“You think?”
“We’re gonna get therapy and/or brain drugs and/or whatever and do what we have to do and we’re gonna get everything figured out.”
I dig in the earth just a little, so my fingertips are blacked with dirt, itching with dry pine needles. “I don’t know if that’s true.”
“Well,” he says, “me neither.”
I burst out in laughter.
“Could be total bullshit,” he adds.
“Oh thanks for that, that helps.”
He stares at me, smile in his eyes.
Because, well, it does.
Maybe it helps for someone else to be unsure.
My whole life, it’s been map this and that and lay out a chart and navigate this way and this plus this equals the desired outcome, and my whole life in front of me.
But what matters to me now, in this moment, is the sharp question mark of it all.
The vast unknowing.
Jonah leans a little closer to me and says, “I am kind of cold, now that you mention it.”
“I mentioned it like twenty minutes ago.”
“I don’t care.”
I say, “Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
He shrugs. “I dunno. I kind of like it.”
I slide so that now his knee pushes into my thigh. He glances down at it.
It is incredible how a person can be so utterly relaxed and so on alert all at the same time.
My muscles are uncoiled, my mind is not racing but it’s not numb, it’s right. But I can feel every single movement Jonah Ramirez makes, down to the little lightest shift when he breathes.
We are shivering here, talking truths in woods we shouldn’t be in, and it feels right.
Suddenly, I am afraid.
I am afraid that everything feels right, right here, right now, and the second we get in our cars to leave, all the wrongness will return.
I will feel like some kind of alien creature who doesn’t know how to exist in her family, with her friends, in a convenience store, on the highway, on the freaking Earth.
And after this, this thorough hour of belonging, that seems intolerable.
I quell the train of thought with, “How’s everything with your family?”
Jonah glances up at the sky. It’s painted with stars. Not in the same way it was on THE MOUNTAIN™, but it glitters enough to draw the eye. He says, “Back to normal.”
“Same,” I say.
“It’s weird as hell,” he says.
I wait.
“Like everyone else is the same and that’s so . . . fucking impossible. Because how can that be when you’re so . . . so goddamn different? Right?”
“Yes. Yes.”
He draws in a breath and stares at the ground, the trees again, the stars again.
It is full minutes of silence before he says, “We’re gonna have to get out of here eventually.”
I say, “Yeah.”
I do not want to.
I want to stay.
It is two more minutes before he says, “It’s cold.”
I shut my eyes and draw in a deep breath. And I stand.
Jonah stands with me, and this time we walk together.
I don’t have to run to keep up with him; we step side by side, shoulders brushing, path criss-crossing just a little, in the way that no one really walks a straight line.
Eventually, the trail entry shows itself, and I jump the gate first.
Jonah follows just behind me and walks to his truck.
He stops.
Like there’s something he wants to say, and I’m hoping he does because . . . it feels like—it feels like if we drive off now, he’ll go to school and I’ll go home and that will be that.
This will be something we had and he will be someone I had and it will all be past tense, and we’ll just . . . move on.
Until I see him sometimes at Jaxon’s.
It feels like a crossroads.
Like he will always be Jaxon’s.
Or he could be mine, too.
I don’t know why I can’t make myself say anything.
Jonah twirls his keys over his finger, catches the cold metal. He glances down at his own hand and twirls them again. Opens his mouth.
Shuts it.
Opens it again.
His hand is on the handle to his door.
I feel it in my chest. The thread between us, tensing, stretching, one more second and it will snap.
I say, without a story, “Did I ever tell you about the constellation Stormpilot?”
His mouth twitches up. He looks down at those keys, at the handle.
He finally says, “You hungry, Jacob?”
I look back at the woods and bite my lip. “Starving.”
“Tell me about it at breakfast.”
He smiles, big and genuine, and I jump in his truck.
We don’t say much to each other in the closeness of the vehicle, just listen to Tom Morello rage for a while and watch the street signs pass.
There’s a little twenty-four-hour diner just up Colfax, and I’m certain that’s where he’s going. That’s somewhere our lives have intersected, I guess, though we knew nothing about it.
He pulls in and parks, and we both take a little too long getting out of the car.
There’s a couple people in the diner besides us.
It feels strange and right all at once.
It’s warm in here, and brightly lit, and smells like cinnamon and okay eggs and decent coffee—like a twenty-four-hour diner on the middle of Colfax.
The waitress brings us coffee without either of us asking.
Jonah opens a menu, and so do I, and I settle into the softness of the seat across from him.
My foots brushes his calf and he doesn’t pull back.
The waitress asks our order.
I want cinnamon rolls. He wants steak and eggs, which I am certain will be pretty shitty—who orders steak at a diner?
It is so . . . regular.
I don’t tell him about Stormpilot.
Jonah clears his throat and sips his coffee and says, “This is kind of shitty, huh?”
I laugh. “Yeah, it sucks.” And I take a huge drink.
He looks sleepy and disheveled and comfortable, and like everyone looks under fluorescents.
He grins at me.
I eat my incredible cinnamon roll and he starts on his mediocre steak, and at first it’s so quiet that all we can do is listen to the other diners’ conversations.
But somewhere between bites, one of us has started talking about school.
About EMT work.
About that movie that could be the best thing to have ever been written or the literal worst.
Somewhere between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m., our stomachs are full and I have shed my coat and he keeps kicking me under the table.
I light up at the touch.
I laugh when he says something stupid, and he laughs when the waitress spills water on me.
I drink another shitty cup of coffee.
I am alive.
The End.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A stormy book for a somewhat stormy time in my life. Thank you so much to those who helped me weather it, in a million different ways. First, my agent, Steven Salpeter. You are, as always, a force of encouragement and belief and indispensable advice on tea. (Two tea bags for Irish breakfast! What a revelation.) Holly Frederick and Maddie Tavis, I could not ask for two lovelier humans to have in my corner. Thanks so much for going above and beyond for me and my wild little books. To my editor, Nicole Frail, you are an absolute delight to work with. I am so grateful to have the chance to tell stories with you. To Nicole Mele and the rest of the amazing team at Skyhorse, thanks so much for every single thing you do to make my years-long dream of becoming an author a continuing reality.