“Wait, what?” My heart, which has felt like it was carved out of stone since early this morning, gradually warms and starts beating again. A distant, faint palpitation at first. Tiny wings fluttering, followed by electric pulses that rapidly go haywire. “What do you meanwe’regoing home?Are you, are you,keeping me?”
His head tilts to one side and he plants a hand on his hip. He rolls his eyes vaguely, and when they land back on me, they’ve softened.
“I’m mad at you,” he says, his voice clear and carrying an unmistakable, unshakable certainty. “I’m worried about you. I’m upset, and I’m confused, and there’s a lot for me to unpack, but yeah, I’m keeping you.”
He walks over to the driver’s side of my car and raises his hand. I toss my keys to him, and he opens the door.
He smiles at me before he gets in. It’s a strange smile. Small and knowing with a little twist that quirks one side of his mouth. “Obviously, I’m keeping you.” His chin drops fractionally, lowering his voice. He looks up at me through steely lashes, eyes darkening microscopically, morphing into something strangely familiar—the intensity and determination I usually only see when I look in the mirror. “How many times do I have to tell you that you’re not the only one who’s obsessed?”
53
Lennon
Welieinbed,facing each other but not touching, and talk for hours. I tell him the entire story again, from the night Havi and I went to Dorothy’s right up to this morning when he found the tin.
“I want honesty, Lennon,” he says. “From tonight onwards, that’s what I want.”
“That’s what you deserve,” I promise, “and it’s what I’ll give you from now on. I swear it, Connor. I won’t lie to you again.”
“I want you to show up for yourself. Ineedyou to show up for yourself.”
“I will, Con. I’ll throw everything I have at getting better. I’ll do anything to be the man you deserve. Anything.”
We talk until I feel like I’ve been rubbed raw. Like three or four layers of my skin have been rubbed off. Like I’m the one whose chest has been cracked open.
I tell him everything, even the things that make me seem crazy. I go over them and over them until what really happened and what I wish had happened split into two separate things.
Two different things.
Mostly, though, I tell him about the vast, endless, cavernous hole that has been trying to consume me. The guilt. The regret. The remorse that Havi and I had the worst fight of our lives, and I never got a chance to make it right.
The first time I try to put it into words, it’s a garbled mess. A howl made by an animal that’s wounded. When it happens, Connor reaches across the space between us and takes my hand in his, gently containing me as I let it out.
The second time, he slides his arm under my neck and wraps his other arm around my waist, containing me more.
The third time, he crushes me into an embrace that finally feels big enough, safe enough, to secure me and hold me in place as I let the shattering pain I’ve been holding at bay have its way with me.
I cry and cry until the salt burns and I feel like there’s nothing left of me.
And then I cry some more.
I don’t notice it at first because it’s just a simple question. A random question. A seemingly insignificant question.
“What was his favorite old movie?”
I answer that and hardly notice the next one. Or the next one.
“Was he a night owl or a morning person?”
“What made him laugh?”
“What did his voice sound like?”
“What was his favorite kind of cake?”
“D’you mean actual or ass?” I answer with a wry smile.
It was Havi’s standard answer to that question.
