Taking in a quick breath, I blurted, “Was it because I pushed too far? Did I force you? Pressure you?” Biting the bullet, I asked, “Did you regret it?”
Poppy tensed, her eyes glistening. I wondered for a minute if she was about to cry, confess that what I had feared these past two years was true. That I hurt her. She put her trust in me and I hurt her.
Instead, Poppy rose from the bed and knelt down. I heard her pulling something out from underneath. When she rose to her feet, in her hand was a familiar glass mason jar. A mason jar filled with hundreds of pink paper hearts.
A thousand boy-kisses.
Poppy carefully kneeled on the bed, and tipping the jar in the direction of the nightlight’s glow, she opened the lid and began to search. As her hand swilled around the paper hearts, I tracked the ones that traveled past the glass on my side. Most were blank. The jar was coated in dust—a sign it hadn’t been opened for a long time.
A mixture of sadness and hope stirred inside me.
Hope that no other boy had touched her lips.
Sadness that the greatest adventure of her life had come to standstill. No more kisses.
Then that sadness cut a hole right through me.
Months. She only had months left, not a lifetime, to fill this jar. She would never write the message on a heart on her wedding day like she wanted. She would never be a mamaw, reading these kisses to her grandchildren. She wouldn’t even live out her teens.
“Rune?” Poppy asked when new tears fell down my cheeks. I used the back of my hand to wipe them away. I hesitated to meet Poppy’s eyes. I didn’t want to make her feel sad. Instead, when I glanced up, all I saw on Poppy’s face was understanding, an understanding which quickly changed to shyness.
Nervousness.
In her outstretched hand was a pink heart. Only this heart wasn’t blank. It was full, both sides. This heart’s ink was pink, practically disguising the message.
Poppy pushed her hand further out. “Take it,” she insisted. I did as she asked.
Sitting up, I shifted into the path of light. I focused hard on the light ink, until I could make out the words.Kiss three hundred and fifty-five. In my bedroom. After I made love to my Rune. My heart almost burst.I turned the heart over and read the other side.
I stopped breathing.
It was the best night of my life … as special as special can be.
I closed my eyes, yet another wash of emotion flowing through me. If I had been standing, I’m sure it would have brought me to my knees.
Because she loved it.
That night, what we did, it was wanted. I hadn’t hurt her.
I choked down on a noise that was slipping up my throat. Poppy’s hand was on my arm. “I thought I’d destroyed us,” I whispered, looking into her eyes. “I thought you’d regretted us.”
“I didn’t,” she whispered back. With a shaking hand, a gesture rusty from too much time spent apart, she pushed back the fallen strands of hair from my face. I closed my eyes under her touch, then opened them when she said, “When everything happened…,” she explained, “when I was seeking treatment,”—tears, this time, did slip down her cheeks—“when that treatment stopped working … I thought of that night often.” Poppy closed her eyes, her long dark lashes kissing her cheek. Then she smiled. Her hand stilled in my hair. “I thought of how gentle you were with me. How it felt … to be with you, that close. Like we were the two halves of the heart we always called ourselves.” She sighed. “It was like home. You and me, together, were infinity—we were joined. In that moment, that moment when our breathing was rough and you held me so tightly … it was the best moment of my life.”
Her eyes opened again. “It was the moment I replayed when it hurt. It is the moment I think of when I slip, when I begin to feel scared. It’s the moment that reminds me that I’m lucky. Because in that moment I experienced the love my mamaw sent me on this adventure of a thousand boy-kisses to find. That moment when you know that you are loved so much, that you are the center of somebody’s world so wonderfully, that youlived… even if it was only for a short time.”
Keeping the paper heart in one hand, I reached up with the other and brought Poppy’s wrist to my lips. I pressed a small kiss over her pulse, feeling it flutter beneath my mouth. She drew in a sharp breath.
“No one else has kissed your lips but me, have they?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I promised you I wouldn’t. Even though we weren’t speaking. Even though I never thought I’d see you again, I would never break my promise. These lips are yours. They were only ever yours.”
My heart stuttered and, releasing her wrist, I lifted my fingers to press them across her lips—the lips that she had gifted to me.
Poppy’s breathing slowed as I touched her mouth. Her lashes fluttered and heat built in her cheeks. My breathing quickened. Quickened because I had ownership of those lips. They were still mine.
Forever always.
“Poppy,” I whispered, and leaned toward her. Poppy froze, but I didn’t kiss her. I wouldn’t. I could see that she couldn’t read me. She didn’t know me.