Chapter Twenty-Four: When You Hold My Hand, You Hold My Heart.

Chapter 24
My weekend home was refreshing and exactly what I needed to move into the slow adjustment of college life. It was amazing how your perspective of things can change in two short weeks. Home was cozier, the food was tastier, my parents were lovelier, my town was prettier. It was good to be back.

Darin and I saw each other as much as we could over that weekend. Instead of going straight home Friday evening when he got back to town, he came to my house first. We hugged and immediately started talking ninety to nothing. He looked different. He seemed older. He had changed so much in those little two weeks. Oh, but he smelled the same. I missed that smell.

We had plans with both of our families all weekend, so we saw each other every evening of the weekend. Saturday night came and after a movie and dinner, my parents retired back to the bedroom for sleep. We were all alone and we could finally talk. Face to face. Flesh to flesh. We talked about everything. We laughed so hard and I was relieved to see that he still looked at me the same way. I knew it was still there. It was getting late and we sat smiling and chatting - not wanting to leave each other and making every excuse not to.

I looked at the TV as it read “Proscan” scrolling across the screen over and over. The movie had been over for over half an hour, and we had left it on – not even realizing nothing was playing. As I laughed about the blank TV, I felt him coming closer and he every so slyly slipped his hand into mine.

I just about died.

I’m sure my face turned 1,000 shades of red and I didn’t really know what to do. I just stared at him and smiled…and then rambled on about something else to break the awkward silence that I am sure was only awkward to me. Darin and I had been more than friends for quite a while, but we had never, ever had any sort of a physical relationship. We hugged when he went for college, but that was about it. I sat in disbelief and confusion as we held hands. I knew what we had established weeks previous at Denny’s and knew we weren’t becoming a couple anytime soon, but I also knew it felt right. It felt amazing and there was no other place in the entire world I would have rather been than right there, on my parents brown leather couch, holding hands with the guy I thought so much of.

I never wanted to let go.

But…eventually I had to. It was time for Darin to go home and we walked hand in hand to the door. We never really acknowledged that we were holding hands – we just kind of ignored it. As if our hands had minds of their own and were doing their own thing, separate from our minds. All I knew is that I loved it, and I wanted to hold his hand all the time. We held hands again on Sunday afternoon before we had to say goodbye again. I never grabbed his hand, though. I always waited for him to grab mine….which never took him long once we were alone.

As soon as I pulled back into the parking lot at school, I flew up the flights of stairs, threw myself through Amber’s door and fell into the floor.

“What on earth are you doing?” she asked.

“He. Held. My. HAND!” I gushed.

She just about died – screaming and laughing so hard. It was late and I was afraid she was going to wake everyone up, but she didn’t care. She wanted to know every last detail and I beamed as I told her. We talked for an hour and a half about the weekend and she suddenly got a serious smile on her face and said, “So….what does this mean?”

I stopped dead in my tracks, looked at her with a confused expression on my face, put my hands on my face and said, “I have no idea.”

Oh my goodness. What did this mean?