Where was Ethan? This meeting in secret locations so people didn’t know they were together had its downsides. Todays being waiting for him in a field.
When he arrived she was going to talk to him about telling people so they could be seen together. Maybe somewhere a damn sight warmer than the back of her car. Although they did manage to warm each other up.
Faye tried to recall when Ethan stopped being the boy who pushed her over and brought her sweets and became the man who made her insides go gooey.
He said he loved her even then. He had learnt better ways of expressing it, but it did take some time.
***
The teenage valentine’s cards he shoved through the letterbox.
‘Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
If I must have a girlfriend
I guess you will do.’
‘I like you.
You don’t like me.
I still want to kiss you.
We are meant to be.’
She had all of them in a shoebox under her bed with every letter he’d written her while they were apart.
She ignored them at the time – too busy with her studies, her friends and going out with boys she fancied but who were in the end boys rather than grownups. No-one lasted long.
When she saw Ethan again, she realised she’d been comparing them to him, and no-one matched up.
The years of people trying to push them together brought too much pressure to be the golden couple. They decided to be together in secret to see if it worked so they could save face if it didn’t and be each other’s one that got away.
Sitting on the bonnet of her car waiting for him she admitted to herself she saw a future with him. She was bursting to ask him if he agreed.