I tug my comforter back and hop into bed. Only when I’m settled on my side, covers pulled against my chest, do I realize Finn is still standing in the center of the room. Like a life raft bobbing in the ocean. He clears his throat and averts his gaze.
“Get some sleep. Make sure you finish that water bottle before you crash,” he says, nodding to the half-full bottle on the nightstand.
“Thank you, Finn,” I say, and want to say more, but the alcohol still has a grip on my tongue, and I don’t trust myself to keep talking. I’ve already dug myself deep enough into this hole.
“Good night, Jo,” he says, and heads for the door.
Before he gets halfway, I jerk up, suddenly frantic. “Wait.”
Finn halts, turning to face me.
Before he can even ask, I say, “Stay.” My throat is so dry, it makes it hard to speak. “Please. Until I fall asleep.”
He frowns. Then, slowly, he makes his way over to the bed. I shut off the lamp and scooch out of the middle of the bed. He lies down beside me, his face aimed at mine, careful not to get close, as if he, too, is trying not to shatter the illusion of a world where his skin might meet mine.
“I wish you could have been there,” I say softly.
It’s too dark to tell, but I’d bet money he’s blushing. I know I am.
“I wish…”
“You wish…?”
His expression turns serious in a way that sends my pulse into a frenzy.
“I wish a lot of things,” he says. He shifts his head closer, close enough I’d feel his breath if he had any.“I think about opening car doors for you and keeping you out too late.”He reaches a hand out, thumb ghosting over the dark strands of my hair splayed across the pillow.“Tonight, I thought about dancing with you at that party.”
“I don’t dance,” I whisper.
“Oh, I’d get you to dance with me.”
“Just for you, then,” I say.
Something in my chest gives a tug, and I reach my hand out, letting it pass through his. I imagine it isn’t fabric under my fingers, but skin.
I want to feel him. I want to feel the calluses on his fingers from years of guitar. I want to run my hands through his curls. I want to press myself against his chest, feel the warmth of his skin, the thrum of his heartbeat, and stay as long as he’d let me. All the thoughts I don’t allow myself to fall into during the day swirl around in my skull like pinballs. How the melody of my life might change with him added to this next verse. All the normal things I’d feel and wonder if Finn were alive and I weren’t afraid.
I can’t do any of those things, and I shouldn’t want to. I’ve worked incredibly hard not to.
But I do.
“I wish I’d met you when you were real, Finn.”
Finn’s eyes fall shut, long, dark lashes kissing his cheeks the way I wish I could. “Me too,” he says. His eyes flutter open.
He shifts closer, and my heart teeters on a blade’s edge as he leans in and ghosts his lips over my cheek. Not even the wind moves with him, and the hopeless part of me that always prays for the touch to land fractures once more when it doesn’t.
Unthinking, I bring two fingers to rest on the spot his mouth would have touched. He smiles and lifts two of his own fingers to his lips.
The ache in my chest and the curl of my stomach wage war on my insides.
We will never be more than this.
Twenty-Seven
It’s the dull throb inmy skull that drags me out of sleep. It’s the dry tongue and bright, overwhelming light that keep me from slipping back into it.
I groan, rolling over and jamming my face into the pillows. The momentary reprieve from the light is less helpful than I’d hoped, and my stomach twists.
