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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Keep in mind that this book is not your typical romance. I’m even reluctant to call it a romance at all, only because that comes with certain expectations these days. This novel is very much a coming-of-age, character-driven saga. One explored in a real-time, organic sense. And it is by no way light. It’s about the journey, not the destination, and it gets very dismal at times along the way.
This book truly is for the fans. And it’s for me. Messy and long-winded that it is. So grab those tissues, get comfortable, turn on the playlist or your favorite break-up albums… And take a deep breath. You’re gonna need it for this one.
Before diving in, I recommend you give “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam a listen, if you’re not already familiar with the song. Perhaps even look up the lyrics and meaning behind the song/why it was written. It will help with some references made in this book.
“This doesn’t chan—” He snaps his head around, his gaze crashing into mine so fast, I rear back. And in a guttural voice, he says, “It changes everything.”
My fingers dig into his arm, and I open my mouth to refute it… Only nothing comes out. He nods, a knowing sheen overtaking his already too-bright eyes. “It’s okay,” he says near-soundlessly. My gaze drops to his mouth when he repeats it, tracing the shape of each syllable, trying to make it make sense. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.
This scenario is not one I ever imagined. The one with Jeremy walking away. The one with my heart in my throat. The one where it feels as if I’m being physically ripped apart as two timelines converge.
“They’re dead, kid.” “What?” He juts his chin at the sky. “The stars.”
“The stars are angels,” she’d said, fingers running through my hair as she pointed up at the twinklin’ sky. “It’s why we make wishes on them. God sent them to light up the scary dark, and watch over us, hear our prayers, our dreams…”
If the stars are dead… Where are the angels?
My lips rise. “Jeremy,” I blurt, and with it, I hear guitar notes and drums and my heart’s a racin’. Just like the song. Just like the song!
6 yo mason thought Jeremy was a girl
Maybe he’s the best friend I was hopin’ for. He obviously likes comic books after all. We don’t have the same favorites—mine is Spider-Man—but that’s okay, because Captain America is so cool. He’s the first Avenger. No one messes with Captain America.
Sucking in my cheek, I wonder what Jeremy’s doing. I wish we were in the same class. I hope no one else is giving him a hard time. Does he have friends? Everyone else seems to.
“What?” “You have really cool eyes. They’re like…really light. Almost see-through. Do they glow in the dark?” My cheeks get all warm and I sink in my seat. People always like to say things about my eyes. It makes me feel weird. “I-I don’t think so.” I bite my lip. “Your eyes are cool too. They’re, like, red.”
“Right? I’m like a vampire! And you’re like a ghost!” Waylon snorts. “And you’re…” She drags the word, frowning deeply, like she’s thinking real hard. He scowls, glaring up at me, like it’s my fault she can’t come up with anything. I shrug, and look down, nibbling on my pretzel. “You’re a demon!” Izzy blurts.
“I found Jeremy, the boy from the song,” I tell her, grinning. Her mouth twitches. “Oh?” I nod, and then my face crashes down with a scowl. “People are mean to him too.” Momma’s eyes crease, and her mouth thins. “I’m sorry to hear that.” I shake my head. “It’s okay,” I rush out. “It’s not gonna happen again. He has me now.”
A new song has started playing, one I recognize immediately. Mason’s favorite. “You Get What You Give” by the New Radicals. He turns the volume all the way up, and runs over to us, grabbing my other hand, and they both drag me over to the center of the room.
“But you don’t,” I whisper. “You don’t have a shield.” His eyes widen like maybe he finally gets what I’m trying to say, and he looks down at the ring—it’s a thin silver band, with a small circle where normally a diamond would be, made up of red and white rings, surrounding a blue inner circle and a white star at its center. “A shield,” he says.
“Maybe when you feel scared, or like—like people are staring and stuff—you can wear that ring, and it’ll keep people from getting through to you. Keep you safe. It’ll do whatever you want it to do.”
“Why do you always have to change everything?” My voice shakes something fierce, like I’m crumbling from the inside out. She scoots off the bed, and stands to face me. I meet her gaze. “Why do you ruin everything?” I growl. Her eyes widen, chin wobbling as they fill with tears. “JJ…” “It’s Jeremy!” I scream bloody-murder, lunging toward her, hands clawed at the air.
“And nothing changes for me and you, right?” he says, and there’s a worried pinch to his features now that wasn’t there before. “We’re still best friends?” I lift a shoulder. “If that’s what you want.” “Yes,” he blurts before I even fully get the words out. Then, “I don’t want anything to change.”
“We’re okay though, right?” I look into his eyes, and I can see the worry shining back from deep within him. Nodding, I say, “Yeah. We’re fine.” His mouth thins, and he nods. “Promise you’ll tell me if we’re not?” I search his eyes, and slowly nod once more. “Promise.” And just like before, I feel it for the lie it is.
“I’m gonna count to five. Don’t let go until I tell you to.” I’m nodding, even though he can’t see. “And when you do, you have to let all these feelings go with it too. Give yourself these five seconds to feel it all, and then exhale. Okay?”
If I could, I’d make like the Flash and race around the planet as many times as I needed to, to go back to before this party even started. Even if it means never knowing what it’s like to kiss a boy… To kiss Mason. I’d take not knowing over this.
Spinning, spinning, spinning
“Who?” I try to swallow, and fail. “Who?” Chills spiral down my spine, and my eyes grow big and wide, lifting to meet his. In all the years I’ve known Mason, I have never once seen him this pissed off.
After being bullied by clay and his friends, Jeremy tries to escape but runs into mason and he’s pissed at the sight of Jeremy’s swollen jaw
“Just another fucking day being me. What else is new?” I regret it immediately. Not so much the words themselves, as the brokenness behind them. “Jer—”
Crazy girl. Just before she slams the door, she throws out, “All for one?” I grin, and salute her. “And one for all.”
Spinning, spinning—
“Lots of study time. Don’t exactly have much of a social life.” “What am I, chopped liver?” “Yeah, but you have a life, Mason. One outside this house.” He arches me a look. “You have a girlfriend. A best friend. A—” “You’re my best friend.” He tips his head, conceding that. “Okay, so you have two.”
“Hey, Jer?” “Yeah?” He turns to face me. I crook a grin. “Thanks. For earlier, I mean. Thanks for…getting it.” His lips stretch out into a smile, blond hair tarnished gold from the lamp behind his head, curling around his head like a halo. He nods. “Always.”
I can’t breathe, I can’t bre— “Hold it, Mason. Just close your mouth and hold it.” It takes what feels like everything in me, but I manage, sealing my eyes shut in the process. So tight, I see stars behind my lids. Jeremy’s voice warbles. It’s as if I’m underwater, and he’s peering down through the surface at me, seconds from dragging me out. “I’m gonna count to five. Hold it. Let it burn your insides. One…”
“How long?” “Mas—” “How. Long.” Blowing out a breath, I say, “It doesn’t ma—” “Of course it fucking matters!” he explodes.
“It matters, Jeremy. You hurting yourself matters,” he grits out. “I’m not…” He whirls on me. “You’re not what? Hurting yourself?” He gestures angrily at my arm. “How is slicing your skin open not hurting yourself?” “I told you—” “You want it out. Yeah, I heard you.” He shakes his head, a humorless laugh escaping him. “What do you want out?”
“Fuck, I know in a lot of ways it looks like it’s always been the three of us one side, and then you—” “Because it is.” “But there’s me and you too,” he argues back. “You know that, right?” Frowning, I stare at him.
“But you’ll always be hers first,” I whisper before I can help myself. “Theirs,” I quickly amend, turning around to face the sink. I clear my throat. “You’ll always be theirs first.”
He could never love me in the way I crave so desperately…not in this timeline. Not in this universe. Our stars are only ever meant to exist from opposite sides of the sun burning brightly forever between us. “Sometimes I feel like…like you only tolerate me, because I’m dating your sister.”
“So the fact you think you can’t come to me? It hurts, okay?” I stare at him, and he gestures to my arm. “You could’ve talked to me. Vented about whatever it is that made you think hurting yourself was your only option.” He barks out a short, broken laugh. “Hell, punch me in the face next time for all I care. If that’s what it takes to take some control back, to quiet whatever assholes’ voices are in your head, just take it out on me. Not yourself.”
I love that song, I do, I love that it makes me think of him, us… But I also hate it for those very same reasons. Hate it for the image he so clearly has in his head of me. The poor bullied boy who’s headed down a path of destruction. “You scare me sometimes.”
“I can’t lose you,” he says. “Be it intentional, or accidental…I just can’t.” A heavy feeling fills my chest. But you will lose me… someday, somehow… It’s inevitable.
My eyes cut to the right, gaze catching on the small black infinity symbol inked into Izzy’s wrist. I have the same one, in the exact same spot, just under the heel of my palm. We got them last winter. Older brother of a kid in our class did them. “Eyes like smiles like figure eights,” I sing quietly.
Izzy smirks, singing back whisper-light, “Girl, you got me spinnin’…”
“It’s okay,” she murmurs. “It’s okay to have something that’s just yours.” “Music is ours,” I say back. She nods, dragging her lips across mine. “Always. For infinity.” I smile into the kiss, sliding my hands down her thighs, and dragging her onto my lap. “Infinity.”
I wait for the guilt to hit, knowing it’s coming. Hell, it’s already here, just…buried right now, buried under the heavy-ass boulder that is shock and confusion and-and… Something I can’t name. Something I don’t want to name. This…this isn’t how it’s supposed to go.
“They’re dead, kid. The stars. Those twinklin’ lights? That’s from billions and billions of years ago. They’re so bright, because what you’re seeing is them exploding. Dying. We’re so far away, it’s only reachin’ us now.” “Mason.”
It’s official: Isobel Montgomery, a seventeen year old female from Pennsylvania, has been abducted from a hotel conference center in Florida.
I stare unseeingly down at my desk, wondering, not for the first time, how this is my life now. I’ve got the boy of my dreams in my bed, and all I want to do is crawl into a hole and die.
As above…so below… In theory, there is a balance to things. The tides are supposed to turn. It’s all I can hang on to these days. That there is an end in sight.
He’s a noose I’d dangle from in strangled, agonized hellfire for eternity.
Jeremy’s gaze drops, and he takes a step back, then another, wrapping his arms around himself, visibly trying to make himself smaller. “I’m gay,” he whispers, again, and there’s a thread of disbelief there, that wasn’t before. Shaking his head, he says again, “I’m gay.”
“And then someday, there will be this guy, and he’s gonna come along and-and push all the right buttons. You’re gonna fight it. Be stubborn as always. But fuck, he’s gonna fall so hard. And you’re gonna fall so hard right back, because…because he won’t give up. He’ll never rest until you let him in.”
😭😭😭😮💨😮💨🥹🥹🥹🥰🥰
“This boy—this man… he’s gonna treat you the way you deserve, better than you think you deserve. He’s gonna give you the world even when you insist you don’t want it. Because as low maintenance as you try to be…” I say roughly, a low chuckle threading my words, “you’re not.”
“And you shouldn’t be. You should have ridiculous standards and expectations, and settle for nothing less than everything.” The mood sobers once more, and my voice grows even quieter, so quiet, it’s no more than a whisper. “And he’s gonna be the luckiest man in the world, whoever he is. Because…you don’t let people in easily. You don’t love freely. So to have that…” I swallow. “To have that…”
Deeper, and deeper, and deeper—a gravity I can’t escape. Perhaps that’s why I hang on so tight, despite knowing how wrong it is. Unhealthy… Depending on him as desperately as I do. Clinging to him like he’s all that’s keeping me from falling into oblivion. Despite how much it eviscerates me when I do. Perhaps that is why I continue to burn and burn for him.
“I’m gay,” I say out loud for the sixth time in my life. No warning. No preamble. No hitch or inflection in my voice. It just is what it is. The sky is blue, and the grass is green, Izzy’s still missing, and I, Jeremy Montgomery, am gay. It’s a long moment before one of them seems to notice that I’d even spoken.
Because there’s absolutely no way in this universe—in this timeline—that Mason Wyatt—Mason fucking Wyatt—is burying his face in my hair and kissing my head and holding me so tight I almost forget what it’s like to not be held.
“The stars. They’re dead.” Frowning, I look up, taking in the pale, sharp edges of Mason’s profile, and once again I follow his gaze up to the distant lights winking back at us from universe. “My dad,” Mason goes on stiffly. “He told me that once. I used to…I used to talk to them. The stars. Like they were my friends.”
Something stutters in my chest. “I’d ask them for things. Make wishes. Tell them secrets. You know.” My breath hitches. “Mason…” “And one night, he caught me, asked what I was doing.” In my periphery, he’s slowly shaking his head side to side. “And he told me… he told me they were just echoes. Light reaching us billions of years after they’d already burned out.”
