Back to Yesterday by Pamela Sparkman Read Free Book Online Page A

hers showcased itself. “If you don’t start watching where you’re going you’re gonna have another broken leg. Eyes in front, Charlie.”
    “I’m multi-tasking. I have great peripheral vision. No need to worry about me.”
    She scoffed like the idea was preposterous. “I’m worried about being seen with the guy who trips over his own two feet because he wasn’t paying attention. Crowds would gather, people would stare. I’m only trying to spare you the humiliation of it all.”
    “Well, that’s very kind of you.”
    “ I thought so.” She squeezed my arm. “Look at that.” She was admiring the sun setting on the horizon, looking at the sky as though she were seeing it for the first time. “It’s so beautiful,” she whispered.
    I wasn’t looking at the horizon. I was looking at her. “Sure is.”
    “What’s it like to fly, Charlie?”
    “I’m not sure I can describe it really.”
    “Then tell me what you love about it.”
    I pondered that for a moment. I had never tried to put my love of flying into words. It was always something that I felt, mostly because no one had ever asked me before.
    My eyes traveled upwards where blues, grays, oranges, reds, and yellows decorated the skyline like a beautiful canvas, an artist’s masterpiece. “Up there is like another world where you can escape the one below. Everything is simultaneously larger and smaller. When you look down, the Earth beneath you seems small. But when you look towards the vast open sky all around, you realize that there is so much more to living than the little boxes we create for ourselves. Anything seems possible when I’m soaring above the clouds. The view offers a unique perspective we’re not granted with our feet on the ground.” My gaze traveled back to Sophie and I offered an apologetic shrug. “I don’t know if that answers your question, but it’s the best I can do. I don’t think it was meant to be explained, only experienced.”
    “When you put it that way, I can understand why you love it.” She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. She nuzzled into me while we walked, resting her head on my arm. “This is nice.”
    Her body was warm against mine and she smelled of jasmine and vanilla. And that’s when I felt it. That moment of utter awareness when your heart, mind, body, and soul agree on the exact same thing at the exact same time.
    I, Charles Edward Hudson, was falling in love.
    “Are you ever afraid?”
    “Of flying?” I asked. “No.”
    “Are you afraid of anything?”
    “I’m human, Sophie. I have fears like anyone else.”
    “What fears?”
    I didn’t want to get into the things that scared me and we had reached her house by then, so I said, “Some other time perhaps.”
    We stood facing one another a moment longer than we ever had. The magic in the air still crackled around us and it left me feeling brave enough that I swept a loose curl behind her ear. “I wondered what it would feel like.”
    “What?” she asked.
    “This.” Slowly, gently, I kissed her, offering her a taste of what I could give. My heart was thumping, my pulse was racing, and I felt that tingling warm sensation in my stomach that I only ever felt when I was flying across majestic landscapes or over the wide ocean blue.
    Pulling back, I traced the seam of her lips with the pad of my thumb, memorizing their softness, their taste.
    “Are you in love with me yet, Sophie?”
    In a voice that had lost its confidence, she said, “Not yet.”
    “How much longer you think?”
    “It could be a while,” she whimpered. Her chest rose and fell in quick, shallow breaths. “I need to help my mother start dinner.”
    “Sophie.”
    She pulled away. “I need to go inside. See you tomorrow?” she asked, voice trembling. She cleared her throat and turned away, fidgeting with the lock, and swinging the gate open.
    I placed my hands inside my front pockets, took a step back, and crashed back to Earth. “Same time, same