luc

He stopped her. He quite literally made her lose her footing and therefore fall out of her turns while he leaned against the newly opened doorway like it was the most normal thing in the world for him to be standing there and watching her like this. 

“Steve-”

“Don't you get all dizzy doing that?”

She ignored his question (he had already asked her that a thousand times before anyway) as she made her way across the black floor to him. It felt different seeing him here. It was like a little corner of her world was colliding with another corner. Dance and Steve Harrington, both inside the same building. 

“What are you doing here? I thought you were going to wait outside?” She glanced at the clock that was hung up on the wall behind her. She had a whole ten minutes left until Steve was supposed to be pulling into the parking lot. “Aren't you too early anyway?”

“Which question do you want me to answer first?” He smiled painfully smugly for a moment before giving in. “It was way too hot out there and I was getting bored so I thought I’d come inside. You get AC in here don’t you?” 

They did. It was one of the best parts about dancing during the summer break. Hawkins grocery store had air conditioning and so did her dance studio, everywhere else was humid and sticky from June to August. 

“Why are you here early?” She peered over his shoulder, the woman who sat at the reception desk was staring right at them. Steve just warranted attention wherever he went, and she knew why. It was that chestnut brown hair, those hazel eyes and that voice of his. It all amounted  into a truly treacherous combination. 

He tilted his head to the side. His skin was newly sunkissed from spending the first week of summer up at his parents' lake house. She was shocked that after a few days of him being back home, she had only just really noticed it. 

“You make it sound like you don’t want me in here.”

That wasn’t true. Not even a little bit. 

She placed both her hands on his shoulders. Steve was taller than her but he wasn’t so much taller that she couldn’t reach him. The only thing that would be difficult would be kissing him, she would have to go on her tiptoes. But, luckily that wasn’t a very likely scenario. “Give me two minutes.”

He placed a dramatic hand over his chest as she slowly pushed him towards the glass doors but he did eventually leave. He made his way across the warm pavement and leaned against the hood of his car as he waited for her. She could picture him as she was packing up her bag, checking his watch to make sure he gave her exactly two minutes and not a second more. It was what made her move so fast. 

Steve was mostly kidding around, but the gnawing feeling that she was holding him up was stronger than her faith in their friendship. She already saw it as a mild inconvenience that he always picked her up. That he was always the one she called when she needed a ride somewhere. She had spent more time in Steve Harrington’s car than in anyone else's. She knew which backseat had a tear in the headrest and how to pull the passenger seatbelt just right to get it to go over herself on the first try. 

She was right back in his car a few minutes later. 

“I might get a ride home with one of the other girls next week.” She kept her fingers busy in the black hem of her skirt. The soft fabric was suddenly the most interesting thing to her in the car. Much more interesting than the scent of Steve’s cologne and the sight of his hand on the bottom of the steering wheel. 

The sun reflected across his face as he screwed up his nose. “Why? You’re practically on my way home?” She wasn’t. She lived two entire streets over from him. He had to take a wrong turn just to drop her off. She stared at him for a moment, waiting for him to admit the truth that they were both very much aware of. “Okay so you’re slightly out of my way…”

She felt herself smiling. “Slightly?”

He titled his head from side to side like he was weighing up the distance in his mind. “Maybe a little more than slightly. But, I like it. I like being needed.” It was such a simple thing to say, and in all reality it probably held no lingering meaning but to her, it was the sweetest thing she had ever heard anyone say.

Everyone wanted to be needed. Deep down people just want to feel important and essential to someone. And Steve Harrington was no different. It was wildly endearing to her to think that he enjoyed their rides home together as much as she did.

“Even by me?” 

She wasn't sure where the question came from. It was easy for her to bite her tongue and keep all of her sudden thoughts to herself, but Steve had a way of making people talk. In fact ever since they had become friends, she hadn't had a single secret that she could keep all to herself. Steve knew everything.

“Especially by you.” He looked over at her like that was the exact question he had wanted her to ask just so he could answer it. She let go of the hem of her skirt and thought about pinching the skin on her knees but decided against it. There was just this obnoxious need inside of her to keep her hands busy, because if they weren’t, she would end up doing something stupid. 

She wasn’t sure what that stupid thing would be, but she knew deep down that it wouldn’t come under the terms of their friendship. She knew in her head that she didn’t want to kiss Steve, the thought never even raced through her mind. She didn’t want to love him like that. But lately, her mind and body weren't aligned on those facts. 

She would’ve fallen out of her turns whether she had spotted Steve standing in the doorway or whether she had not. The image of his arm carelessly thrown around her shoulder or his knee accidentally leaning against hers under the table had been flashing her mind constantly. Completely throwing her off at every turn. 

She silently thanked whoever was listening when he redirected his attention to the road. She was scared that if he looked at her for too long he would know. He would figure it out and see every overfilled glass of water, every misstep and every distracted moment in the last few months right on her face. 

She just needed to get through summer. Her feelings (whatever they were) would have to die out soon. Crushes or fleeting feelings of love never last that long. And if she really wanted to push her luck, she would be over it by the time she was at the Harrington’s lake house next weekend. 

My hands were always clenching, 'til I held yours, and you held them back

He could feel the straps of her bag cutting into his shoulder as he took her things upstairs. There was no way Steve was going to let her carry all of this to her room by herself. That would just be a pitiful attempt at hosting. This was his house, his parents had drilled it into him that he was responsible for whatever went on under its roof when he came up here.

“Can I just-”

He shook his head at her, cutting her off from finishing the sentence that was bound to end with her helping. She was standing at the top of the stairs with one hand on the wooden bannister and the other falling at her side in a pair of denim shorts that were cutting off the blood supply to his head. 

He loved summer. He loved the way it felt endless but fleeting. It made him impulsive. He also liked the taste of salt in the air, the scent of sunscreen and hot pavements. But he didn't really care for the clothes. The short skirts and the dresses. The shorts and the strappy tops. And the worst of all, dainty little anklets that drew all his attention to her legs.

He wanted to bite his own tongue for letting his mind wander, but he was worried he'd make himself bleed all over the inside of his mouth so he just settled on focusing on the conversation at hand instead. 

“No, you can’t.” 

“You can be really stubborn when you want to be, do you know that?”

“I know.”

Steve looked down to make sure that he didn’t trip up on the last few steps. He dropped her bag when he got to the top, he needed a second to relax his shoulders before continuing on to her room. 

It felt strange to think of it that way. Every summer before it was just the guest room, but now, it would be hers for the weekend. He had passed by the closed door a week or so ago when he was up here with his parents, and for the first time in his life, he felt this overwhelming need to look inside. 

Steve put her things down on the bed for her, and then he watched as she wandered around the room, studying the pale green flowers on the wallpaper and the spines of the books that his Mother had left on the dresser for guests to read. 

He could picture her in here, with the sheets pushed down to the end of the bed and the windows left open to keep the room cool, he could see her with a book in her lap and the dim lighting of the bedside table lamp dancing across her face.  He wouldn’t actually get to see it, he wouldn’t get to see her like that, he’d be down the hall, in his own bedroom, wide awake. 

She sat down on the bed with her hands tucked underneath her thighs. “What do you want to do tonight?”

He smiled to himself before digging a lighter out of his back pocket. She hadn't been able to come up here last year when all their friends had. Steve could remember sitting by the fire, out on the dock beside Jonathan as the sun went down. The s’mores were good, jumping in the lake past midnight was fun, but there was one very obvious thing missing. Her.

He just kept seeing her face as she told him that she had to stay home, all because she had dance privates scheduled that weekend. He knew she loved dance, but dear god, she had looked so heartbroken over the thought of missing out on a summer trip with her friends. 

This year, he decided that he was going to make it up to her. 

“How about a bonfire?” Her eyes lit up as he started walking backwards towards the door. “Out on the dock?” He twisted the lighter between his fingers. He was enjoying the way that she was hanging on his every word a little too much, but he couldn’t help it. “I think we have marshmallows.” Correction, he knew they had marshmallows. 

She jumped off of the bed and blindly started to follow him. “I think you’re my favourite person, ever.” 

He knew she was messing around but he wanted to remember the sound of her saying that forever. Just so he could play it back to himself whenever he couldn't sleep. Favourite. Steve had never been anyone's favourite anything before. If there was even a little bit of truth to it, and it wasn't an offhanded comment solely resting on a bag of marshmallows, then he wanted to be her favourite everything. Boy. Friend. Person. Whatever she would allow him to be, he'd be the best at it. 

It didn't take long to get the fire going, and before either of them knew it the sun started setting on the lake and marshmallow after marshmallow had been placed between two crackers with a square of chocolate in the middle.

She hugged her legs closer to her chest. It wasn’t cold tonight by any means, and even if it had been, the fire that Steve had started was more than making up for any midsummer breezes. It was just something comforting to do. A way to keep her hands busy. 

It was dark enough now that the lights left on in the house were reflecting onto the water. It looked pretty, almost fake. She looked across the firepit at Steve. He had a white marshmallow at the end of a long stick, he was turning it around, trying his hardest not to burn it. She had forgotten about hers, and it was long gone past the point of melted.

“Steve?” 

“Hmm.”

She wasn’t really sure what she wanted to ask him, or how to ask it for that matter. Was she just supposed to just tell him about her feelings? The ones that still hadn’t gone away and that only seemed to persist even further when he insisted on carrying her bags upstairs. 

There wasn't going to be a chance for her to get over whatever she was feeling for him if he kept acting like Prince Charming. She set her gaze back on him, the fire made him look golden and something inside of her was daring her to tell him.

“It’s nice up here, isn’t it?” She watched the muscles in his jaw tighten, maybe he was expecting her to say something else. She set her feet back on the floor and took her marshmallow off of the fire. It tasted like her cherry lip balm and burnt wood. 

Oh, take me back to the country, to the hills, and to the spires

She missed being at the Harrington's lake house the second the weekend was over. Steve had dropped her off in her driveway and she had suddenly wished that he was only just picking her up. Driving there was one of her favourite parts of the whole trip, but then again, driving anywhere from her spot in his passenger seat was always her ‘favourite part’.

In hindsight, it had been foolish to tell him that she didn’t need him to drive her around anymore, she still did. It just wasn’t a need as much as it was a want. 

The sheets in the guest room at the lake were somehow a thousand times softer than her own. They were light and decorated with pretty little green flowers that matched the wallpaper, and she loved it. So much so that she made a note to ask Mrs Harrington where she had gotten them from, and if they came in blue. 

Her home, as lovely as it was, also lacked a fire. Something she never thought she would be pining after in June. She didn’t see Steve for a couple days after they came home. She needed some time to stop thinking about the pillow lines on his cheek when he came down to breakfast and the way he said her name when he was getting tired when they were sitting out by the fire. 

Her phone had broken anyway, so there was no way for her to call him up to make plans even if she wanted to.  

She was leaving the grocery store when she finally saw him again. She had a heavy bag wrapped around her wrist, filled with glass bottles of lemonade, a bar of white chocolate, and any in season fruit that she could find.

Her sandals made an abrupt sound against the sidewalk as she stopped and she knew she had scratched the soles. He was just right there, looking as perfect and sunkissed as ever. He was heading inside and if he had been just a few minutes later, they would’ve missed each other. Damn. 

A few days away from him were nothing but disillusioned hope that she was ‘over’ him. The second she saw him it all just came rushing back, and it was hitting her even harder this time. She was mentally forcing herself to picture the word FRIEND written in capitals above his head. 

Steve stopped when he saw her too. He had his hands in his pockets and all his emotions flashed through his eyes within a few seconds. She felt she was invading his privacy. He was taken back at first, then he was registering that it was her, and then he was happy. Really happy. 

“Hi Steve.” She shifted her weight from foot to foot as the sun heated up the back of her neck and she silently wished she hadn't gotten so many of those bottles of lemonade after all. It was heavier than she had expected it to be when she was shopping, but it was probably also just the weather playing tricks on her and making everything seem more inconvenient. 

“Is something wrong?” His question, and more importantly the way he said it, threw her. From her point of view, there was nothing wrong, it was summer and everything was as perfect as it could be. All she had on her mind was him, but she was dealing with that in her own denialistic way and more importantly, he had no idea about any of it anyway. Steve’s gaze fell away from her and he seemed suddenly much more interested in his shoes. 

“I called your house and you never got back to me. I was worried that you hated staying at the lake house and you were just avoiding me so you wouldn't have to admit it.”

“No.” She couldn't have gotten the word out quick enough. “I loved being at the lake.” She probably loved him too but that was a conversation for another day. “Steve, I wish we were there right now. I didn’t get your call, I swear. I would’ve called you back if I had, the phones not being ringing all week and I was meant to go see someone about getting it fixed but I-” She cut herself off. 

She knew she would’ve talked herself around in circles until the sun went down if she kept going, and Steve knew it too. He was giving her that all knowing look, that ‘I know you so damn well I don’t even have to think about it’ look. She took a deep breath, the weather was making the backs of her knees sweat. And the way his eyes were glued to hers wasn’t helping matters. 

“I could fix it for you.” He stepped closer to her and for a split second, she thought he was going to kiss her, right in front of Hawkins' grocery store. But then he reached down to take her bag for her instead. Which was equally as nice. “Or at least find somebody else to.”

“I’ll figure it out, just don’t call me again until I do.” She was tempted to make him promise but something in his eyes told her that he was listening to her. It was an odd feeling, to know a person was always listening to what you were saying. Even if it was just a conversation about a broken phone, Steve refused to miss a word from her lips. 

He nodded his head while smiling to himself. “I won’t.” Thank God for boys like Steve Harrington, who meant what they said and smiled perfectly while doing it. “Are you going home or do you have classes?”

“I’m going home.” She reached for the grocery bag but Steve took a step backwards. To her, this seemed like the natural end of the conversation, he would go inside and do his shopping, and she would go home and start thinking about what to make for dinner. But Steve didn’t quite see it that way. 

“I’ll walk you.” He wasn’t going to let her go so easily. He had just spent the past week pacing around his house wondering why she hadn’t called him back and what he could’ve possibly done to upset her. He eventually decided that she must’ve just had a terrible time at his parents lake house, but now he knew that wasn’t true, he had to make up for lost time. Summer wouldn't last forever, and they had just given up a whole week that they could’ve spent together for nothing. She tilted her head at him, in a ‘you came here for a reason’ way. “I can just come back later.” When would she learn that he loved to be convinced by her? 

He started walking again, and this time she had no choice but to follow after him. 

I hate the after parties, I want forests, I want fires

All night she had been daydreaming about soft bedsheets and warm cups of tea instead of sandals on cobblestones and broken glass (someone had smashed a bottle in the middle of the street right outside the house). She was drifting in and out of conversation while thinking about her bedroom, the fan humming in the corner of the room and her soft pink bedsheets. She could practically picture her slippers by the door, right where she had left them.

She should’ve been elated by the time she finally saw her front door, marking the end of the night, and she would’ve been, if it hadn’t meant saying goodnight to him. 

Steve had pulled up right outside her house, there were already cars parked in the driveway this time around. They weren’t coming back from the lake, they were coming from a friend of a friend's party that had consisted of glass after glass of dark orange strongly scented liquid and crushed ice to fight the heat.

She rested her head against the headrest, she wasn’t ready to go inside yet. The whole night she had been counting down the minutes until she could leave, she had watched the clock like it was set to a timer, and now, she was killing time like going home was the worst possible outcome of the night. 

“You look pretty tonight.” Steve muttered, just loud enough for her to hear. She knew he wasn’t drunk, he hadn’t had a single drink all night because he knew he would be the one driving them both home. “Old movie pretty.” Oddly, she knew exactly what he meant. Saturday nights used to be reserved for watching Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly movies on her living room floor. It was the most romantic thing she had ever been told. 

She turned her head to face him. The soft yellow glow from the street lights made him look warm and safe, like if she rested her head on his shoulder, she would just fall asleep. “Thanks Stevie.” It had been a long time since she had last called him that. She reached for the door handle but just as she pushed it open, she wanted to close it again. She twisted her body to face him one last time tonight. “Do you think you’ll ever be in love again?"

He screwed his nose up and opened his mouth to say something but then he changed his mind. Maybe he was going to ask her where that question had come from, maybe he had a clear cut answer, maybe she would never know. 

“Probaby.” He didn't sound convincing. “But if you ask anyone around town, definitely.” He laughed softly under his breath. It was the kind of laugh that was halfhearted and meant to cover up something more hiding underneath the surface. But she didn’t feel like pushing him. It was a subject matter that was only going to end with her getting her feelings hurt. “Why?”

“I was just wondering.” She smiled at him, but it was mostly forced. What she really wanted to say was ‘will you ever be in love with me?’ but she wasn’t quite brave enough for that yet. Maybe if she had had another drink things would’ve been different. 

She got out of his car and walked to her front door knowing the whole time that he was still there, waiting till the last second to leave, making sure she got inside safely before just driving off. If Steve did fall in love again someday, they were going to be extremely lucky and she was going to have to find someone else to take her home after the parties she didn’t even want to be at. 

'Cause love, when it's the right kind, well, it always points you home

She had called Steve over an hour ago to let him know that she was staying late. There was no point in making him sit in the parking lot when she didn’t even know when she would be done. And God forbid he come inside again and force her to answer a thousand questions about him from the woman who sat at the front desk. 

She had spoken to him on the pay phone that was right outside the dance studio. It was still light out then and none of the street lights had had the chance to come on. But they were all on now. 

Steve hadn’t argued about the change in plans. He didn’t ask why or how she had gotten extra time in the studio. He didn’t even warn her about walking home alone in the dark. She had hung up the phone almost feeling disappointed, which she knew was a foolish way to feel given in the situation but she just couldn’t help it. 

She threw her bag over her shoulder and winced just a little. She couldn’t remember it being quite so heavy before she came in, maybe she was just sore. She flicked off all the lights, she was the last one using this room tonight and she didn’t feel like getting sent a huge electricity bill just because she had left the overhead lights on all night. 

When she stepped outside, she instantly wished that she had asked Steve to come and get her after all. The street lights suddenly seemed eerie and the empty parking lot was making her instinctively want to shiver even in the heat. 

She couldn’t have given him an exact time to come and pick her up but she could have given him an estimate. And then she would’ve been sitting in his passenger seat right now, with her bag in his footwell and the scent of him drowning her senses, and she was fairly sure that the lights wouldn’t seem so scary anymore.  

She stood outside the glass doors for a moment. She knew whoever was sitting at the desk tonight could see her, but she didn’t mind if she looked like a lost dog who didn’t know which home was. She was picturing Steve’s car parked in the parking lot. In her head it was in his usual spot, the windows were rolled down, and his radio was on.

‘Especially by you.’ That’s what he had said a few weeks ago when they were in his car. ‘I like being needed. Especially by you.’ And of course, just days ago back in that same car, there was, ‘You look pretty tonight. Old movie pretty.’

She resisted the urge to call him as she stepped off of the pavement. She was more than ready to keep replaying their conversations in her head until she turned everything that Steve Harrington had ever said to her into a subtle love confession as she walked home but she was suddenly brought to a stop.

Her old trainers scuffed against the gravel and she was quietly glad that she wasn’t wearing her sandals this time around. They were destined to fall apart if she kept doing this. But it wasn't completely her fault because every single time she acted like a deer in headlights, Steve just happened to be the one standing there, making it happen. And tonight was no different. 

He was standing around the corner with a coke in each hand and an easy smile on his lips. The kind of smile that was just taunting her to kiss him. The bright red straws screamed Summer, and so did the sunburn across the bridge of his nose. She was starting to wonder if it would ever really fade, or if he would just look sunkissed until Winter came. 

“You-I told you not to-Steve…” She wasn’t really sure what she wanted to say to him. How could she be mad at him for not doing what she said when she didn’t want him to do it either. She had created her own little parabox and all she could do was blame it on the unfair fact which was that she was in love with her best friend. 

The boy who brought her coke on a warm night and wasted all his gas money on her weekend plans. He walked over to her and handed her one of the coke’s without saying a word. She took a sip. It was cherry. If she wasn’t careful she was going to end up associating the flavour with him, and then when he inevitably broke her heart in two, she was going to have to avoid it for the rest of my life. And what was August without cherry pie?

“You told me you were staying late to spin around in circles.” She hadn’t quite put it that way. For starters, she didn’t spin, she turned. ”I said okay and we hung up. You never told me not to come and meet you. You never said that I couldn’t walk you home.” Shit. He had her. She had never actually uttered the words ‘don’t come and get me’. In the future she was clearly going to have to be more literal. 

She bit back the urge to smile. She had gotten what she wanted. “So, you came out here just to walk me home? It's Saturday night, shouldn't you be doing something?” She tilted her head to the side. Steve looked pretty at night. His eyes were darker and for some unknown reason, he looked taller. 

He took a sip of his cherry coke and they started to walk across the empty parking lot. “I am doing something.” He rolled his eyes as she smiled at him. “Don’t let it go to your head, my plans got canceled at the last minute." She didn’t believe him. He was making too much of a point not to look at her. Steve was a really bad liar and the worst thing that he would do while twisting the truth, was to look at the person he was twisting it for. 

“You’re lying, aren’t you?”

He smirked to himself, before slipping her bag off of her shoulder and placing it on his own, silently giving her the answer that she wanted. She felt cooler now that she wasn’t carrying her dance bag, and the cherry coke had helped too. But she also just felt calmer. She didn’t need to look over her shoulder the entire way home, Steve was there. He would keep her safe. 

 I don't need accolades or everyone to want me, 'cause you want me, and that's as good as it gets

It was still the early hours of the morning. The pavement wasn’t quite hot to the touch yet and there was this lingering breeze in the air that she knew would soon die out. It was also the last day of July, and she was starting it by standing on Steve Harrington’s doorstep. 

He had called her just fifteen minutes ago, and the first thing he had said was ‘I didn’t know who else to call.’ She panicked the second she heard his voice, just like anyone would at half four in the morning. But luckily in her sleepy/confused state she couldn’t say a word let alone ask a thousand worried questions, which gave him time to actually explain what was wrong. 

He was hurt. Not badly, but just enough that she could hear his grimacing over the phone. He told her it felt like he had twisted his wrist or pulled something in his hand that was not supposed to be ‘pulled’. 

He asked her what to do, and he told her not to come over. But then after a soft mutter of his name, he admitted that he needed her. And as she walked down the street in her pyjamas and a pair of trainers, she finally agreed with him, it was nice to be needed. Especially by him. 

Steve looked so sweet when he opened the door. He was holding his left hand to his chest and his hair was a complete mess. If her vision was even just slightly blurred, she could’ve been convinced that it was his seventeen year old self who had opened the door.

“Hey.” His voice was so soft it made silk seem hard. He looked her up and down. “Nice pajamas."

She stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind herself. “Thanks.” It was her turn to look him up and down, he was wearing a soft white t-shirt and light blue shorts that looked familiar. “You too.”

In the kitchen, she twisted the bandage around his wrist. His fingers flinched as she turned his palm over to tuck the frayed end in. She had done this a thousand times over, for herself and for the other girls that she danced with from time to time. It was like muscle memory to her at this point but this time it felt different. 

And it wasn’t just because Steve hadn’t injured himself while dancing, it was because it was him. It was his hand that she was holding. That fact alone made it different.

“You’re good at this.” He was watching her every movement very closely, like he was taking notes just in case he ever caught his hand on his bathroom doorframe again. “But I guess you’ve had practice.”

“I used to have this recurring injury with my ankle. It always came back after recitals and auditions. The pressure from the bandages helped.” She gave back his hand. It was all tied with white, it was warm, and it was still slightly shaking. “Better?”

“Hmm.” Steve nodded his head, but his eyes weren't on his hand anymore, his gaze was locked on her. His kitchen felt small suddenly, even though it wasn’t, and the lights didn't feel quite bright enough. She wished it was the middle of the day and the sun was blinding them. 

He leaned in, like he might kiss her, and he kept leaning until she could feel his breath ghosting over her lips. It felt like he was silently asking her something, she took a leap, decided what that question was, and nodded her head in agreement. And then, Steve Harrington kissed her. 

He tasted like summer, like fireworks and cherry sherbet. The rough edges of his bandage gently pressed against her cheek as he pulled her in closer, deepening the kiss. In all the times that she had overplayed this scenario in her head, she hadn’t countered in the scent of his soap, or the overwhelming feeling of having him so damn close. 

When he eventually pulled away, breaking the kiss and giving her lungs a second to catch up, he sighed like something heavy and all consuming had been sitting on his chest. He nudged his nose against hers. “Can we do that again?” She felt herself smiling. “And again, and again, and again…”

“Steve?” He gave her all his attention the second his name left her lips. “I-” He brushed his thumb back and forth over her skin. “I love you, you know that right?” 

His mind started doing summersaults while his heart just gave up altogether. She loved him. Him. She looked at him starry eyed and nervous. He wanted to kiss every inch of her face until she looked completely and utterly devoid of anxiety.  “I didn’t.” He admitted honestly. “But I do now.” 

He kissed her again before she could utter another word. And somewhere, between kisses and heavy breathing, she heard his voice cutting though making her more dizzy then she had ever been. 

it's fingers in jean loops & kisses that catch you off guard, it's feeling safe with him, being able to tell him anything and know it's in trusted hands, it's calling him after a bad day and just listening to him softly tell you over the phone that it'll be okay, that you'll be okay, it's playing with his hair when he gets tense, dragging your nails down his neck just to help him relax a little, it's leaving your things in the backseat of his car or in his bedroom, it's hiding in his side when you watch scary movies, it's messy love confessions in the middle of the street when you first fall for each other, his hands were freezing against your face but kissing him felt so good that you didn't care, it's stealing all his t-shirts because they smell like him and you sleep better in them anyway, it's him writing his name across your back before you wake up, it's sticky lip gloss kisses & your tall brunette boyfriend in your blush pink bedroom