“I don’t think we know each other well enough for you to say that,” Audrey said, attempting to keep things light.
Hallie scowled at her. “We do. Maybe we’re still getting to know each other but… you feel it, don’t you?”
What would be the point in denying it? From the moment they’d met, there had been something easy between the two of them. The more time they spent together, the easier it all felt. Audrey had never experienced anything like it, but the two of them just understood each other.
Audrey nodded. “I do. But I’m not sure what we do with that.”
“Kiss now and deal with the consequences later?” she asked hopefully.
Audrey couldn’t help laughing. She understood that hope entirely. “It’ll hurt like hell later.”
“You think it won’t hurt just because we didn’t kiss?”
“No. I do not think that. But, in three days, I can be thousands of miles away from you, clinging to the hope that us kissing would have been a nightmare, or, I can be there knowing it wasn’t and hating the distance.”
Hallie edged her fingers up the scarf wrapped around Audrey’s neck, one Tracy had given her to wear. Her eyes darted to Audrey’s mouth, lingering too long to have been unconscious. “If we kissed, Dr. Bee, I don’t think it would be a nightmare.”
“Neither do I,” Audrey murmured.
“So, I can either ache with missing your lips, or with knowing I’ll never get to kiss them.”
Audrey’s hands ran up Hallie’s back, holding her close. That was the real dilemma, wasn’t it? And, if it was going to hurt either way, wasn’t it better to have the kiss than not?
Her own eyes found Hallie’s lips and she realized just how much she’d been trying not to look at them. Full and soft. Pink and pillowy and perfect.
As if the universe was trying to make a point, a snowflake fluttered down and landed right on Hallie’s bottom lip. Whether from it or from the intensity between them, Hallie shuddered and it shot straight into Audrey. She’d never wanted to kissanyone like this before. It felt like its own driving, pounding rhythm in her body, some force greater than the two of them pushing them forward. It had allowed them to find each other, despite all odds, and, now, all they had to do was kiss. Everything would be okay if they did.
But that wasn’t real. Nothing was going to change their reality. And Audrey didn’t know if she could handle kissing Hallie and leaving her.
The benefit of never dating was never breaking up either. And she had no idea how to handle having someone like Hallie for a moment and then losing her forever. Even preemptively, it hurt like hell. She had no idea how people survived breakups.
Hallie sighed and looked down, wiping the now melted snowflake from her lip. “This probably isn’t the place for this conversation.”
Audrey stumbled over a laugh, looking around. Tracy and Dirk were still nearby. They didn’t seem to be paying them any attention, but Hallie was right. This choice wasn’t easy. There would be consequences either way, and, if they were going to kiss, Audrey wasn’t sure she wanted the very first time to be in front of Hallie’s mother and her… crush? Boyfriend? Whatever he was.
Hallie smiled at her again, still standing close, one hand on Audrey’s scarf. “I shouldn’t have—”
“I’m glad you did,” Audrey said quickly. “Sure, this whole thing is… complicated, but isn’t it better to know we were both feeling the same way than to spend the rest of our lives wondering?”
“I suppose so, but knowing the most wonderful, intelligent, and beautiful woman I’ve ever met is far away and wanting me too is a very specific form of torture.”
Hallie’s laughter was so beautiful, so much more than Audrey could have ever dreamed of hearing. She trieddesperately to commit it to memory. She knew only too well that her mind liked to throw her nightmares over happy dreams, that it would prioritize her family over the perfect woman before her to haunt her restless nights, but she hoped that, if she memorized it well enough, some day, even if only in her dreams, Hallie would come back to her.
Chapter Twenty
After almost kissing and walking back from it, Hallie was certain she should have been keeping her distance from Audrey, but she didn’t want to. They only had so much time together and, inexplicably, Audrey was feeling the exact same way she was. Sure, she’d had some inkling that Audrey liked her—she wouldn’t have even gotten close to kissing her otherwise—but she hadn’t really expected it to be so… identical. She’d thought, perhaps, that Audrey had a little physical crush on her. Given all the ways she’d been vulnerable with Hallie, perhaps that had been silly. Of course she wouldn’t have been so intimate with someone she just had a slight crush on, but it was still hard to comprehend someone like Audrey wanting her so much in spite of their circumstances.
It wasn’t as though Hallie didn’t think herself worthy or desirable. It was that Audrey was… so much bigger than her life felt. She’d been through so much and gotten so far. She was holding and surviving things Hallie couldn’t fully comprehend, things she worried she’d never be able to survive herself, butthere was Audrey doing it with grace, being so strong and human through it all. Falling for someone so beautifully real made sense. Being wanted by her in return was a little baffling.
And a little heartbreaking when she was about to be so far away.
Surely, the only course of action was to have as much of each other as they could while they were here? She understood the hesitation, though. In three days, did they try to switch to being long-distance friends? Try to ignore what had happened between them? Could she be Audrey’s friend as she dated other people after knowing what it was like to kiss her? She would try, but it wouldn’t be like other breakups. They wouldn’t have run their course. It would be so much harder to leave behind.
Could she handle a long-distance relationship? Plenty of people did, but their jobs didn't contain the freedom people suggested you needed to make them work. Plus, Audrey’s complicated feelings around Michigan needed factoring in. A relationship wouldn’t work if Audrey coming to visit her was always triggering her trauma. Hallie didn’t want to do that to her.
But she really wanted to kiss her.
They walked past a stall selling Christmas cards, and Hallie noticed Audrey didn’t have her gloves on. She’d definitely had them on before and it hadn’t gotten warmer.
