Loved - A Novel by Kimberly Novosel

empty when he didn’t hand it back to me. I reached out and held his hand. We were quiet for a few minutes.
                  “I’m not saying no or anything,” he said finally. “I just don’t know yet what I want. I do love you.  That’s all I can say right now.”
                  “I understand,” I said.
                  “You’re cold.  Let’s get back.”
                  I tucked the Camel coupon from his cigarette pack into my pocket, a souvenir of the moment where he said maybe . I would hold on to his maybe for as long as it would take, even forever.
     
     
                  November, 2000.
                  I went home for a long weekend to take care of some things regardingmy pending graduation and to see my friends. It was weird walking down the high school’s hallways again. I remembered emptying out my locker just a few months before with Chase standing next to me, watching me prepare to leave him. Even though I always came back, he said he was always watching me leave.
                  On the video we made documenting my last day of school, Chase was holding the camera while I put notebooks and scraps of paper into my backpack.
                  “I’m picking your nose,” he said, his finger positioned to create that illusion on the video. 
                  “Okay,” I laughed, un-sticking pictures from the inside of my locker door and putting them into my backpack: a new one of Chase and me, one of the Dixie Chicks, one of me with Meredith and the girls.
                  “Now I’m staring at your ass,” he said, positioning the camera on my white shorts.
                  “Umm, Ok,” I said, smiling at him, a glimmer in my eyes.
    Chase appeared in front of me then. It was between classes and the halls were filled with students talking noisily and slamming lockers. He was holding a white carnation in his hand. He handed me the flower and bowed a little and he kissed me. I could feel the other students’ eyes on us. Did they know what a special moment this was? That I wasn’t just another student kissing her boyfriend in the hall? Looking closer, I realized he had written, “I love you” on every petal on the flower. He also handed me a letter, which I read in the car before I left the school parking lot.
     
    Kitten,
    Welcome hom e, baby.  I don’t really know what to say.  I’ve missed you so fuckin’ much.  It’s not even something I can describe with a pen and paper.  I love you.  I guess I always have, and I know I always will.  I’m sorry for what we’ve been through in the past few months, but this is new for both of us, right?  We’re an army.  We’re a tank.  We can’t be stopped, and I won’t take that chance.
     
                  I didn’t know how we could be together or if we could make it work. But there was one thing I was sure of—there was no one like Chase in all the world.
                 
                  We saw each other again when I came home for Christmas. He gave me a gray garden statue of an angel with the word “Faith” engraved at her feet. He said he walked by her and thought, “Kit has to have that!” I loved her. She was sad and romantic and hopeful just like me. There were a lot of things I cared about that Chase didn’t—Jesus, country music, clothes—but he loved me for exactly who I was.He still saw me even as I changed. He still chose me. He also gave me the infinity ring he always wore on his pinky finger, the ring he hardly ever took off.  I wore it on my left hand.
                  I knew what he wanted from me. I told him I was ready and we set a date for a couple of nights before I was set to leave for Nashville again. At home and getting ready, I was so scared I thought I might be sick. We had fooled around plenty over the last year but I was nervous