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work in progress

She walked through the door with her eyes pasted to an unfolded map, and when she looked up, the path of her gaze ended at my hand.

"Let's go!" she blurted with wide eyes jumping to meet mine. Before I could say anything, she grabbed my hand and turned to run out. My heart was beating like crazy, and I could hear my pulse in my ears. "Keep up, smalls!" My god, her smile was illuminating even in the dark of the night. The quiet that surrounded us was pestered by our panting, and we sprinted until we came to a van. The van was painted all sorts of blues and purples and greens in a tie-dye pattern, and there were dinner plate sized peace signs painted on messily. I stood there with the corners of my mouth reaching for my ears as I realized what was about to happen.

"Are you sure about this, Al?" I asked so quietly that I barely felt it escape my mouth. I bit my lip really hard after I realized how much I really wish that I hadn't said that.

"Nothing is ever set in stone, Gus." She walked over to me and kissed my forehead and laced her fingers with mine. "Let's get out of here." Our fingers unraveled, and we both ran to the van laughing.

We drove for hours listening to mixtapes that we'd spent days working on at a time. Each song reminded me of what we were doing when we discovered it, and when the song "Talk is Cheap" by Chet Faker played I remembered our clothes on the floor and her hands in my hair. I knew that she did too because she pulled over to the side of the road and took the key from the ignition. She unbuckled her seat belt and climbed over to me, looking in my eyes as she traced the key up and down my throat.  Her hand slid past my thigh to release the seat's back, and she relaxed on top of me and pressed her lips to mine. Kisses were trailed from my lips to my neck, and then stopped abruptly. Her head was on my shoulder, and she was curled up on my lap. She was crying, and I didn't know what to say. So I just held her until she fell asleep.

In the morning, her hands were cold, and she put one of them up my shirt to touch my chest.

"I love this," she said as she felt my heart beat.