You, with a View

by Jessica Joyce

It’s unconventional to call a grandparent your best friend, but Gram was mine from the time I knew what best friends were.

I don’t know what my ultimate happiness looks like or how to get it. If it even exists. Without Gram here to tell me it’ll be okay, and after the missteps that have moved me further from my Most Likely to Succeed path, I’m not confident I’ll ever find it. I wish she could tell me something.

It’s fucking rude that he’s so good-looking. It offends me.

I have no idea where people go when they die, but sometimes I swear I can feel her.

You’re the first thing I’ve been brave enough to go after just for myself, simply because I want it so much.

It’s okay if this scares you. It scares me, too. But I’ll do it anyway.

How is it possible to want something as equally as you fear it?

hope that things will shift into the shape I confidently sketched out when I was young.

He kisses like some people fuck: slow, deep, and dirty, with bitten-off noises that broadcast his need.

“You look so fucking beautiful right now.”

“I love the way you say my last name with all your attitude, so I’m not saying stop calling me Spencer.” He pauses and I open my eyes, holding my breath. “But now that you’ve started calling me Theo, don’t stop that either, okay?” I squeeze my eyes shut, inexplicably, exhaustedly happy. “Okay.”

“I love your sounds when you come,” Theo says, licking his lips with a smirk before kissing me. Against my mouth, he adds, “You’re going to give them to me again in a few minutes.”

Our eyes meet and something deeper than lust passes between us. It’s a sharp need, not just for the meeting of our bodies, but for the emotional threads we’ve woven together. Right now, it feels like we’re creating something unbreakable.

“You always touch my neck when we’re doing things.” “Things?” His hips start moving, too slowly, an unbearable drag. I groan. “Kissing, touching, fucking now.” His expression softens into something achingly vulnerable. “I like feeling your heart beat fast for me.” A secret revealed in the middle of our sex. “That’s how I know you like me.”

We stay caught in a gaze that says so much of what I can’t out loud. His heart is racing from what we just did. Did he feel it, too? That line we crossed? It didn’t feel like simple sex. Then again, nothing between us has ever been simple.

I love waking up with him like this—unhurried, quiet.

“You didn’t save me, I happened to fall back into you. You seriously remember that?” He grins. “A beautiful girl touched me—” “One hundred percent accidentally.”

“I didn’t care. I knew right then high school was going to be awesome.” He backs me into the door, smirking. “And now look at you. Touching me very much on purpose.”

“I’m going to kiss the hell out of you now.” “Okay,” I repeat, dazed. He does, right in front of Paul and the family of four who’s on the tour with us. And, I suspect, in front of Gram, too, wherever she is.

“The energy between you two is pretty intense. It feels old.” “Old?” Theo echoes, insulted. Flor laughs. “Old, like multigenerational. Like lots of forces and people worked to get you together. You’re very, very connected, and that’s rad.”

“But just so we’re clear, I want you, Noelle. Don’t think that there are conditions to the way I feel about you.”

“Tell me a secret.” “I don’t want to be done with this in two days.” As soon as that last confession is out, the relief pours through me like adrenaline. “Tell me yours.” He pulls back. “I don’t want to be done with this at all.”

“Remember, nothing lasts forever. You have to hold on to the good things, knowing you may be on borrowed time with them. And with the bad, recognize that eventually it will pass.”

I hate that Gram is gone; I’ll never get over it. But I don’t have to dig up any more secrets to keep her near, because she’s everywhere. She guides me when I guide myself.