IN A MOSTLY empty bedroom, I tap my finger against my chin and point to a corner. “There.”
Shawn and Mike begin carrying my dresser to the spot I indicated, and I shake my head. “No, there.” I point to the other wall, and they huff and change direction.
“Tell me again why I have to get you a housewarming present when I just got you a going-away present?” Shawn asks, quickly adding, “And I just got you a housewarming present for your last place a few months ago?”
“That was a birthday present,” I scoff, ignoring the part about the housewarming present.
“Tell me again why I have to get you a housewarming present when I’m living here too?” Joel asks, and I smile and wrap my arms around his neck.
“Because you love me.”
He lowers his mouth to mine in a single kiss that makes my insides flutter, and then he pulls away and curses himself. “Damn it.”
I give him my sweetest smirk, someone behind us gags, and we all get back to moving my things into Joel’s bedroom.
Yesterday, after I burst into his place, threw a poster tube at his head, and agreed to be his girlfriend, I remembered that I was moving six hours away. Reality settled heavily in my stomach, and I told Joel it didn’t matter if we wanted to be together because someone new was already set to move into my apartment and I was in the process of moving back home. I told him about how wrong college was for me, how I was thinking about going to fashion school, how popular the T-shirts were getting, and most importantly, how I had to move back home because I had no other options. Rowan had already told her parents about her living with Adam, so even if I could find another apartment in town, we couldn’t keep lying about living together. I’d have to find a roommate, and I had no idea how long that would take.
“Move in with me,” Joel had said, interrupting me mid-rant.
The only response I could muster was, “Huh?”
“Stay here,” he answered.
“Joel—”
“If you think I’m letting you go again, you’re even crazier than I give you credit for,” he challenged, and I ignored the taunt since, for once, I didn’t feel like fighting.
“You don’t think it’s too fast?” I asked, and his voice softened.
“I think that all we do is fast. When we try to slow it down, we mess shit up.”
When we emerged from his apartment, after the hottest make-up quickie I’ve ever had, everyone from my birthday party was already gathered in the lobby anxiously waiting for me. Rowan, who was gnawing on a fingernail, lowered her gaze to our clasped hands, and her hand fell away from her mouth as a big smile lit her face.
“Shut up,” I warned, but I couldn’t stop smiling and she started laughing.
“Her stuff is already packed up?” Joel asked the guys.
“Yeah,” Shawn cautiously answered. “Why?”
When Joel announced I was moving in with him, Adam burst out laughing, Rowan’s jaw dropped, and Leti grinned like a goofball. From the expressions on everyone else’s faces, they thought we were batshit crazy. And maybe we are, but it’s either go crazy with him or go crazy without him, and that choice is finally easy for me to make.
This morning, I called my dad to let him know I was going to move in with Joel instead of moving back home.
“Are you there?” I asked in the long moment of silence that followed my announcement.
“Yeah . . . Give me a minute, I’m trying to figure out how to feel about this.” I gave him what felt like the full minute, and he finally said, “Is Joel with you?”
I cast a worried look at Joel, who was sitting next to me on his couch. “Yeah . . .”
“Put him on.”
“Why?”
“Because my little girl is moving in with him and we need to have a talk first.”
I worried my bottom lip. “Dad?”
“Dee.”
“There’s something you should know first . . .”
Another long moment of silence passed while I tried to work up the nerve to tell my dad I’d fallen in love, and he interrupted it by stating matter-of-factly, “You’re pregnant.”
“No!” I shouted into the line, my outburst making Joel flinch. “No! Oh my God, no! NO.”
An audible sigh of relief sounded from over three hundred miles away. “Thank God.”
“Jesus, Dad. What the heck?!”
“I think I just aged thirty years.”
“This is ME we’re talking about!”
“YOU are acting strange lately,” he argued. “Now what were you going to say?”
Joel leaned closer to try to hear more than one side of our conversation, and I rubbed a spot between my eyes as I confessed, “I love him. I just wanted you to know I love him.”
“Sweetheart,” my dad said, “I knew that at Easter.”
“How?” I breathed.
My dad chuckled into the phone. “Because I’m your dad. I know things.”
“So you’re okay with me living with him?” I asked.
“I didn’t say that. Now put him on the phone.”
I reluctantly handed Joel the phone, and he and my dad had a long talk during which he told my dad that he loves me and that he’d never do anything to hurt me. By the time he handed my phone back, all I wanted to do was hang up on my dad so I could kiss Joel senseless for saying all of those perfect things.
“Okay,” my dad said. “You have my seal of approval, but if he ever gets out of line, you tell him I have a gun.”
“But you don’t . . .”
“But he doesn’t need to know that.”
I laughed and told my dad I loved him, and when he finally let me off the phone, I beamed at Joel. Rowan and the guys showed up a short while later with the moving van, and I immediately got to work bossing people around, which I’m still doing when Shawn and Mike carry my dresser into the room.
Moving the furniture in is easy, but the little things are hard—like positioning my coffee mug next to Joel’s, or spreading my comforter on his bed. When I drop my purple toothbrush into a plastic cup next to his green one, my heart lashes against the walls of my chest and I have to take deep breaths to calm it. The little things feel like bungee jumping, like skydiving.
Like falling.
And there are moments when I want to back away from the ledge again, but when I remember how lonely that felt—how bad—I let myself fall. I cling to Joel on the way down—holding his gaze, brushing his fingers, and planting soft kisses on his lips as we unpack—and he falls with me.
Later that night, after the little things are done and I haven’t passed out even once, I change into a pair of teeny pajama shorts and one of Joel’s T-shirts.
“So your dad is really okay with this?” he asks me for the second time that day as I watch him tug his shirt over his head. God, that will never get old.
“My dad loves you,” I say, climbing into bed—under my crisp covers, on top of his firm mattress. Our bed. My heart pounds again, but this time it feels a little warmer, a little nicer.
Joel gives me a skeptical glance and climbs in next to me. “He didn’t sound like he loved me on the phone . . .”
“What did he say?”
“He said he wasn’t a fan of seeing his baby girl cry over a boy.” Joel slides closer, his hand coming to rest on the curve of my waist. His voice is soft, careful, when he says, “Did you cry?”
I fight the urge to deny it, to downplay the misery I felt. Instead, I admit, “I fell apart.”
“I thought you’d be relieved I was gone . . .”
I curl up against his chest so I don’t have to look him in the eyes, and he wraps his arms tight around me. “When you left, I lashed out at my dad. Then I went over to Rowan’s and cried my heart out. I got sloppy drunk and passed out, and my dad had to come get me.”
His firm fingers rub my back, and he says, “I’m sorry.”
I shake my head against his bare skin, closing my eyes and breathing his scent deep into my lungs. “I slept in the guest room that night and cried into the T-shirt you left behind. After I came back to school, I wore it to bed a few times just because I missed you so much.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. I still have it.”
Joel pulls away to lower his lips to mine, giving me a soft kiss that tells me he loves me more than words ever could.
“I love you,” I say anyway, getting better at saying it. My heart beats strong and steady.
“I love you too,” he says back, giving me another sweet kiss and asking, “Did you love me at Easter?”
“I loved you at the festival,” I confess. I snuggle against him again, knowing it’s true. “I just didn’t know it.”
“Same here,” Joel says. “I didn’t know it until you went home and didn’t text me.”
“I should have known it earlier. I just didn’t want to admit it.”
“Why?”
“I never wanted to fall in love. My mom . . .”
“You don’t have to tell me,” he offers when I trail off, and I take a steady breath. I’ve never talked about my mom to anyone but Rowan, and to some extent, to my dad. But I want Joel to know about her. I want him to know about me.
I need to stop hiding. I need to let him see me.
I pull away from him so I can lose myself in his blue eyes. “My mom had an affair,” I say, strengthened by the steady way he looks at me. “I have no idea how long it had been going on, but she left when I was eleven, and when she did, my dad was broken. I never wanted anyone to have that power over me.”
“You know I’d never do that to you, right?”
“How do you know?” I ask, and when he just stares at me like he’s not sure what I’m asking, I say, “The band is getting huge, Joel. You have girls throwing themselves at you every time you perform.”
“They aren’t you,” he says simply.
“What happens when you get tired of me?”
“Not going to happen.”
“But how do you know?”
He studies his fingers as they gently tuck my hair behind my ear, and I study his face as he touches me. “You’re the only girl I’ve ever wanted to draw,” he says, his gaze coming to settle on mine. “You’re the only girl I’ve ever wanted to date. To live with. You’re the only one with a dad I wanted to meet. You’re the only one I’ve wanted to fall asleep with and wake up next to. A lot of girls came before you, Dee . . . a lot of girls . . . but you’re the only one. I know it’ll always be you because it’s only ever been you.”
I close my eyes to prevent the tears from falling, and Joel leans forward to plant a tender kiss against my brow.
“I mean it when I say I love you,” he says.
“I know.”
“How I feel isn’t going to change.” I open my eyes, and he brushes his thumb across the wet apple of my cheek.
“Do you promise?”
“I’m promising it every time I say those three words,” he says. A moment passes, and then he says them. “I love you, Dee.”
A soft smile touches my lips, and still lost in those deep blue eyes—which hold the secrets of my own heart—I make a promise back. “I love you too.”