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I squeeze close, my hip against his. There’s not room to be any further apart and still see out the window, but it doesn’t matter. It never matters with Lucky.
Taking a step forward, I tip Lucky’s chin. His eyes catch mine and his lips pop open, and when I lean down to press my mouth to his, his fingertips dig into my arm. Not pushing, though, holding. I’ve never kissed before, either, but Lucky deserves a first with someone who loves him. At least I can give him that.
“If you ever decide to love someone,” he says slowly, “they’ll be very lucky.” He already is.
“But we’re not done,” he says vehemently, stepping into my space. “We’ll never be done. Me and you, we don’t have an ending.”
“Not everyone is going to understand you, Ellis. But it’s not your job to make them.”
I was ten years old when I met Lucky. I knew it then, and I know it now. He’s a firefly. Luminous and wild. He was never meant to be trapped. Not here and not with me. And in a few days, I’ll finally watch him fly away.
I think it was at thirteen that I first felt my heart beat for you. And break, just a little. Because I knew, like that tornado, you’d leave destruction in your path, and I’d be your willing victim. I’d do it again. I love you, my brilliant firefly.
“He’s your anchor,” Danil says quietly. “No,” I whisper, my eyes lifting to the full moon. “He doesn’t fight the tide. He controls it.”
Attraction can be swift, instantaneous and all-consuming, like wildfire. It can be slowly crafted and tended to over time, an ever-changing canvas, brush strokes built over one another until the picture is clear. It can be lost, I think, for some. But what makes one person look at another and think yes, this one. I want this one? What makes their heart beat faster? What makes their body react? Is it our atoms, working on a level we’ll never understand? Is it fate or kismet or something out there pulling threads together? Or is it simpler than all that? Is it our humanity, our need for
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How would I explain my heart doesn’t know how to beat for anyone but him?
When I shut the car door, his head turns a fraction, enough for his eyes to seek me out. And it’s then, when our gazes collide for the first time in half a year, that my worry fades, my tension dissipates, and I sway forward as every single part of me sings in rightness and relief. Because finally—finally—I’m home.
It was us against the world, Luck. The two of us, always. Me and you. We’ve grown. Of course we have. But still, always, I love you. Don’t stay away too long this time, my darling firefly.
“We’ll never be done. Me and you, we don’t have an ending.”
Lucky wasn’t mine to covet, mine to have. And yet here he is. Somehow, mine, by his own choosing. Mine to hold and treasure and cherish. Mine to love freely.
“This is real, El. Me and you, it’s real.” I grip him tighter, my heart pounding so hard I’m sure he can hear it. He places his hand over my chest as if in acknowledgement, and his breaths puff lazily across my skin. With the moon lending its soft glow through the window, Lucky falls asleep. And I learn what it is to cradle a firefly in my palms.
It’s a small lifetime that passes in the seconds it takes me to stand before him. It feels like our history, and in a way, maybe it is. Maybe that’s what makes love—all the moments, big and small. All the memories piled up one on top of the other, just like those Northern Lights that paint across the sky at the edge of the world. Maybe, when it comes down to it, love is in the act of living. It’s choosing—breathing—that person every single day. Me and you.
Adventure can call. Time can, too. But neither will take Lucky from me. He’s already written himself into my heart.
“You say I’m your firefly?” I nod. Yes. “Well you’re my goddamn moon, Ellis. You call, I come.”
But the autism spectrum is as vast and varied as those glass jars Ellis collects. No two situations are the same, and at the end of the day, ASD or not, Ellis is his own person. He’s his own unique person just like everybody else. He’s not broken. He doesn’t need to be fixed. None of us are perfect, but I love my son just as he is. And you do, too.
He’s so lovely. So utterly gorgeous, and I know, no matter how hard I try, I will never be able to explain to him the depth of what he makes me feel. How he means comfort and safety. How I long for him with an intensity I don’t even fully understand. How he makes me brave and, at times, a little fierce, just like him. How, when we’re together, all I can see is blue. He’s blue, and our story is washed in it. It’s waterfalls and a quick beating heart. It’s starlit skies and the feeling of home. It’s paint, splashed across the floor, a messy declaration of loyalty. It’s the look in his eyes, both
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“All this time… The picnics and the drives in your truck, hanging out in the cornfields and nights like this under the stars… I think we’ve been dating for years, Ellis, and we never realized.”
“Promise me something,” he says, turning his face. My lips brush his cheek. Anything. “Promise we’ll still do this when we’re sixty or eighty or a hundred. I want a lifetime with you, El. Me and you. ’Til the end of time.” I draw an X over Lucky’s heart. Promise.
“Made you…something.” Ellis steps to the side, letting me see the center of the table. On it, glimmering slightly from the glow of the candles and fireflies overhead, is a glass heart. An anatomical heart. I pick it up gently, the piece fitting perfectly in my palm. It’s blue, and something within the substance makes it glitter in the light. “Ellis,” I say, at a loss for words. “My heart,” he says simply. “It’s yours.” My breath leaves my lungs.
He opens his hands without a word, opening the small box within at the same time. The world feels hushed, not a sound reaching my ears above my own soft exhalation. Ellis never speaks. He doesn’t have to. Earlier, he gave me his heart. This…this is his life he’s offering.
“Me and you, El,” I whisper against his lips. “It’ll always be me and you.” His mouth brushing mine is an agreement. We stay at the top of that windmill for hours, my lips bruised from Ellis’s kisses. When the sun sets, we watch, the fairy lights keeping us company like little twinkling fireflies. The stars keep us company, too. And as night rolls over to morning, my fiancé’s hand is in mine.
Luck. We’re going to get married today. Can you believe it? In less than an hour, you’ll be my husband, and I’ll be yours. I know they say wedding day jitters are common, but I’ve never been surer of anything in my life. I was twenty-two years old when I said goodbye to you. College was over, our childhood was over, and it was time for you to move on. I said goodbye to you a lot after that. Each time you came to visit or we talked on the phone, I knew goodbye was inevitable. I don’t have to say goodbye anymore. I know we decided to exchange simple vows today. To say our ‘I dos’ in front of our
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I was sixteen years old when I fell head over heels for Ellis Cole.
