“I’m sorry, did she just call us scallywags?”
“Unbelievable,” I say. “We’re clearly rapscallions.”
“—get those rapscallions OUT OF HERE!”
“See, now I feel seen.”
He smiles, and then he kisses me so passionately that the squawking of the old lady beyond the gate fades away to background noise and I wonder if my knees will buckle. But they don’t. It’s not weakness I feel now, but strength. Like I could do anything. Likewecould do anything.
We break apart only when an unenthused police officer clears his throat right behind us.
“Right, you two,” he says. “Show’s over. Time to get a move on.”
We walk arm in arm as he escorts us from the premises,biting back smiles like teenagers who’ve been caught behind the bleachers.
“Somehow,” I say to Grant, “when I imagined us running afoul of the law, I didn’t think it would be a matter of garden trespassing.”
“Oh, I absolutely did,” says Grant. “You’ve got garden trespasser written all over you, Mitchell.”
“Says the guy who went in there first!”
He grins at me. “Well, I guess that makes us partners in crime.”
“Yeah,” I say, a smile radiating through my whole body. “I guess it does.”
Through the gates and back on the street, we wave goodbye to the old woman, who shakes her head in stern disapproval, and then continue on down the sidewalk with no idea where we’re going or how we’re going to get there. No map, no outline, no clues. Just our hands linked together and our footsteps side by side. Just him, just me. Just us.
Epilogue
One Year Later
Grant’s face is contorted in terror as he lets fly a barrage of profanity and a chorus ofOH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD.
“Aww,” I shout over the violent wind, straining to pat him on the shoulder. “If this doesn’t take me back.”
He’s not feeling very nostalgic, judging by his horrified stare.
“You don’t have to do this,” I remind him.
“No,” he says, looking queasy as he squeezes his eyes shut. “I want to.”
After we returned from London, Grant started a to-do list of adventures for us to go on together—things to remind him how to “really live.” Officially, he won’t let me call it the LARPe Diem List. (But it’s called the LARPe Diem List.) Skydiving was the first thing on it, and also the one he’s put off the longest.
With one sharp intake of breath, he twists his head stiffly to Zeke, the instructor attached to him.
“Okay,” he says, his voice strangled. “I’m ready.”
They angle into position, peering into the ocean of sky below, and Zeke starts his countdown.
“WAIT,” Grant shouts, throwing a hand onto the plane’s wall before Zeke can get to zero. He looks back at me with his worry furrow out in full force.
“I love you,” he says, like they’re the last words he’ll ever say.
“Good man,” says Zeke, thumping him on the shoulder. And before I can say it back, Zeke shouts, “Uh-oh, I think there’s something wrong with the—” and hurls them out of the plane.
The last thing I hear is Grant shouting “WHAT?!,” the sound swallowed cartoonishly as he plummets away.
My instructor, Mari, chuckles behind me. “He does that every time,” she says.
