Arden leaned in, obviously interested in the answer to this. Oblivious, Noah stuffed the rest of his pizza in his mouth.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I’m not sure how he feels about this apartment. It’s probably similar to what we felt at our house. I don’t want to push him into doing something that might hurt. Because he would come if you asked him to. You know he would.”
Phoebe nodded, offering a small smile. “Yeah. I guess we’ll see.”
Arden and Noah stayed a while longer, chatting while I did dishes. Once they left and Phoebe retreated to her room to FaceTime with her new friends, I grabbed my phone off the counter and pulled up my text history with Dex, chewing my lip until blood bloomed on my tongue.
I hear you’re coming home soon, I wrote, sending before I could think myself into a coma. Three dots appeared at once.
She is so bad at keeping secrets, he replied.
Followed by:But plans might’ve changed.
I sank against the couch, crestfallen. I hadn’t noticed the balloon of excitement inflating in my chest until he whipped out a pin.
Too bad, I sent. And then, because the hurt was raw and I was alone and, damn it, it was true:I miss you.
I miss you too, he replied.Finding you in all the good things isn’t enough.
Warmth overflowed from my chest, spilling everywhere. If it wasn’t for my steady consciousness or lack of pain, I would’ve thought my heart exploded.
We stayed up until four texting like teenagers. I updated him on the paint situation and my concerns regarding Phoebe’s birthday. Dex told me about Gavin’s pointless crush on Cat, and about his fear that he’d fail to keep in touch with everyone once he was on his own again.
I didn’t require a long-form interview from him. Just this.
I needed this, he told me once I admitted I could barely hold my eyes open.
It was too late to feel shame or anxiety, so I wrote:I need you.
You have me, he wrote back.
I fell asleep smiling.
Twenty-four
We stayed up talking every night.
I floated through the days, applying the wallpaper in the bathroom and shopping for Phoebe’s and my school supplies, counting down until the clock ticked past eight. It became a competition, who would call first. I won more often because I’d gotten really into cheating (calling at 7:55).
There was a delicate innocence to it, the way we simply talked about our days. Dex opened up more each night, the highlights and low points of his day slipping into messier feelings I helped navigate as best I could. He did the same for me. It was such a gift to be understood. I hated that we had this thing in common, but every time Dex told me he knew exactly what I meant, something inside me came back to life.
We agreed to hold off on the deeper conversations until we were face-to-face. He hadn’t given me an update on his return home, but I assumed it remained a number of days away. Until then, it was enough to know he had every intention of coming home to me.
With Phoebe’s birthday next week and the anniversary ofDad’s death looming, it was nice to have a happy distraction. I kept expecting Phoebe’s mood to take a turn, but she seemed okay. We’d tentatively discussed how to deal with the anniversary: ordering enough food to last the day and crying our eyes out to his favorite movies. The preplanned breakdown eased the dread slightly. I would be devastated and it would be horrible, but Phoebe and I were in it together. As for her birthday, I special-ordered a donut cake and dipped into some savings to get her a real camera. We had to find a way to live with the pain, not liveinit. We were making progress.
I walked home with my tote bag of school supplies slung over my shoulder. The clouds overhead blended into a milky white and if I wasn’t sweating through my clothes, I might’ve thought flurries were in the forecast. I didn’t mind walking. It cleared my head and it was nice to get to know our city better. Sometimes I stopped into the bakery located an equal distance between school and home, and every time I passed the run-down café before 8A.M., three old men sitting outside would tip their hats to me and tell me to have a great day. Boston was vast, but I’d found a quaint comfort among it.
My eyes snagged on Sequest on my way by. The Pride flag danced in the wind.
I wasn’t a religious person, but I liked to believe my dad was somewhere out there, and I talked to him on occasion, when no one was around to hear. I’d started talking to Benji, too, mostly to say thank you for bringing Dex into our lives.He only needed the last word when he had something really good to say, Catalina said, and I had a feeling this whole thing was his last word, one more grand gesture for the road.
By the time I reached our building, the sky had darkenedand a light drizzle fell. I moseyed inside and checked the mail, letting out a breath when I got in the elevator. My phone told me it was almost four. We were in different time zones, but Dex hadn’t complained about my increasingly earlier phone calls. I wondered if six was too early. Or now.
I debated it all the way to my door until the sound of voices inside snapped me out of it. Phoebe had company? Not notable, really, seeing as she’d invited a few friends over since returning from our trip, but she’d never done so without asking first. Awareness pressed in from every side as I pushed the door open. Holding my breath. Bracing for—what? A few teenagers on the couch or maybe even just Noah home early, attempting to fix the leaky sink.
Or.
I stepped inside, greeted by Phoebe’s cackling laugh and a loud, plinking soundtrack to whatever game system she’d hooked up to the TV.Mario Kart, I recognized, and my heart jerked wildly at the sight of three heads on the couch, facing the screen. Phoebe in the middle. Noah on one end. A familiar mess of dark hair on the other.
