Jess nods. Still flushed. She looks so nervous.
“Okay. Call me!” She holds up her phone, making sure Jess sees she has it. Then she looks at me. “Hawk, make sure she calls me!”
“Okay,” I manage. Dimly I realize there’s been some kind of plan in motion, Salem and Tegan and Jess working together for I don’t know how long.
But I can’t care. I can’t care about anything except her standing there.
Tegan steps back from the door so Salem can make her way out. When she does, she stops long enough to look over her shoulder at me. “And you make sure you call me. We have work!”
Then she sets a hand on Tegan’s shoulder and leads her away, and it’s only Jess and me.
Two points in our compass gone, but it doesn’t matter.
I’m still staring straight at my true north.
“Can I come in?” she says, and that’s when I realize I’ve been staring for a shade too long.
I drop the chips, the bag obnoxiously, absurdly loud.
“Yeah. Yeah, of course.”
She steps inside, closes the door gently behind her. Whydon’tI have any art on the walls? She’s going to think I live like a college student. The corn chips don’t help, surely.
But she doesn’t seem to notice. She seems to have a plan, because she comes in only far enough to stand in front of the coffee table I just cleared off. She slides her phone from her back pocket and taps at the screen, a look of sincere, serious concentration on her face. I hear a familiar tinny ping, and then she bends to set the phone on the table.
She doesn’t speak softly.
“This is Jessamine Greene,” she says. “I drove all the way from Columbus, Ohio, to Boston, Massachusetts, to see Adam Hawkins.”
She pauses, swallows. Keeps her eyes on me.
“To see you.”
“Jess,” I say, but she shakes her head. Gestures to her phone with a small, explanatory gesture.
“To see you, and to say how sorry I am for disappearing on you. To say how sorry I am for what I said right before I did. I know we haven’t known each other that long. I know it was only two weeks, but it wasn’t just any two weeks. It was . . . it was a really important two weeks, and I remember every single second of them, and I have thought of you—I havemissedyou every single day since I left you in Washington. And also . . . also, I’m in love with you.”
Her voice wobbles, and she takes a second. Swallows and lets her eyes slide shut for a beat before opening them again. I don’t dare make a sound.
I’m in love with you, she said, and it’s all I want to hear for hours. For forever.
Until she speaks again.
“I love you, and I haven’t loved many people in my life, so I don’t think I’ve done the best job at it. But you said you’d help me, and I was wondering if that offer still stands. If you—if you can be patient while I’m working on helping myself. If you think you can love me, too.”
“I—”
But before I can say anything, she bends down, taps the screen on her phone again. A couple of times, quickly, her face all concentration again.
From somewhere behind me in the kitchen, my own phone vibrates on the counter. A message received.
“So you’ll have it,” she says quietly. “On the record.”
“Jess,” I say again.
“There’s other stuff I have to tell you, too,” she interrupts quickly. “But it’s not for a recording.”
“None of it needed to be for a recording.” My voice sounds thick to my own ears. “But I’m still glad you made one.”
