The Search for Lily Myers ✓

46 | Grow As We Go

When Amelia woke up one morning, happened to glance at the calendar on her phone, and realized that there were only twelve days left until Christmas, a tender sadness tugged at her heartstrings. She immediately got out of bed to get changed.

Thirty minutes later, she was pulling her car into Henry's driveway.

She hadn't actually known if he would be home—she hadn't asked—and with his schoolwork finally wrapped up for the semester, she wasn't sure if he might be off visiting Lily for longer stretches of time. But his car was here and through the front window she could see the lights sparkling on their Christmas tree.

Maybe it wasn't smart to drive here before she knew what she wanted to say, but overthinking also wasn't doing her much good lately. Hopefully, the right words would come to her this time once she saw him.

While getting dressed, she hadn't consciously reached for that sweatshirt he'd given her weeks ago. She owned an excessive number of them, so she hadn't even realized which one it was until she was pulling it over her head and was suddenly wrapped up in the faint yet cozy scent of his cologne. It made her more certain that she was tired of nursing her wounds alone, that she had processed her pain enough by now to be capable of treating it as something that didn't have to exist exclusively of Lily's or Henry's or anyone else's.

And she didn't want to spend the holiday season feeling miserable. She wanted to spend it with her boyfriend.

So she rang the doorbell and held her breath, hoping that he would answer quickly and wasn't upstairs taking a shower or anything of the sort.

He wasn't upstairs. The door opened just a few seconds after she rang and there he was, dressed simply in a tee shirt and sweatpants like he had no intention of leaving the house today, hair messy and glasses slightly askew.

And when he smiled, Amelia smiled too.

"Can we talk?" she asked.

His response wasn't a verbal one. Henry offered his hand to her and when she took it, he carefully drew her through the doorway and right into his arms. And he was hugging her like he'd thought she might never come back and she was melting into his embrace, lifting her arms to drape around the back of his neck. She felt warmth all throughout herself, like the blood in her veins was liquid gold, and she wondered what she had been so nervous about in the first place. Her cheeks were roses by the time he gave her a kiss on her forehead.

"You don't even know what I came here to talk about," she murmured.

"You were looking rather optimistic at the door," he explained, his breath a flutter against her skin. "So I thought it was safe to assume you aren't here to break up with me. That's going to be very awkward if you are."

She tilted her chin up towards him, close enough now that the tip of her nose rubbed against his, but their lips didn't meet yet. "I'm definitely not here to break up with you."

With that settled, they situated themselves on the couch to get comfortable for a conversation that could take minutes or hours. It wasn't difficult at all to get comfortable—there were multiple throw blankets draped over the back of the cushions and she shifted close enough toward Henry to rest in the crook of his arm, to drape her legs over his lap.

If he was irked about her wanting to cuddle before outright apologizing for the fact that she'd in essence been ignoring him, he didn't let it on at all. His delicate fingers traveled over her thighs, but it was more comforting than outright sensual, even if her heart did thump a couple of extra times in her chest. Amelia wasn't sure if the reassurance was more for herself or for him or if it even mattered since it was needed sorely by them both.