“Nothing to be nervous about. She’s here through the gala. You’ve got more days of me,” I say, going over to sit in the rocking chair. I know I should tell him about Mom’s offer, but it doesn’t appear to be the right time.
“Is that a threat or a promise?” he asks.
God, I could stare at that smirk forever.
“So, what was your plan if Iwasleaving? Did you come down here to hide all my stuff? Steal my suitcases like you could’ve on that second night?”
He dips his head, hides his blush. “No, nothing like that. It’s just that I realized when you go back to New York, I’ll be here or in Texas and you’ll be there or jet-setting around the world and, I don’t know, dude. Distance and I aren’t exactly good buddies.”
He says distance, but I think he meanslong distance. He may be over Natalia, she may be over him, but the distrust she left behind lingers in the depths of his heart. Now I really can’t tell him about what Mom said. There’s no use letting him worry about it.
I have too much to think about. On one hand, with my accounts unfrozen, I could easily get him into the city for my party before having him fly home on New Year’s Day, but… Again, what would Bentley say? What would the internet trolls say? I don’t want to bring him under the lens of scrutiny.
We can’t hide behind the excuse that we’re in it for the social and commercial gain. I can’t pretend I’m removed from it somehow. We’re a bundle of raw, hot emotion.
There’s a fantasy world where I stay and celebrate in Wind River. Maybe we all get wasted at the Blacktop Tavern, sing bad karaoke, and I pretend my old life doesn’t exist for a little while longer, but wouldn’t that just be delaying the inevitable?
Both poles have a strong pull, and I’m being torn between them.
“We’ll figure it out,” I say. “We’ll have to, won’t we?”
He nods, reopens the book in his hands, and shows me the notes. “When did you do these?”
“How do you know I did them?” I ask.
He shrugs. “The handwriting and the doodles in your sketchbook. They are almost identical to the ones in here. Of course, the stuff in your sketchbook is a bit more refined now. More mature. Still, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together.”
“I was probably ten,” I say and I tell him about Thanksgivings, the agreement me and Gramps made, and all the books I read by reading light on car rides home.
“You were an English major in the making,” he jokes.
“I don’t think I was doing any critical analysis. I just liked stories.”
He stacks the book back on the pile, careful not to disrupt the balance of all the other titles nearby. “But you don’t want to write your own like your mom?”
“Nope. Never,” I say. “This is going to sound silly, but I always loved the big events in those books. The Jane Austen-esque parties, the big dance scene inLittle Women, or Fezziwig’s annual Christmas Ball. They set the stage for so many interesting interactions, different people coming together, making new connections. I think that’s what I love about planning events. I make space for new stories to start and old stories to collect new meaning.”
“That’s beautiful.” He flashes me a winsome smile.
“Thanks. But I’m so afraid of doing anything in a true, professional capacity because what if I fail? Failure seems to follow me everywhere these days. Success is the only marker of worth in my family. I’ve always been so afraid of what people and my parents would think if I put my mind to something and it fell apart.” Prince-a-Palooza comes to mind too quickly.
“And now?” he asks.
“Now I’m still scared, but coming around to the idea of being a bit more fearless,” I say. “Thanks for that, by the way.” He shrugs it off. “What about you?”
“I think I want to follow in my mom’s former path and do the academic circuit, while working on a novel or a collection of short stories. Maybe I’ll do Spanish-to-English translations? I mean, that’s the dream, but we’ll see what happens, what grad schools will have me,” he says, then stands suddenly. “My fear is that I’ll always live in this uncertain in-between place. Forever a student. Forever on the margins. That I’ll never be enough.” I want to say that he’s enough for me. That he always will be. But I don’t want to interrupt.
“I don’t know if I can do it. Any of it,” he admits shakily. “I just don’t know, dude.”
“I think you might be the hardest-working person I’ve ever met,” I say. Compliments have never come naturally to me, and yet with him, they flow freely without worry. “There’s noif. Youcando it. I know it.”
“It’s the dollars and cents of it all that scares me. How will I work off the loans? How will I make money? It’s not a surefire pursuit, and what jobs are out there for us now anyway?” he asks. “Well, notusas in you and me. You don’t really need a…” His voice trails off. “Can we stay away from the overarching-life-goals talk for tonight and just be together? These next few days are going to be hectic getting everything settled for the gala, and your grandparents are out…”
He doesn’t need to ask me twice. I go to him, braid my arms around his back, and tug him close. He smells of laundry detergent and cranberry hand soap. I give each of his cheeks a kiss before planting one on his lips.
He gasps into me as if I’m a balloon he’s trying to inflate. The longer we hold there, the more it’s like I’m levitating over the ground, but still fully in my body. This isn’t the anxiety-attack float I’ve become accustomed to. This is the out-of-body magical float that feels amazing.
With both hands firmly on his pecs, I press him down onto his back on top of the soft gray duvet lining my bed, a welcome change from the hard Great Hall floor. I straddle his hips and take off my shirt, careful not to crack my head on the bunk above, before helping him out of his pants.
