If Only I Had Told Her

by Laura Nowlin

I pause, then rush to my room to catch another glimpse of her before she goes inside, perhaps see her again when she goes to her room, since our windows are across from each other.

surely she would realize we should get married.

And that was that. Sylvie never asked about her again. I’ve managed to not mention Autumn, despite how much we’ve been together this summer.

Autumn brings out the worst in me, and it’s not her fault.

Just as I have been all summer, ever since Jamie made me the happiest man alive by breaking Autumn’s heart. My Autumn. No, Phineas, not yours.

“What if I kissed you right now?”

“Oh, Autumn.” My friend. My dream. My love.

“I love you,” I tell Autumn, saying it for all the times I couldn’t before and all the times I may never be able to again.

BRUH

“It’s okay. Don’t cry,” I say, because all the other things I want to say can’t seem to find their way out. You are safe. I kiss her eyes. You are cherished. I kiss her forehead. I’ll be whatever you need me to be after this. I kiss her cheek. Whatever you want me to be. I kiss her other cheek. “Don’t cry. It’s okay.”

“Come on, Autumn,” I say. “I know that you know I’ve been in love with you for forever. You don’t have to pretend.” Whatever she wants from me after this, my one rule is nothing left unsaid between us. “What?” she says.

‘Your girlfriend is a freak,’

he knew that you didn’t want to be my girlfriend and that I did.”

I’ll love her even if she turns out to be cruel. That’s my curse.

I relax again. “Yeah, I know,” I say to her as I tell my brain to stay calm, that asking Autumn to elope to Vegas is absurd. “But it’ll have to do for now.”

My love for her is part of who I am.

After four years of saying no to Jamie, why did she say yes to me?

Autumn pushes me down on the bed, and for some unknown period of time, I am entirely at her mercy.

“What about it?” Tomorrow is going to be wonderful, and the day after and the day after, because I am hers. Tonight is the only concern, and that’s mine alone.

“We have forever,” I whisper into her hair, and then I wonder if forever is too much for her.

The sky is gray with thick clouds, and the wind has picked up.

“Please don’t go,” she says.

“I’ll be back to help you fend them off.”

I’m buoyed by the knowledge that I’m going to come back to Autumn and hold her and kiss her and lie beside her as she fights dragon-faerie wars in her sleep. I smile at her. She looks so somber.

“After this, things are going to be the way they were always supposed to be,”

buying the whole stock of Autumn’s favorite candies and some condoms.

This could be it. This could be how I die.

What happened? I’m still alive.

I fall to my knees in front of Sylvie, putting my hand to the ground. It’s wet—

There was an accident. Sylvie has a concussion, but Finn died.”

“How the fuck did Finn get electrocuted?”

Alexis said Finn had been declared dead on the scene.

“I was screaming for a while,” she says. “I was trying to make it not real by not believing it, and screaming worked…for a while.”

People are laughing or crying or talking, and they’re all going to die. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But they will die. Everyone they love will die too, and no one can stop it.

“I love you too,” she tells him in his box, and I bolt from the room.

An older guy stands at what’s supposed to be my door, removing the sign with Finn’s misspelled name, Phinaes. He turns and sees us.

I’m so, so grateful that Finn was once alive and that I got to love him. That he got to love and be loved. And be loved still.

There is a piece of Finny inside me to keep alive, so the rest, like breathing, must be endured.

“It’s still worth it, Autumn, even if they die.”