"She wasn't the one who…"
"Who what? Fought back? Stood your ground? Refused to be a doormat?" Arty shook his head. "Raven, I don't know the details and I'm not asking for them. But I know enough to know that you've convinced yourself you're some kind of relationship disaster when really, you were just in a disaster of a relationship. There's a difference."
Raven wanted to argue. Wanted to list all the ways she'd failed, all the times she'd said the wrong thing or pushed too hard or withdrawn too far.
But the words wouldn't come.
"What if I ruin this too?" she said quietly. "What if Annabelle realizes I'm not worth the trouble? What if she wakesup tomorrow and thinks, 'What was I thinking, kissing the miserable rockstar next door?'"
"Then she'd be an idiot," Arty said. "Which she's not. Annabelle Swift is many things, overly optimistic, boundary-challenged, incapable of sitting still, but she's not an idiot. If she kissed you, it's because she wanted to. And if she wanted to, it's because she sees something in you worth wanting."
"She barely knows me."
"She knows enough. And she didn't run away screaming, I’d have heard about that."
"She should have."
"But she didn't."
Raven opened her mouth to respond, then closed it again.
Because something about the image of Annabelle panicking, rushing over in her pajamas, pounding on the door because she'd noticed the silence, made something warm unfurl in her chest.
Nobody had ever noticed the silence before. Nobody had ever cared enough to check if she was okay.
Alissa certainly never had.
"I don't know how to do this," Raven admitted. "I don't know how to be with someone without ruining it."
"So don't try to figure it all out right now," Arty said reasonably. "Just… see what happens. Be honest with her. Show up when you say you will. Don't disappear into your own head. That's it. That's literally all you have to do."
"That sounds impossible."
"It's not. You're just catastrophizing." He picked up his toolbox. "Now, are we actually going to discuss lighting for this fundraiser, or are you going to spend the rest of the morning spiraling about your feelings?"
"Can I do both?"
"Absolutely not. Come on." He headed for the door. "We'll go to the school, look at the hall, make some decisions about equipment. It'll be good for you. Get you out of your own head."
Raven followed him to the door, then hesitated. "Arty?"
"Yeah?"
"You really think I deserve this? Happiness, I mean. Or whatever this is."
Arty turned to look at her, and his expression was so genuinely kind it made her chest ache.
"I think you deserve to find out," he said simply. "I’ll meet you over there."
And then he was gone, leaving Raven standing in her doorway, staring at Annabelle's cottage and feeling something she hadn't felt in a very long time.
Hope.
But hope wasn't the only thing she was feeling. Because underneath the exhilaration, underneath the terror and the tentative optimism, there was something else. Something that had woken up last night and refused to go back to sleep.
Want.
Real, visceral, consuming want.
