Lovesick -- A Rocky Lynch Story

Chapter 19

I had forgotten what it was like to have a morning that wasn't rushed or exhausting in itself. For some reason this morning the kids were in a pleasant mood, Rocky and I had slept incredibly well, and we were finally recovered from our not-so-21 year old weekend in Vegas.

Right as I got the kids strapped into the car, Rocky received a phone call from his brother whom he barely got to see, Ross. "Hey man," he smiled into the phone happily. "How's it going?" He raised his eyebrows and looked at me and held up one finger for me to wait a minute. "Oh absolutely," he nodded his head. "We're just taking the kids to school. We got nothing going on. Sure," he beamed. Rocky and Ross always had a nice relationship being that they were so close in age, and now that they were older they talked on the phone like old high school buddies.

He hung up and smiled at me. "Wanna take a trip to the airport?"

"What for? They didn't fly themselves?" I asked curiously. Ross and Andi were always going new, exotic places.

"Not this time. They couldn't fly to Europe, baby," he shook his head. "They had a connecting flight from New York to Vegas and they're flying into LAX in like two hours. I told them we could pick them up?"

"Sure babe, if you don't need to go into the office?" I reminded him he had a job.

"Nope," he shook his head. "I'm good. I'll go in this afternoon." He kissed my cheek and took the suburban keys out of my hand to get in the car with us.

We dropped the two kids off at school and started the far-ish drive to the airport to meet arguably our second favorite couple to spend time with. "Since we've got time..." I started my sentence and turned around to see Mason playing with his shoe in the backseat. I giggled and shook my head at the little boy. "Why don't we do our little couples task for the day?" I asked him.

"Sure baby girl," He nodded his head. "What is it?"

I pulled the book out of my large purse and read aloud, "recall the first time you felt like you loved each other and then recall what it felt like to say it to one another."

"Well shit," Rocky laughed. "I'll go backwards- saying it to you was the most terrifying thing ever. Like even more terrifying than proposing to you. Because I felt like you would say yes when we got engaged because we had spoken about it before. But I had no idea if you'd say it back." He shook his head and placed his hand on my thigh. "But now I'm glad I said it."

"Well, for me, it wasn't all that nerve wracking to tell you I loved you because you said it first." I giggled and scrunched my nose. "But, I realized I loved you, um..." I had to think on that one. "I think I remember realizing it when we all went to the beach for like Memorial Day Weekend. And there was this little girl remember?" I asked him.

He thought and nodded his head. "Oh yeah, the waves knocked down her sand castle," he chuckled. "That's what made you realize you loved me?"

"Well, it was just that you helped her build it again... And then I was like 'aw, he's such a sweetheart'. And then I just remember saying 'I love him' in my head and I gasped," I laughed as I told him. "And then I realized I loved you..." I smiled up at him and studied his smile for a moment. That smile had aged, but the glisten behind it was still the 20 year old boy I had met when I was in college.

Rocky pulled up to LAX and parked in the waiting lot. He put the car in park and turned to face me. "Well," he paused and thought for a moment. "I think I realized I love you when... We were at that spring formal your senior year in college in your sorority," he told me. "You were rooming with all those girls and they all had crushes on me. But I focused on you... and I remembered when I saw you at the first of the night you wore that gorgeous blue dress." He sighed and closed his eyes like he was remembering it.