Page 88 of Catching Sparkles

There was an absolutely massive oak tree, decades old easily, blanketing the backyard with its canopy cover, with a small stone bench at the base of the trunk. There was a whimsical look to it, like someone had once sat there surrounded by a lovingly-tended garden. But I was too afraid to roam that far from the house where I couldn’t hear any cries for help, so I settled down on the dirt, hanging my legs into the window well.

There were empty flower beds on either side of the large hole that led down to the basement window, filled with old mulch and lined with planks of wood. I could tell whoever had once lived in this house, probably long before I was born, had loved it once. I suddenly understood Kendall’s aversion to having it demolished a lot more clearly. It was sad.

When I finally heard rustling from the basement and watched Kendall’s hand push the window back open, I let out a sigh of relief.

“All good,” he informed me as he carefully put his legs through and slid out to the ground. “No issues.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Yep,” he said, brandishing a dingy, dirty item I could barely identify in the dim light.

“A book?”

“It’s a journal,” he informed me sheepishly. “I used to write in it all the time, but I kept it here so my dad wouldn’t find it.”

“Oh,” I said. I could understand the sentimentality in that, at least. And it certainly wasn’t sketchy or dangerous. “Anything about me in there?” I joked, and he snorted.

“Of course not. Do you think adolescent Kendall Austin spent any time thinking about adolescent Rhys Kensington?”

I chuckled, trying not to smirk. I was pretty sure it’d been obvious to anyone who’d ever been in the same room as the two of us that he’d had a comically giant crush on me. If only I’d known how everything would turn out.

“Are you going to read the really juicy parts to me?”

“Maybe when we get home,” he responded, stepping up onto the boulder in the corner of the well using it to lift himself back to ground level. The beam of his phone’s flashlight passed over the wooden lining of the flower bed to our left, briefly illuminating something that caught my eye.

“Hey, shine that back over here,” I requested, gesturing to it. When he looked at where I was pointing, he immediately flushed a bright pink and fumbled with his phone to cut the light off entirely.

“Can we go now? I got what I came for.”

“Yeah, in a second. I thought I saw something.”

“You didn’t,” he insisted, but the embarrassment dripping off his words and lighting up his face only magnified my curiosity.

Digging my own phone out of my pocket and activating the flashlight, I shined the beam onto the plank. There were letters carved into wood there.

‘K.A + R.K’

My jaw dropped, my eyes widening as if my brain wanted to absorb and record the visual in as much painstaking detail as it possibly could, while Kendall groaned in embarrassment, covering his face with his palms.

“I totally forgot that was there,” he admitted, his voice muffled by his own hands.

“This is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” I breathed out, brushing my fingers over the texture reverently. “The second cutest,” I clarified, glancing up to watch him part his fingers to peek at me with one eye through the gap. “Yes, I meant you.”

“Oh my god,” he whined. “What are you doing?”

“Taking my new lock screen photo,” I responded, lining up the picture so the carving was perfectly lit up by my flash. I felt as light as air, like my entire form was made of joy and I’d be completely impervious to fear and shame and doubt for the rest of my life.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“You have no idea how nice it feels to not be the one dying of embarrassment for once.”

A laugh bubbled out through his hands, but he shook his head. “I can’t believe you saw that.”

I braced my hand onto the wooden plank to help heave myself up, staring at him. He was beautiful, the moonlight spilling through the treetop glowing on his hair like a halo. I wished I could talk to the younger Kendall who’d carved our initials into his secret little sanctuary and tell him everything would be okay. I wished I could tell him not to worry so much and not to be so sad, because one day he would grow into the most amazing person I’d ever known, and I would be so fucking in love with him that I could hardly stand it.

My breath caught in my throat, nearly choking me as my vision zeroed into one tiny pinprick. My heart smacked up into my ribs, one single crack like I’d been struck with a baseball bat. My palm slipped off the wood, the ragged edge slicing through my skin in a messy rip.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh, Jesus fucking Christ.