I laughed. I wasn’t even sure what he meant by that. A few moments later I heard the creak of the trellis. I didn’t look up to see him coming down after me. The last thing I needed was to be distracted by him.
I tried to focus on my hands, but every now and then I looked down at my feet, reminding myself how high I was. When I was finally close enough to the bottom, I jumped. The grass was sleek and I slid as soon as my feet touched the ground, landing hard on my ass. “Shit.”
James laughed as he jumped down gracefully beside me. He put his hand out for me, but instead of taking it, I grabbed my shoes, got up by myself, and started running.
“You don’t know where we’re going!” He called after me.
It was only a matter of seconds before I felt his arms around my waist, lifting me in the air. He twirled me around and then pulled me against his chest.
“You have a huge grass stain on that perfect little ass of yours,” he whispered in my ear.
I laughed and put my hand on his chest so I could lean back and see his face. “Why is it that I can’t picture you here at all? I mean, I can out here. But this is the first time you’ve seemed like yourself all night.”
“None of this is me. I don’t belong here anymore. I’m not sure I ever did.”
“Did you spend a lot of time outside when you were younger?”
“I keep trying to show you.” He let go of my waist, bent his knees slightly, and tapped his back. “Hop on.”
I laughed and jumped onto his back. I never minded running around barefoot, but it was sweet that he didn’t want me to have to.
He alternated kissing the crook of my elbow and pointing out things in his mother’s garden as we walked farther away from the house. Soon all the lights from the house were barely visible and only the moonlight and stars were guiding us.
“Where are we going?” I whispered.
“You don’t have to whisper, we’re all alone. There it is,” he said, pointing in front of us.
I squinted my eyes. It was hard seeing in the dark. “I don’t…” I stopped when I saw it. “Is that a tree house?”
He kissed the crook of my elbow again. “Of all the things here, this was the only thing that was truly mine. Jen and Rob never even came up unless I invited them to.” He stopped at the base of the tree trunk and let me slide off his back. “I was barely ever in my room in the house. I used to come here all the time. You have no idea how many times I nagged my parents to let me get a zip line from my window to the tree house.”
I laughed. “So why was this your special place?”
“Hmm.”
“What? Is this where you used to fantasize about kissing girls and plotting evil little boy pranks?”
He wrapped his arms around me and kissed the back of my neck. “For not having any brothers, you have it spot on.”
I laughed. I thought he might say something else, but when he didn’t, I looked back up at the tree house. “Am I allowed to come up? Or are no girls allowed?”
He laughed. “Let me see if it’s still stable.” I watched him climb up the steps that were nailed into the side of the tree. The boards creaked when he stepped up into the house, but nothing broke. He put his hand down. “Penny Taylor, I’m officially inviting you up into my tree house.”
I laughed and climbed the little ladder. I grabbed his hand and he helped pull me up inside. This was more what I was expecting his room to be like. I laughed as I looked around at all the toys and comic books on the floor. There were actual windows in the little tree house, which had somehow preserved everything despite the hole in the floor. There were even pictures that lined the wall. Photos of James as a happy little boy. He had the same facial features, in an adorable little boy kind of way. “You’re so cute. Is this you and Mason?”
James laughed and unpinned the picture from the wall. “Yeah. That was taken at summer camp one year.”
I laughed and snatched the picture from him. They both had braces and looked so scrawny, nothing like either of them did now. “I have to show this to Bee.” I looked up at him and he was smiling at me. “I’m gaining the best family I could possibly ask for, you know. Not your parents, obviously. But your siblings and your friends. I love all of them so much.”
He scratched the scruff along his jaw line. “You have such a positive way of thinking about everything.”
“That’s what they are. Our family.”
He turned away from me and gazed at the other pictures on the walls. I would have perused the other pictures too, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his face. Even his favorite place growing up seemed to make him sad now. I wanted to joke around with him about how he barely even fit in his old tree house. But I didn’t want to push him. It seemed like he had something to say. So I just waited, staring at his perfect features in the moonlight.
He sighed and leaned his head against the wooden boards behind him. “When you asked me why I preferred here over my bedroom, I just…” His voice trailed off. “It was the only place where I felt like I could breathe.”
He had said that to me before. That he felt like he could finally breathe again when he was with me. I moved onto his lap, straddling him. “So, now I’m your tree house?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.” He placed a soft kiss against my lips, cradling the back of my head in his hand.
“How would you put it?”
He grabbed my lower back and rotated us so that my back was against the wooden floor and he was on top of me. “You’re my life, my heart, my soul, my everything.”
He was so sweet. But for some reason all I could seem to focus on was how handsome he looked with the moonlight streaming in through the branches of the trees, dancing across his face. I spread my legs even wider and pulled my dress up my thighs.