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I’d rather give away all my games than lose a minute of whatever has been happening between us since Jamie broke up with her.
We weren’t touching, but it felt like the atoms between us were warm with my love for her.
This is heaven: her forehead pressed into me, her head under my arm, and my hand on her shoulder. We found each other by instinct.
It is cosmically unfair how beautiful Autumn is. It puts me at such a disadvantage. Her brilliant, goofy brain was already enough. Why must she have a perfect face too?
Maybe you are the two stupidest people on earth who somehow don’t realize you’re in love with each other,
Autumn, though, I’ve seen her finish a novel, pause staring off into space for a minute like she’s receiving instructions, and then open another book. It’s as if her job is to read and she’s behind on her quota.
“Only if you want to.” Her nonchalance chills me. “We’re just being close one last time.” She presses her cheek against the gray metal, and my stomach twists. “Autumn,” I say, but she doesn’t answer me. She’s being with him.
For Finn’s sake. Because he would want me to. I need to let myself accept his death. Breathe. And that hurts. But the truth hurts. I’ll just have to breathe through it.
“Hello?” Dad always answers the phone like you’re about to ask him for ransom money for someone he hates. It probably scares off telemarketers.
Doing laundry is easy. It’s putting it away that sucks.
It’s not like Brett and I instantly become friends. But we talk about how we never used to believe that we would die. About how easily bodies can break.
“Someday,” Brett says, “you’ll think of Finn, and it won’t hurt. It’s
no it will always hurt
“Hey,” I say. “Um, how are you?” She looks like a store mannequin modeling baggy clothes. “Even on a regular day, I’ve never known how to answer that question.” She doesn’t look at me but up and over my shoulder, as if the answer is in the air. “I think most people lie,” I tell her.
“Maybe he thought it was unsafe for some reason?” I venture. “You know how safety conscious he was.” Autumn pauses with the candy dipstick in her hand. “I never thought of Finny that way, but I suppose you’re right.” I’m honestly stunned until she says, “I always thought of him as protective.”
Not wanting to be dead isn’t quite the same as wanting to be alive. There’s a gray space in between where one knows the desire to keep breathing should lie but is coolly absent. This is the space I occupy.
No. I don’t truly think it’s him, though there was a time when I entertained the idea. I’ve accepted this new reality without Finny, yet I can’t stop myself from thinking about him. And when I do? There he is. My Finny. “Autumn.”
“You could and you would, because you’d have to, but you probably won’t,” Aunt Angelina says. “Being a mother is all about losing control and then surviving it.”
Everything having to do with this baby reinforces the fact that Finny’s not here. For all of us. Yet we want this. I want this. He would want this. But that doesn’t make doing this without him any easier. So this is where I live, in a place where every shade of joy must be painted over in the black of Finny’s death, muted to the gray of willfully existing.
