CHAPTER 61 (Part 1) 

Lacey

My dad likes to say that life's full of little miracles--moments where it's impossible to ignore their presence no matter how skeptical or broken you may be. The day mom died, I thought I'd run out of miracles. I thought that when she left she took my whole world with her---my light, my laughter, all of me--gone in a single afternoon. 

Once she passed, our house changed into a cage full of memories my father couldn't get rid of fast enough. Our walls were covered in her pictures and colored with the soft pastel paints Mom fought to convince Dad to let her decorate with.

She was a limitless creative, always finding ways to turn our very ordinary home into a place that could outshine the shadows that lived inside her mind. Her lingering artistic touches still comfort me, but the sight of them torture my dad. 

He's talked about redoing the walls nearly every other week since she left us but hasn't ever found it in himself to erase all those memories. Instead, he erased Mom from our conversations. On his hardest days, he'd pretend she'd never existed even though her presence is still very tangible in our home. 

I clung to her shadows while my dad ran from them. Even on a day like today, he's still running. Still keeping his distance from her graveyard for reasons I can't fully understand.

Given Dad's patterns, I always thought there'd be a divide in how him and I deal with her being gone.

But today a miracle molded into the personality of a boy bridged that gap.

Instead of having to spend this morning visiting my mom alone or sitting on the beach with my father pretending her resting place was out of reach, I got to visit Mom with another person who means the world to me.

A boy who allowed himself to let his guard down and shoulder the weight of this day along with me.

And even though I'm still struggling to find the right way to say it, I can't even begin to tell him just how grateful I am.

For everything he is.

For everything he's done.

For everything he continues to do.

The feeling's overwhelmed me into silence--and Elias is following suit.

He hasn't said much since we left Cliffside half an hour back. We both broke down after he left his heart with my mom in the space of a single speech. No one has ever spoken about me like that. No one's ever cared to. 

When you spend enough time on the outside of normal high school life, you learn to live with your loneliness. When all of my old friends stopped talking to me at Cardinal, I got used to people-watching. I'd sit on the bleachers after school and watch couple after couple fall in love out on our sports fields. 

There were days where I used to pretend that I knew the kinds of sweet nothings they'd whisper to each other in secret. I'd make up dialogues and then imagine what it'd be like if someone said those kinds of words to me. 

I'd try to guess what it felt like to genuinely mean something to someone. To have a boy look at you like you were the only thing that mattered in the whole world. To love someone without hesitation or fear.

By some miracle, Elias has allowed me to live out all of those things. So much so, that I didn't think I could feel more for him than I already do. But today, my heart's so full it could burst.

I tighten my grip over Elias's hand as he shifts gears and picks up his speed on the freeway. I want this small gesture to be enough to communicate the hundred thousand thank you's that are dancing on the tip of my tongue, but I don't know if he feels what I'm feeling. I don't know what he's feeling at all.

Elias has been staring out over the dash, hiding his eyes behind his Ray Bans ever since we started driving. Before we left my mom's, he stopped me from getting into the car and just held me for a long while. 

I cried rivers into his perfectly clean shirt and kept waiting for him to pull away from me or scold me for staining his clothes, but he didn't. He just let me struggle my way through my mother's absence without leaving me once. I've come to visit my mom so many times on my own, I got used to having to pretend to be okay. 

I'd talk myself down before I'd hop on the bus home so the passengers wouldn't stare at me. So they wouldn't realize that I was broken. But Elias finally gave me the opportunity to lean on someone in my weakness. To ugly-cry without restraint. To miss my mother out loud without being afraid of someone seeing me.

Because he sees me.

And despite all of my messiness, he still looks at me like I matter.

But ever since we starting driving, he's felt distant. He's let the radio fill silence where our conversation should be. 

I want to ask him if he's okay, or if I did anything wrong, but I'm too nervous to speak. All I can do right now, is hold on to the warmth of his hand and hope he hears me through the silence.

"Lacey?"

Elias suddenly turns to me and the gentle uneasiness in his voice puts a few of my fears to rest.

"Yeah?"

"You're okay with surprises, right? Like you're not one of those people who gets super pissed if they're kept in the dark about something--are you?"

Elias's question sets my heart off the Richter scale but I play off my nervousness with a smile.

"Well, I mean...I guess it depends on what the surprise is."

Elias grips the back of his neck like he always does when he's uncomfortable.

"I figured you'd say that. The thing is, Lace, I uh--kind of prepared something for you but I don't know if you'll really be into it, so I'm debating whether or not I should tell you where we're going before we get there or just skip out on my plans all together and take you home."

I ease my fingers between his hoping it'll calm him down a little. Little beads of sweat are slowly making their way down the sides of his face which is odd considering how high he's blasting the AC.

"Elias, I'm happy to go anywhere with you. What you did for me today was--already so much that I--"

"So much in a bad way or a good way? I know my speech wasn't the best so I'm sorry if it wasn't good enough or whatever. Your mom deserves Shakespeare level stuff, you know? If I'd done it in Spanish it would've been way--"

I lean across the car and kiss the runaway words off of his lips. Elias loses himself to the kiss and loses control of the car all at once. I quickly pull away from him as he swerves to keep the Wrangler from clipping the passing truck next to us. 

I grip my seat belt so hard my knuckles pale. Elias whips his head in my direction so fast his glasses go flying off his face but he keeps his gaze steady on mine.

"Shit, are you okay?! I'm so sorry, I should've--"

"No, it's okay. It's my fault. I shouldn't have done that while you were driving."

Elias's lips perk up at the corners.

"I mean--I can pull over and we can pick up where we left off."

"Elias--"

"Look, we're technically less than a mile from where I want to take you so--give me five minutes, we'll get to where we're going, make out for a little while, and then we can decide if you're down with my surprise or not. Whaddaya say?"

I can't help but laugh at how quickly a kiss manages to monopolize Elias's attention. He waggles his eyebrows at me and breaks out the kind of puppy-dog grin that reassures me that things are okay between us after all. 

I was sitting here worried that my crying was the reason he was being distant, when he was just nervous about surprising me. I guess I still need to get used to things being "okay" between us. Given our history, it's hard to believe that we've made it this far at all.

"I say, that sounds like a plan."

"That's my girl."

***

Ten minutes later, Elias and I find ourselves pulling into a near-empty parking lot outside of a tiny surf shop bordering the ocean. Elias shuts off the car, undoes his seat belt, and is seconds way from making good on his make out promise when I lift a hand up to stop him.

"Elias--now that I think about it, why don't we do the whole surprise thing first and the make out thing second? You've got me too curious to start kissing you now."

Elias's eyebrows fall about six stories and his lips flatten with blatant disappointment.

"Can't your curiosity wait like--ten minutes? You've got this incredibly sexy, messy make-up thing going on right now and I wouldn't be a good boyfriend if I didn't play my part in making it worse."

He leans in again but I turn away from him so his kiss lands somewhere between my jaw and my ear.

"You asked me if I liked surprises and my answer is yes, but, I hate delayed surprises. You should've brought it up later on if you wanted to do this first."

I expect Elias to give up and throw his version of a tantrum like he has in the past, but instead he leaves a string of soft kisses down the length of my neck. The rush of heat from his breath grazes my skin and throws my resolve into complete and total chaos. 

Warmth ignites in my chest, seeps into my stomach, and spreads to parts of me where it hasn't reached before. My face flushes at the feeling, at the way kissing him in the small space of his car suddenly feels so intimate. 

I ease myself away from him, avoid his gaze, and stare out at the ocean so Elias can't stare at me. I'm afraid he'll see the secret things I want. That he'll spot my growing need for him underneath my sadness.

I snap out of my daze and force myself to face reality. Today's supposed to be about my mom. Nothing else.

Not the way I've missed Elias and his closeness.

Or the way our kisses are suddenly starting to feel like they're not enough.

Or all the ways I want to get so lost in him that I stop feeling anything else.

Mom would expect better of me right now.

But right now, I'm not sure how long I can keep living up to her expectations. 

***

Thank you guys so so much for reading! Since this is the first update in a while, who would I be to not leave you guys with a cliffhanger ;P? Part 2 will be up next Friday!  It has been ages and I am so thankful and excited to be writing for you guys again! For anyone who is still here to read this, thank you. Thank you for supporting this story and sticking with it all this time! I am beyond grateful!

#REALTALKQUESTIONOFTHEWEEK

1. How are you guys? How has the last year been?