When I do a quick scan, I come to realize that the only way down is to jump.
“I hate you all,” I mutter, smiling despite myself.
“Sugar, it’s safe, and it’s only about a twenty-foot drop. The water is deep, and there are no Loch Ness Monsters hidden under the water.” He smirks.
I have to refrain from rolling my eyes.
A second later, his smile is gone, replaced with a sober gaze, a gaze that says, Trust me.
With the way my insides melt at the sheer look alone, I’m confident that, if he told me to jump out of a plane, I would. He just has the kind of power over me that spellbinds me, whether I like it or not.
“Fine,” I say in an exasperated tone.
Even though he does have this power over me, I’m not just going to bend to his whim without a little fight.
“How about I go first? Then, I can be there to catch you when you fall,” he says with a flirtatious tone to his soft and sultry voice, followed with a wink.
This initiates both Rachel and Jenson to snort with laughter.
Jenson slaps him against the shoulder as he steps by. “Smooth, man. I can see why it’s taken you this long to bag a beauty like Jo.” Jenson glances in my direction with a grin before resuming his attention to the glowering stare Drew throws his way.
“Like you were the ladies’ man when you met Rachel. You wouldn’t know a good move if it smacked you upside the head,” Drew arrogantly states.
“You don’t want to know the moves I used on your sister to make her fall in love with me.” Jenson suggestively raises his brow.
The glowering stare from Drew now turns into an outright death glare. “Dude, she’s my baby sister. Jump before I push you,” he threatens.
Jenson steps away with a shit-eating grin on his face until he’s inches from the edge of the cliff. “Gladly.” He turns, and with his sneakers and all on, he takes the leap. He falls in the air and crashes against the water’s surface with a splash before disappearing under the water.
Rachel points to her brother. “Can the both of you spend the weekend together without trying to piss each other off?”
“We always try to piss each other off, so why change an eight-year habit?” Drew answers with humor in his eyes, the blue hues looking even more intense against the sunshine.
“It’s a good thing I love you.” She grins, stepping toward the edge. She slips her flip-flops off her feet and holds them in her hands.
“Mason, you jumping with me?” she asks her son.
He’s clutching a blue pool noodle around his waist, much like Junior.
“No, I want to jump with Junior!” he eagerly hollers, looking down at the water with untamed excitement.
“Okay, go for it, baby!” Rachel smiles.
My protective motherly instincts kick into place.
My insides clench tightly as they both look at each other and count in unison, “Three, two, one.”
They run and jump without an ounce of hesitation, joyous screams escaping from their lungs as they plummet into the water below. Inner panic has me hurrying toward the edge, and a breath of relief rushes from my lips when they emerge from the depths of the lake.
“That was awesome!” Junior shouts from below. “Come on, Mama. It’s like jumping into a pool but so much cooler! Jump!”
My mouth explodes with a huge smile as the three of them begin to chant my name.
“Come on, Jo, live a little,” Rachel says. Then, she takes the leap, and a loud, “Woo-hoo,” follows her fall.
“You jumping, sugar?” Drew holds his hand out, and I glance down at it before looking back up at him. “You’re Wonder Woman. You need to honor that title.” He flicks his eyes down to my swimsuit with a smile. “I’ll be right there beside you. Or shall I say Captain America will be?”
“You make a really hot Steve Rogers.” I wink as I capture his hand in mine.
“Well, of course I do. I’m Drew motherfucking Greyson, the guy you’re falling in love with.”
My heart halters, and my breathing quickens.
“Who says I’m falling in love with you?” I nonchalantly respond even though my heart is slamming against the inside of my chest, and the blood in my veins is burning with need, want, and love.
“You didn’t say you weren’t. Plus, no one has ever dressed up as Wonder Woman for me before.” I open my mouth to say something, but his words stop me. “Five more months,” he reminds me.
I know he’s talking about the wager we have that he can make me believe in forever again.
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“Good.” His eyes penetrate mine. “You ready to take the leap with me?”
I take a deep breath and smile, nodding. “I’m ready.”
After a countdown from three, we charge forward. Before we know it, we’re airborne, and for a second, it as if I’m flying with nothing to hold me back.
It’s exhilarating.
Breathtaking.
Freeing.
The cool water below breaks my fall, and the chill against my heated skin makes me shudder at the immediate impact. I rise above the surface, heavily breathing, while wiping the water from my eyes, kicking my legs to keep me afloat.
“You did it, Mama!” Junior cries with happiness, a proud little smile on his adorable face.
I look up at the cliff above, proud of myself for actually jumping. I’ve never been good with heights, but I fought against it with the help of my very own superhero.
My Captain America.
Junior swims over and high-fives me just as Drew emerges to the surface, shaking the water from his hair.
His eyes connect with mine, and he smiles when he sees my smile. “It’s pretty awesome, right?”
“So awesome. I want to do it again!”
He moves toward me and pulls me into his arms. Automatically, my legs float around his waist.
“That’s my Wonder Woman,” he praises.
He presses a kiss to my lips, but we break apart when water rains over us. We turn to see Mason and Junior giggling, floating on their noodles.
“You’re going to give the fish cooties,” says Mason, causing more laughter to erupt from Junior’s mouth.
“Is that right?” Drew queries with a tilt of his head, almost like a warning.
“Oh no.” Mason sniggers, obviously sensing what’s about to go down.
Drew drifts from my hold, heading in Mason’s direction, and Mason swims on his back, kicking his legs with gusto. Junior laughs as he backs away with Mason as Drew gets closer.
“That’s it! You’re both getting it!” Drew says.
The boys squeal, and within seconds, waves of splashes erupt around us. Soon enough, the six of us are battling against one another in a water fight, and it’s quite frankly the best fun I’ve had in a long time.
After filling up on burgers, hot dogs, and s’mores, we sit around the crackling fire with the stars glimmering from above, drinking chilled beer from Mountain Dew bottles since the camp has a strict no-alcohol policy. It makes me feel pretty reckless, concealing alcohol in order not to get caught. It just adds to the experience of my first camping trip in Austin.
I’m curled up against Drew on one of the camping chairs with his hoodie, keeping the chill at bay.
“Do you hear that?” Rachel says in a hushed tone.
With concentration, I squint my eyes through the darkness, but the only thing I can hear are the crickets chirping from afar.
“Hear what?” I ask.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing, and it’s heaven.”
I laugh when I catch on. It hasn’t been long since the boys passed out in Rachel and Jenson’s tent, giving us a much-needed time-out. Together, they’re usually quite tame, but today, mixed with the excitement of the day and the sugar intake from the ten s’mores they each consumed, they were both in a hyperactive frenzy.
“I’m with you on that,” I agree.
I take a sip of my beer that has a hint
of Mountain Dew. I’m guessing Jenson didn’t wash the bottles out before pouring the beer inside them.
We sit in silence for a little while, and I snuggle further into Drew’s hold as he presses a lingering kiss against my temple. His lips along my skin soothe my soul, and with every touch, every caress, and every kiss, I fall a little bit more. I’m more content and happier than I’ve been in a long time. The longest time.
After an incredible day filled with laughter and happy memories, nothing could possibly ruin this day, this moment. In my blissful state, there were times when I almost told Drew I loved him. The urge to say those three words was so powerful that it became almost unbearable to keep them to myself.
Since meeting him, it’s almost like I’ve been seeing the world in a new light with a fresh pair of eyes. Within a matter of just a few months, I’ve gone from believing forever is utter bullshit to falling hopelessly in love. I didn’t know second chances existed, my belief in fate long gone, but it seems my fate has been restored. Drew is my second chance, and it’s taken this weekend for me to realize it.
The sound of a sad sigh breaks me from my spell of Drew, and I glance over at Rachel, who has her head tilted back against the chair.
“I wish Mom were with us. These camping trips aren’t the same without her,” she says.
I glance at Drew, and I see a glint of sorrow flicker across his face. I smooth my fingers through his untamed hair, my way of comforting him. His eyes meet mine with an appreciative stare before he looks over to his sister.
“I know,” Drew agrees with her. “She used to love camping.” A deep chuckle resonates from him. “It was quite ironic how she loved camping yet hated the wildlife that came with it.”
Rachel tilts her head back down with a laugh as she looks over to us, her gaze on Drew. “Oh God, do you remember that time when she realized she had an unexpected guest in the form of a snake in her tent? She went batshit crazy with the spatula and a fork.”
Drew’s chest vibrates against my side as he roars with laughter at the memory, and I find myself smiling at his contagious laugh.
“What had taken us an hour to put up took only seconds to collapse with the force of her hits, and the snake still managed to slither away, unharmed. Mom was lucky that was the era before smartphones existed, or it would have ended up on YouTube for sure.”
“And then she would have kicked your ass,” Rachel speaks with confidence that tells me she saw firsthand what would happen if overstepping the mark with their mom.
“I would have had a bruise the size of Texas on my ass.”
They both continue to laugh, but once the laughter slowly dissipates into thin air, sadness soon seeps back over them.
I see Jenson reach out to Rachel, clasping her hand into his with compassion.
Then, she lets out a delayed sigh with determination set strong along her face. “You know what? Mom wouldn’t want us to be sad. In fact, did you bring your guitar, Drew?”
“Yep, it’s in the trunk of my car.”
“Go get it. Play some tunes for us.” The tone of her voice is more upbeat, the opposite of how it was just a few seconds ago.
“Okay, let me grab it.” Drew presses yet another lingering kiss on my head.
I shift off his lap and sit back down in the chair, the seat heated from Drew’s bodily warmth. He grabs the keys from the tent, and within less than a minute, he’s back with his acoustic guitar.
He takes a seat beside me in the next chair and cradles his guitar, tuning the strings. “What do you want me to play?”
“Oh, how about ‘Sugar’ by Maroon 5? I love that song.”
I almost spit out my beer at Rachel’s request, and my eyes fall in line with Drew’s, noticing the smirk on his lips.
Rachel notices the silent conversation between Drew and me, and her face pulls together with confusion. “What is it?”
Drew shakes his head, still smiling. “Nothing. It’s just kind of perfect; that’s all.” He winks in my direction as he gently strums the guitar, trying to familiarize himself with the song.
When the first line of the song huskily leaves his mouth, I fall into a trance, a world where the only two things that exist are him and his guitar. He keeps his eyes glued on mine, his words serenading me. There’s humor in his stare each time the word sugar is mentioned in the song, and my heart expands within my chest. The song itself might remind me of the nickname that makes every inch of my body tingle whenever I hear that chosen term of endearment, but the lyrics sound like they were made for us, almost like they’re speaking of our life since I moved here to Austin.
Once the song ends, we all take turns to give him our requests, and like the superstar—or shall I say superhero—he is, there isn’t a single song he doesn’t know the words to. He sings a version of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” that’s more hauntingly beautiful than I’ve ever heard. He destroys my heart with a melancholy version of “Bohemian Rhapsody” and blows my mind with an acoustic rap of “The Monster” by Eminem. I mean, he’s no lyrical rap genius like Eminem, but hearing Drew slay those words, wrapped so effortlessly within every strum and beat of his guitar, turned me on in a way only a rock star can.
My rock star.
When it comes back around to me to choose a song, there is only one song to be chosen. And, when he sings the words that stole my heart all those weeks ago, the beautiful words of “You & I (Nobody in the World)” by John Legend, this time, it isn’t Christopher I see.
The story is about Drew and me.
Drew is singing this for us.
He’s telling me that he’s my forever.
Within the jagged heart he’s slowly been healing from the moment he first sang this song to me, I feel the final piece slot into place.
It seems he’s won the wager between us, but I don’t mind being the loser because, if anything, I’m winning, too.
As the song comes to a finish, the conversation we had after our first night together comes to mind, and I smile as I live through the memory.
“So, what’s the time frame of this wager, and what do I get if I win?”
“Six months and a lifetime’s worth of cupcakes,” he said straight off the bat, almost as if he had been prepared for my question.
I smiled before asking my next question, “And, for argument’s sake, what do you get if you win?”
He trailed his finger along my cheek. “I get you.”
And I get him.
I wake much later that night to the sound of Drew whispering down my ear, “Sugar, wake up.”
Through a tiresome groan, I roll onto my back, and my eyes blink open to see Drew looking down at me, his fingers caressing through my hair, the inside of the tent lit up by the flashlight on his phone.
“What time is it?”
“It’s five thirty.”
Another groan whimpers from my mouth at the thought of being forced to wake up at an ungodly hour.
“Are you kidding me?” I whisper-shout at him.
“Shh.”
He shuts me up by pressing his lips to mine, and suddenly, I like this part of him waking me up early. In fact, he can wake me up on most mornings like this.
After claiming my mouth, he pulls back and looks down at me. “I want to show you something. Get dressed.”
I put him under scrutiny, blinking the sleep out of my eyes. “This’d better be worth it.”
“Trust me, you’re going to love it.”
I change into shorts and a tank top, slip my feet into my Converse, and wrap myself in Drew’s hoodie. It’s two sizes too big for me, but I love being wrapped up in the smell of him.
It’s still dark out when we crawl out of the tent, but with the light from Drew’s phone, we’re able to easily navigate our way through the campsite.
When we set off, I was pretty chilly, but after climbing uphill for ten minutes, I have to peel the hoodie off my sweaty body and wrap it around my waist.
“I hate to sound like a petulant
child right now, but are we nearly there yet?” I ask, my calves beginning to burn with the pressure of the climb.
“When has anything stopped you from sounding like a petulant child?”
I smack him against the chest, initiating a burly laugh to escape him.
“Damn, I don’t have any sugar with me,” he teases.
I smack him again. “You’re such an ass,” I say with humor in my voice.
His laughter fades. “We’ll be there in a minute, but the higher we get, the better the view will be.”
“The view of what?” I inquire, intrigued at why he dragged me out of bed and into the wilderness at five thirty in the morning.
“You’ll see.” He smiles, and my heart thunders inside my chest at his beautiful face against the moonlit sky.
Soon, we approach a clearing and step out onto the edge of a cliff, much similar to the rocky cove we jumped from yesterday but much higher.
I take in the view, and I’m taken aback when I see a trace of pink along the horizon, the dawn meeting the twilight sky, giving the world a heavenly glow.
“Wow,” I breathe, mesmerized at the contrast of the moon and stars intermixed with the beginning of the rising sun.
It’s like day and night are one and the same, and right now, there is no day or night. There is only beauty.
Pure, untainted beauty.
“I know,” Drew softly agrees as he pulls me into his arms from behind and rests his chin along my shoulder.
“I…it’s…God…” I try to find the right words to describe the emotions that rise within me at the sight in front of me, but I’m utterly speechless.
“Shh…don’t speak, baby. Just enjoy the view.”
I clasp my fingers through his and bring his hand up to my mouth, gently kissing his knuckle.
No more words are spoken, and for the next hour, we stay wrapped in one another’s arms, simply watching the interchanging colors along the sky, almost like the sky is a canvas and we’re watching an artist paint a masterpiece before us, until the ascending sun finally makes its appearance. As twilight turns into daylight with the sun quickly dominating the sky, I turn around to face Drew, and without saying a word, I kiss him.
Our Forever Page 24