You, with a View

by Jessica Joyce

What kind of millennial are you? We’re supposed to be afraid of calling people.”

You were never my nemesis. You were my . . .” I hate how I hold my breath. “My motivation.”

I’m staring down the barrel of thirty and I still haven’t found my place.

have a secret,” Theo murmurs, his midnight eyes fixed on me, full of starlight. “Tell me.” “Don’t let it go to your head, okay?” “Well, with that disclaimer . . .” His grin is small, but it fades as quickly as it came. “You look so fucking beautiful right now.”

Like maybe it’s not too late to fight for what I want, if I can admit it to myself. That it’s okay to have hope, to try, even if it doesn’t turn out the way I expect.

It’s so coincidental that I’m starting to think it can’t be anything but inevitable.

“Look at the view,” I say against his mouth when we pull back for a breath. His thumb grazes over the plane of my cheek. “I am.”

How lucky that this is the moment I landed in. How temporary everything feels when surrounded by a landscape that was here long before us and will be here long after we’re gone.

“Historical data goes against me. You dated a woman who worked for NASA.” “And you mean more to me in two weeks than she did in nearly a year, you little Google stalker,” he snaps out, genuinely affronted.

“I hate that you felt like you had to lie to me,” he murmurs. “But just so we’re clear, I want you, Noelle. Don’t think that there are conditions to the way I feel about you.”