Something about him is making me smile. His dorky gestures, the impossible giddiness deep within those emerald eyes. The way he looks at people like they are his whole world. What a silly gentleman. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you can see the sheen of melting golden light simmering around him in a delicate veil of unexplainable glorification. He’s a star. Maybe someday I’ll get to feel his soft flannel, or let his old, rugged boots wrap around my feet. His velvety hat would lay very fine on my own head, I suppose, and I’m sure that the sound of his approval, murmured through a smile with lips tucked in at the corners, will be gentle and caring when I ask. With dimples deeper than an endless abyss, he laughs, throwing his arms wide. I fall against his chest, breathing in the sweet scent of peppermint -- the smell he says he likes to have around to remind him of home. Then he wraps his arms around me until even the tips of his long, strong fingers that I like to watch drum against the tabletops are around my shoulders, his arms stretching far enough to reach around the distance across my back.
He speaks of traveling, and of music, and I catch myself unable to keep from grinning, even though he can’t see my face. His words will get slower and slower, I know, until he pauses for a long stretch of infinite seconds that are never long enough for either of us where we stay in each other’s embrace, and then he’ll whisper a simple remark that he imagines to be humorous on a degree of disability to breathe through  laughter. And even though he’s overconfident about his jokes and could never crack a great one to save his life, I’ll still giggle and tell him he’s weird, and he’ll smile in victory. But this time he doesn’t slow, and I find myself getting impatient, waiting for the moment I can tease him for absolutely failing at comedy and then realize that it actually was a little funny, but only because I understand his emotional(though charming) personality. Yet he keeps talking, telling me of an amazing world beyond my small hometown, and I bite my tongue, forgetting my impatience as I listen to his lost words. The passion in his speech is exhilarating. He’s the kind of boy to make your knees weak with his choice of story, as it makes you wonder how he could have thought of such things in such circumstances. I lean against his beating heart and close my eyes when his tangent finally slurs, and then I’m on-edge again, awaiting his lovely foolishness.
But he surprises me, and although  it’s definitely not a first amongst all of the surprisement he’s slapped in my face, I am taken aback. Not by the softness in his raspy accent, not by the way he leans his head down onto my shoulder and holds me as if I am life.
I am not affected by these things. What strikes me is his next choice of words, which he has never spoken to me directly, until now. He tightens his strong arms around my middle and presses the sentence to my ear, a ticklish feeling that I could blame for the butterflies erupting in my chest, and I breathe out a smile, hugging him back.
“I love you, too,” I say.