, so now we have a house for seven people and only three of us to go.”
“Right, and I have work,” he said slowly.
“Oh, come on!” I whined and sat up straddling his thighs through the blanket. “It’s your senior year and you’ve never taken a real spring break trip before. It’s your last chance. And the diner is gonna be deserted, I’m sure you can get the time off.”
Tiredly he said “Ri, even if they would let me off, I already said no once.”
“Please, Kit! Please, please, please!”
“Oh. My. God. Stop that, you toddler,” he said as he laughed.
“Please Kit, for me,” I begged with wide, pleading, and hopeful eyes.
Kit rubbed at his eyes and tiredly said “You’re not going to stop this for hours, are you?”
“No,” I answered smugly.
He sighed and said “Right, then I’ll say yes on one condition.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Actually, make that two,” he said.
“Come on, Kit,” I said and flopped back down onto his chest.
“Condition number one,” he held up one finger and booped me on the nose, “I’ve got some assignments I need to get done over break, so you gotta let me work on them while we are there and not beg me to wait on it every chance you get.”
“Fine,” I agreed easily. That was simple enough.
“Second, we spend at least one day by ourselves.”
“Okay.” I could do that. I could definitely do that.
“You win, then. I’ll go.”
“Yes! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” I nuzzled my face into his neck.
“Alright, alright, you absolute toddler, you.” He ran a hand through my hair then pushed me away just enough to see my face. “You said time sensitive for a reason. How much time do I have to get ready?”
“Umm, about two hours.”
“Just enough time to get ready then.”
“Yep,” I said with a smile.
“Gonna need you to get off me now, Riker.”
I rolled off him and crawled under his blanket.
“Now, what are you up to?” he asked.
“Taking a nap. Wake me up in an hour?”
He chuckled and kissed my forehead. “Sure thing, Ri,” he said before climbing out of bed to get ready.
Chapter 44 – Kit
March 11th, 2017
It was a long drive and I wasn’t sure what possessed me to offer my car for the trip. I mean, yeah, it was bigger than Jermaine’s, who wasn’t supposed to drive to begin with. Mark had been their original driver. My car was the logical option, and I didn’t mind offering it up or letting the others drive it when they offered to take turns driving for the day. It was just that offering my car meant that I was the one
who was driving for the first leg, and I was already tired. Next time Riker woke me up early I was going to make him drive. Somehow the little drama king had managed to talk his way into the back seat where he was now asleep slumped on Jake’s shoulder, who was also asleep. Like he really needed more sleep.
Jermaine and I didn’t have a whole lot to talk about. Besides I was too tired and neither of us wanted to wake them up at the beginning in case it resulted in them being grumpy the rest of the day. So, we had been sitting in almost near silence for the last few hours. Luckily, it was almost noon.
“Alright, we waking them up or letting them sleep through lunch?” Jermaine asked suddenly.
“Your call. I don’t know if Jake’s likely to bite our heads off for either one of those choices,” I answered.
“Nah, either way he’s going to be groggy for like an hour after he wakes up and go along with whatever we tell him to. It’s like his brain has to warm up before it actually works,” he said.
“How does he ever make it to his morning classes?” I asked.
“He doesn’t take morning classes, anymore. Never really worked out well the few times he had to,” he answered.
“Meanwhile, Riker just doesn’t go to class and outshines all of us,” I commented.
“Yeah, well, if anyone in the world is blessed it’s Riker,” he said.
“No arguments there.” I looked back at them again. “Might as well wake them up. Riker wakes up better with the promise of food in his immediate future.”
“Good choice,” he said and turned around to wake them both up. There was only minimal grumbling from Riker as he woke up and nothing more than a confused question about why he was suddenly awake from Jake.
Fifteen minutes later, we were sitting inside a Subway. Riker basically took charge of a practically comatose Jake as if it was the most natural thing in the world. It occurred to me as we sat down to eat that it probably was that natural to him. They were roommates before, best friends since, they were probably used to stepping up for each other in their less functional moments. I had witnessed it the other way around before, Jake helping Riker, but this was the first time it had ever really registered to me that they really were that in tune with each other.
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