There’s no guarantee that I’m going to run into him again.
But I…
I had to do something; he’s here.
I mean, I have to see him.
I just have to.
“Looking for me?”
At the voice coming from behind me, my heart jumps in my chest.
And I spin around.
And I… God, he’s bigger.
Than he was the last time I saw him.
He’s taller. Broader. And he was already plenty tall and broad from what I remember.
Those shoulders of his — the ones that were already bigger than the shoulders of any other guy I know — now look like they can span the door of my bedroom. His chest looks like it can block off the view of the woods and the manor from my window.
Not to mention, it looks like he can so easily tower over the canopy bed that I sleep in.
He can so easily tower over me.
Plus he still looks like my favorite season.
Despite the fact that he still has dark clothes on.
He still looks like the end of June with his bronzed skin and that long dark surfer’s hair.
“You done staring, Bubblegum?”
My eyes shoot up to his and since his words are a repetition of what he said to me a year ago, my words are too. “I wasn’t… staring.”
His lips — which I now notice look fuller than last year too — stretch up into a smirk. His typical arrogant smirk that makes my already racing heart race more.
“Good,” he drawls. “Because if you were, then I’d have to tell you what I was just thinking.”
“What were you thinking?”
His eyes that I know have red hues in them stare at me something fierce before he says, “About how I wasn’t wrong and that I didn’t dream it up.”
“Dream what up?”
“You.” Then, “Or how pink you are.”
Breathless, I fist my dress. Which is pink. Again.
“It’s, uh, a special occasion,” I tell him.
“I know.”
Okay, I have a confession to make.
When my mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday this year and I told her a pink dress, I wasn’t ready to admit it. When I put it on tonight before I came out for my midnight stroll, I wasn’t ready to admit it then either.