St. Cloud

october

When you fast forward a couple of weeks, Gray and I grew much closer.

I began to stare at my phone every second of the day, waiting for it to light up with a notification of his name. We shared stories, silly pictures, videos of singing dogs, and everything else in between.

We were always talking, and for once, I felt important to someone. I felt as though I mattered. Usually I feel like I'm not terribly important to anyone, I just kinda exist in people's lives. I'm more like a simple flash of convenience for people. Only there when I'm needed.

Yet this boy that I thought would never give me the time of day, now behaved as though I was the sun and the moon and all of the stars that shined in the sky. It felt good. So good, that I wanted it to last forever. Though I wouldn't call it love, because I wasn't familiar with the feeling so to me, it was just a nice feeling.

Yet when the month of October came, things began to change. We went to amusement parks together, pumpkin patches, corn mazes, and even to a big bonfire party thrown by a mutual friend of ours. The thing was, we did it all together. It began to feel unnatural to do something without the other, and specifically on the night of the bonfire party on October 22, I felt something else.

You see, that night was cold. It was freezing actually, so we took it upon ourselves to go inside and make hot chocolates and grab a couple of blankets. We didn't want to stay inside, because being as young as we are we enjoy the cruelty of the cold because it means we gather up by the fire and move closer to one another. The cold was comforting, in essence, because it gave us a chance not only to warm up our flushed cheeks, but our hearts too.

I remember my drink steaming with heat and warming my lips, and my throat would burn even with little sips. After Gray drank his, I remember the simple gesture he made to zip up my coat all the way (we all were wearing the heaviest ones we owned), and how it warmed my chest more than my hot chocolate did.

The wind sliced through the air like knives, and as close as some of us got to one another and the fire, the freezing wind would still cut. When the skin on my hands and face almost went completely numb, Gray pulled my body close to his and pressed me close against his chest. I remember the tips of my fingers slowly regaining the sense of touch, and I was able to feel the flesh of my cheeks again too. The wind was still sharp and the air was still cold, but with Gray, it didn't hurt.

Call it sappy, but the warmth he gave me that night was more comfortable than the flames of the fire.

It was on this very night I realized the power of another humans arms. The power of two eyes and a heartbeat. It all felt like home. A home I didn't know I missed so much.

It was on this very night I realized I liked Gray a lot more than I thought I did. A lot more than I thought would be possible.

It was on this very night I realized I loved him.

It was a mixture of fire and touch and steam and light that blended into an overwhelming feeling of affection that wrapped around my heart and suffocated it.

I loved him.

Whether or not this was dangerous was something I wasn't even worried about, because as my heart began to beat for a new reason, it was already too late.

Of course I grew afraid, because in the next couple of days I would find out if Gray felt the same. If he didn't, I'd experience a new unbearable pain that I've never wanted to feel. If he did, I'd experience a new uncontrollable love that I've never wanted to become a victim of.

But it was too late, because my heart was in love and the stars of the night shined brighter than ever before.

When he took me home at the end of the night, my heart was racing at such a speed I thought it would burn out. We got home a lot quicker than we got to the bonfire, and before I said goodbye, part of me wanted to ask him how he felt.

"Can I tell you something?"

Those were the exact words Gray said before I stepped out of his car. I simply nodded, not expecting the words that followed.

"I love you."

It was three words I had never heard from another human that actually meant something. My heart was on the verge of burning out, or so it felt that way, yet it became still at the sound of the gently laced words that fell from Gray's lips.

I do not know how long he had loved me, or if it was just coincidentally on the same night that I had fallen in love with him too. The importance of the matter, was that the universe was in our favor and we shared the same love in our racing heartbeats.

"I love you too."

I truly did, and it was in the month of October that we entered the city of St. Cloud together.

-