A Daydream Away

Alex’s POV

You know those stupid love poems that you always see on the internet that never seem to make any sense and are kind of just super annoying? Well, when you’re lying in bed at three in the morning with your arms wrapped around the person you love, all of them suddenly make perfect sense.
I combed his hair with my fingers as his head rested on my bare chest. Every once in a while, he’d snort a little bit from a dream and I’d have to keep myself from laughing at him. It was a perfect moment.
I had a wonderful view of the window from where I was seated, and the stars were twinkling brightly in the dark Baltimore sky.
Instead of sleeping, I started matching up every star with a reason that I loved Jack Barakat.
His smile…
His laugh…
The way he says good morning…
How he looks when he answers a question correctly in class…
I was doing great, but then I ran out of stars.
So I looked at him and wrote songs in my head, trying to somehow do his beauty justice.
I drew circles on the small of his back with my fingers and counted his eyelashes, trying my hardest to believe he was real.
I finally trusted myself enough to sleep for a while, hoping that I wasn’t just going to fall out of a dream.

I was startled awake by a peck on the lips and a giggle in my ear.
“Ew, morning breath.” I murmured in my sleepy haze. Jack stuck his tongue out at me but didn’t bother moving from the position he was in.
“Once, there was a bird.” Jack started.
“That’s great babe.” I responded, laughing at his childish manner.
“No, you have to continue the story. Duh.” He said, acting more like he was like a 7 year old as opposed to a 17 year old.
“Okay… this bird was flying home from work.”
“He was a plumber.”
I stifled a laugh, trying to come up with a creative enough response to please him. “Today was his daughter’s birthday and he wasn’t sure what to do.”
“So he ate her.”
I burst out laughing in spite of myself. “Are you even real?” I laughed out, slipping my fingers through his.
“Nope. I’m just a figment of your imagination.” He responded, kissing along my jaw bone.
“Damn. Guess I’ll have to get a real life boyfriend, huh?” I groaned, pretending to pout.
“Yeah, sucks for you.” He shrugged, playing with the tips of my fingers.
I yawned, then quickly sat up, forcing Jack to roll off of me. I swung my feet off of his bed and quickly ruffled my hair and made my way for his bedroom door.
“What’re you doing?” Jack asked, half hanging off of the bed.
“Going to find myself a real life boyfriend.” I joked, turning to leave.
When I heard him scramble up off of the bed, I picked my pace up and bit my lip to keep myself from laughing.
“Baby come back to me!” Jack sang as he chased me down the stairs.
I was two steps away from the last stair step when his arms wrapped around my waist, pulling me to a stop.
“Oh hey there.” I smiled.
“Don’t leave. I’m real.” He squeezed my stomach gently “See!” His lips fluttered against my neck as he spoke and the familiar tingle in my spine made its way back home.
“I’m not going anywhere.” I smiled, slowly turning around to face him.
I tapped my nose with his and closed my eyes, breathing in his morning scent. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but neither were we.
“How did we manage to end up like this?” He asked, leaning his head away.
“What do you mean?”
His smile slowly thickened and the look in his eyes grew hopeful. “You’ve liked me for ages and I’ve liked you for a little less than a year. We got seated together in history, but before that you gave me a ride home because it was raining. Imagine if it wasn’t raining? Imagine if I hadn’t walked out of school early? Imagine if you took a different route home that day? Would I still be standing here with you?” Jack sucked in a deep breath.
“We’ve been bullied and torn apart so many times and yet we just keep getting glued back together. I’ve been running my whole life from who I am and then you show up and you’re like the finish line and I finally realize why I’ve been running. And I just collapse to you, exhausted from this fight but you don’t care. You just take me in like I’m not some lost and confused boy. What if you hadn’t done that? What if I just ran right past you?”
I gazed at him, listening as his voice grew worrisome. His eyes tore away from mine and his brow furrowed, like he was trying to figure out some problem that hadn’t occurred to me yet.
“Babe” I moved my hand up and ran my thumb along his jawline “don’t get worked up over this. I’m here. I am right here. We don’t have to imagine what would’ve happened if something went differently, because it didn’t and we are together. Right now.” I kissed his forehead, hoping he believed me.
He get out a breath, and then a laugh, and then so many more that soon it was only us to, wrapped up in each other in a fit of laughter, high and drunk at the same time but in the right kind of ways. I felt fearless. I felt like I could take him out to and movie, any bar, any restaurant, or any store and zip my fingers through his and it wouldn’t even matter. Who cares if they stared? Who cares if all the Max’s in the world attacked us at once? So what if we were small people on this big earth? With him, I felt like we could take the world by storm, and it wouldn’t be that hard.
“I love you.” He said to me, still laughing, still high, still drunk, still beautiful.
“I love you too.”
And I did.

Notes