A Story of a Girl
Because she hates talking about herself, lemme tell you a little bit about @AStoryOfAGirl...
Emily Anne Rhodes was born in small town Illinois. She grew up on a farm with four older brothers and threw mud pies from the branches of a mighty oak. Though she tries to hide it now that she's an adult, she's still a little silly when she lets her hair down.
She's wholesome and down-to-earth. It's like nothing phases her. I pretend I'm that way - that I let it all roll off my back and I'm Mr. Easy-Going - but Emily just is. She's all business in her skirts and heels, but when she settles into sweats and fuzzy socks...
She'd tell you it was being raised with brothers who tormented her. Kenny and James used to put lizards in her bed and frogs in her pockets. Most girls scream at spiders, but not Em. Emily catches them with sheets of paper and dumps them outside. She walks it like she talks it.
Speaking of walking. How does she walk in those silly heels she wears? Oh. Wait. That's right. She doesn't. She's like Bambi on stilts; teetering around, fine one minute and about to trip the next. Maybe I'm the reason she's always falling. You know maybe she's just swooning over me. I know what you're thinking - "Sure, TinMan, keep right on thinking that..." Whatever the case, she's adorably clumsy.
Emily tripping over her own two feet was actually how we finally shared our first kiss. She was reading a chapter of my newest manuscript as she walked into the living room and she tripped over the edge of an old rug. Hell, I've tripped over the damn thing myself enough that I've thought more than once about getting rid of it... or I had thought about it. Now it's a memory and something I'll always cherish because it reminds me of her.
Anyway, back to the point - the kiss. Emily tripped and I stood with the intention of keeping her on her feet, because it was the right thing to do, you know? We'd been blowing hot and cold toward each other for quite some time and there was this delicious tension between us. You know that feeling you get - that little shock? - when you touch someone after scuffing your feet on the carpet? That's Emily. She's a shock to the system. She's that thrilling little tingle you feel all the way down to your toes.
So, I reach to catch her and we fall to the floor in a tangle of limbs with her on top of me and my arms around her waist, her wild mop of golden hair falling in a curtain around us. And I did it. I reached up and cupped her face, staring into wide and confused baby-blues and I did it. I kissed her.
It was slow and sweet. Soft. God, her lips are so incredibly soft and full. She should've slapped me if I'm honest. I had no right, no reason, to kiss her. Yet, there we were - on the old rug - melted together like spilled candle wax and making out like teenagers.
Can it perverts. Nothing else happened.
We just kissed until we weren't kissing anymore. She went into the bathroom, blushing and flustered. I stood up and rubbed my hands over my face and through my hair. And - for two explosive weeks after that - we pretended like it didn't happen.
It's been written that a kiss is like punctuation. It's the period that ends a sentence, a question mark that breeds confusion or an exclamation point that demands your attention.
Emily is an exclamation point. Her presence demands attention even though her words and gestures make others the focus. That two weeks was longer than the months before that I'd been on my own. She rattled my cage and I wanted - no needed - more.
It became a question of how to get it. Send her flowers? No. Too cliche. Ask her to dinner? We rarely ate apart. That wasn't new. It wasn't different. I needed something to show her the spark she'd kindled in me. So I did what I do best.
I wrote. I wrote for her and only her. I wrote a story, longhand, and left it on her pillow with a bar of her favorite chocolate.
A story of a girl... and the man who was feeling things he didn't think he'd ever feel again.
Things he'd never felt before.
For her.