Cuddle Application

28 - I Love You

"What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again."
~Suzanne Collins

➳♀♁➳

We missed James's graduation ceremony.

Oliver was Pemberly High's salutatorian; apparently he gave a speech. I didn't even know he did his homework.

He stopped by after, to give James his diploma. My dad made my brother put on his cap and gown for a picture. The smile didn't reach his eyes but at least we documented that life event. We didn't have any pictures from the funeral. And who wanted any? People hired photographers for weddings, but no one wanted bleary pictures of church pews dressed in black.

"How are you?" Oliver asks, standing in my bedroom doorway.

I knew if I opened my mouth I'd start crying, so I just shake my head.

"Sky," he says softly, and steps over to the bed.

I sit on his lap in fuzzy pajamas while he smooths my hair. The sun falls from the sky, painting the horizon, then disappears. Ink spreads across, shadows filling the room. Stars sneak out, one sparkling more than the others.

Nothing would ever be the same. Trauma sat atop old problems. Death swept old worries under the rug.

"What do I call you?" I ask, because I'm not mad anymore. I'm too tired to be anything but mildly curious.

Olivers jaw bumps the top of my head when he moves to speak.

"Oliver," he says. "I want you to call me Oliver."

"Oliver," I repeat. I'm secretly happy that he chose the name I knew him as when we met. The name I called him when we held balloons at the fair. The one I screamed on the back of his motorcycle. The one I smiled when he kissed me the first time. The name that Molly used.

"Judissius only when you're mad at me," he says, "because then I deserve it."

I smile softly. "Never Jude?"

He sighs. "Only my mother called me Jude."

His arms wrap more tightly around me and I know he knows.

"Your dad told you," I say. The real story about his mom. About her addiction, how she lost custody. How she passed away from an overdose when he was a child.

I feel him nod against my hair.

"I was a coward," his father had said when I asked why he didn't stay to be a husband, a father. But he wasn't. He made a mistake when he left, but he saved Oliver when he needed it the most. He gave him a little brother and sister. He gave him a new family, and finally the truth about his mother so he wouldn't live the rest of his life with a heavy distain for her.

"Why did you like me on that website?" I ask.

It takes him a minute, but then he says, "The Cuddle Application one?" I nod. He chuckles. "Your hair was everywhere, your smile was crooked, and your eyes sparkled. How could I not like you?"

I turn around in his lap, repositioning myself so our noses almost touch. "I love you, Oliver Manning."

He smiles with those lips that light fire to my fingers and toes. "I love you more, Skylar Lane."

We kiss and the whole world melts away.