She doesn’t step back when she’s finished. She plants a closed mouth kiss on my lips, then moves to my chin. She kisses the side of my jaw, then underneath, when I tilt my face shamelessly formore. Her lips pepper my throat, eventually landing at the hollow, then traveling back up to my pulse. She holds them there longest, feeling the evidence of my thrashing heart.
She puts a little bit of space between us and cups my face. I’m barely breathing. This is what it’s like to be dead. The night is so quiet around us. It’s late, but not that late. There should be some kind of noise or movement, or anything. There’s not. It’s one of those moments that feels like it’s just us left in the world.
I tilt my head up and direct my eyes at the only place it’s safe to look. The stars. Even they seem brighter, more intense, more beautiful.
“That didn’t feel like a pity kiss to me.” Fawnie manages to make those words sound utterly sincere, all while being a total brat. “Now that I’ve said sorry and I promise not to say it again, I need to tell you one more thing.” Her eyes are so bright. So beautiful. The stars have nothing on her. “You can be scared nowand hold out your hand to me and I’ll take it. I’ll hold onto it. I’ll hold you because Iwantto. For no other reason, I swear.”
I curl back into myself, hesitating and afraid that this woman could burn me far worse than real flames ever could. The logical thing to do would be to chase her away, but what I imagine instead is her arms wrapped around me. My lips are still tingling. My pulse hammers wildly like it’s trying to escape my skin and run straight back to her. I see her little apartment, the kitchen overflowing with all those cookies. Coffee. Staying for a little while and not being an asshole. Finding out that it’s possible to beseenand not die from it.
In the next instant, those images drop from the stars and rain down around me. They’re not practical or right or real. Even if they could be, theycan’t. It’s not right. It’s not right because she could break me. I could break her, and she’d hate me forever.
I can’t. I just… can’t.
“Do you have any idea what kind of betrayal this would be to your father?” It’s pathetic. I know. “Even if it wasn’t, if I wasn’t older than you, if a thousand other things weren’t true, it still wouldn’t work. Life crushes you. Dreams don’t come true. People fail. Love is a flawed notion created by society just like every other system, to control people. I’m too broken and too flawed to be a proper cog. I always have been. Even if our lives were perfect and we still somehow came together, we’re too different and that will only lead to harm and heartbreak for you. You’re Preacher’s daughter and he’s the one man who saw me when I most needed it. I can’t hurt him. I can’t hurtyou.”
“Whoa,” she breathes. “Love?” Her lips curl into a slow, sardonic smile.
Here she is, saving me from myself.
“Eventually. Love. We both know there are many ways to love a person, and that you’re not capable of doing anything less. Look at you. You ran all this way with no shoes on, forblocks, carrying a tray of cookies.” I can’t help myself. I balance the cookies with one hand and brush the back of my knuckles down her silken cheek with the other. Her skin is tight from the tears she cried and hastily wiped away. “You should live the life you deserve to be living.”
Her nose scrunches in confusion. The few freckles there dance with the movement. “Why can’t I do both? What’s so wrong with having you in it?”
“I don’t believe in destiny or fate, but I do believe in certain people being little better than poison. They won’t add anything to your life. You deserve more.” My hard words are belied with tender touches. I can’t stop grazing her cheek.
She can’t stop closing her eyes and leaning into it. “So do you.”
Her soft whisper is worse than direct contact to the skin on my back. I force myself to do it. To hurt myself. To lay that way, to bench press, to sleep. It’s agony. “Maybe.” I have to give her something. “But you’re not the right antidote.”
She blinks and I drop my hand quickly. “We’re just people, Finn. Not poison or an antidote. We’re not fate. Just flesh. I know this is a lot. I’ve pushed you way too hard. I couldn’t let you leave like you did. You were upset.” She motions to the cookies I’m clutching. “You needed to take a tray of those, just in case you wanted to eat your feelings. If not, they’re good anyway.”
“Fawnie. I’m literally the embodiment of rock bottom having a basement.”
And she’s the embodiment of closing a door in someone’s face making them doubly determined to do something. I don’t know how to convince her that some doors are meant to stay closed.
“I know I’ve pushed you hard.” She takes one step back, putting enough space between us so I can finally almost breathe again. “I opened up all your old wounds. I know I’m not a therapist, and that sometimes people need to deal with their stuff alone. Just because you’ve been on my mind and in my dreams for the past five years, doesn’t give me the right to crash into your life. If it’s a good life with no room for me, then who am I to tell you that you’re wrong?”
She studies her feet. Her bare toes look so vulnerable and exposed that I want to sweep her up into my arms and carry her home. I want to kiss her tear stained cheeks and taste her sweet lips again.
I can’t do any of that. Fuck. Bringing any of that up at her apartment was the last thing I ever should have done. I should have kept walking when I had the chance last week. I’m fucking all of this up before I even have a chance to properly fuck it up.
“Anyway.” She looks up and manages a small smile for me, but it’s real and it means so much for being genuine, that it’s as dazzling and radiant as ever. “You know where I live. If you want to hang out sometime, there’s no agreement or obligation. You don’t even have to text. Just show up. I’ll always be happy to see you. You can text too, though, if you want. One day, I might show up at your house, and I might knock on your door, but you don’t have to open it. If you don’t, I promise I won’t camp out and stalk you again.” She motions to the cookies. “Enjoy those. We both know they’re good.”
She steps forward quickly, stands on her tiptoes, and grazes the side of my neck with the softest whisper of a kiss before she turns and walks away. Her skirt sways with every movement. So does her hair.
I watch her until she turns the corner, out of sight.
I want to make sure she gets home okay. I want to follow her. Sit down at her table. Talk to her for the rest of the night. I want to say the things I haven’t been able to tell anyone, because somehow, she makes it easy to say them. She said she wanted me to be comfortable in my own skin. I don’t know why, but with her, I do feel that way. I can’t do any of it, and I can never tell her that, but it’s a nice thought.
One I allow myself to indulge in for all of a few seconds before I harden myself off and walk the four blocks to where I parked my bike.
My phone dings. I take it out of my back pocket and stare at the screen.
Fawnie: I swear I’m not going to blow up your phone. Just wanted you to know that I’m back home safely. That’s it. Goodnight, Finn.
Of course she’d drop my real name the way she did on the sidewalk. And in a text. So intimate. So real. So free, like I’m already hers and she’s already mine.
I put the cookies safely in my saddlebag on the bike, snatch the helmet off the handlebars and ram it on, then I kick the bike to life, welcoming the grumble of the engine as it drowns everything out around me.
