“I feel like I’m living my entire life in the quantum realm now,” I say.
Nothing makes sense. Reality isn’t playing by the rules anymore. I have no idea what is going to happen next, no way to prepare. My parents are dead, my sister’s on drugs, and I’m in the arms of a boy I’m already afraid of losing.
“We found each other there,” he murmurs. “Remember?”
I nod. Colliding by the Charles. An experiment for science. His heart in the palm of my hand.
“No matter how much we discover,” he says, “how many laws of physics we hold to be tried and true—none of this will ever make actual sense. Even if you discovered the origin of the universe, would it explain you? Or your parents, and what happened to them? Or this?”
He leans close, brushing the tip of his nose against mine.
“I … I don’t know.”
“Good answer.”
Ben is melting, snow everywhere, and I help him pull off hat and gloves and coat, and as he kicks off his boots, my hands won’t stop: sweatshirt and shirt and pants.
“Hey.” He stops me. “I know I just made this grand gesture and found a nifty loophole to stay, but I heard you—when you said you don’t have space. I can go. You can think about it.”
I rest my hands on his bare chest, which is warm and soft. “I wouldn’t have let you in if I didn’t want to. And I think I’ve had enough space for one day.” I shrug. “Besides, it’s technically only a minute.”
His answer to that is a slow, roguish smile that gives me no choice but to pull him to the bed and under the covers. I climb on top of him and whisper, “Say it again.”
He pulls my face close to his, eyes on mine. “I love you, Mae.”
As the words fall from Ben’s lips, again and again, as he says them against my skin and into my mouth and as he fills me with them and with himself, I am safe, this moment and this boy a capsule speeding through space.
But.
The thing about wormholes—you reach the other side of the tunnel eventually.
After so many minutes, so many gifts, Ben’s eyelids begin to drop: a sunset. I watch him sleep. Watch our night fade into day, our minute in the wormhole burning up as it hits the atmosphere, as the sun peeks into the room, spreads across the bedroom floor toward the bed. A wave of light. But still: a wave.
And I think: I am going to lose you.
i didn’t want to walk away from him.
Train Seat
C Line
Boston
28
Hannah
Snow isn’t so bad when you have diamonds in your pockets and whiskey in your blood.
I turn to Drew. “I’ve never been kissed in the snow.”
He leans toward me, and I turn my head up, waiting. I thought it would have come so much sooner. The orchard was hours and hours ago. The night is long gone—the sun is already starting to peek into the sky.
But it doesn’t matter because here it comes, our first kiss, finally, finally—
Drew fixes my scarf, then rests his hands on my shoulders. I slide my arms around his neck, but he removes them, his fingers tangling with mine before he lets go.
“Not like this,” Drew says, quiet.
I blink. “What?”
“Let’s get some food. Coffee. Get warm.” He’s already walking toward the diner. “It’s been a long night. Aren’t you cold?”
He’s walking away from me, toward the steamed-up windows, the neon OPEN sign, the turkey and Pilgrim decorations.
“What the fuck, Drew?”
He stops. Sighs. That tired sigh of everyone around me. That I-wish-she-weren’t-her sigh.
“Hannah.”
Snow swirls around him, and he is a poem. Does he know? Does he know how beautiful he is?
I wish I deserved him.
“I thought we…” I shake my head. “I broke up with him. I chose you. I stood there in front of him, holding your hand. Did I, like, read this all wrong or—”
“Hannah, you’re high. And drunk.” He throws up his hands. “I’m sorry if I’d like you to remember the first kiss I give you.”
I stare at him. “Are you seriously fucking judging me right now? Because fuck you for that, Drew. You’re the goddamn drug dealer, not me.”
The party had been an accident, since of course we were supposed to be with Mae, eating cake and opening presents. But Mae and Nate and Ben had gone off, and Micah, too—with them or on his own, I don’t know. They left me in the orchard because Nate said there was no way in fucking hell he’d play chauffeur to my dealer. Drew and I got a bus back to the city. Then we ran into someone. I needed the distraction. A few drinks, a joint. I haven’t even had a pill. I’ve been so good. After today? So good.
“I don’t deal anymore,” he says, quiet.
“So you want some straight-edge girl now. Fine. Go back to your soccer-playing Christian girlfriend. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled. Wish you had told me I wasn’t your type before I broke up with my boyfriend of three years.”
I can’t even think about that now. What he did to me. And how breaking his heart still hurt so much. I turned off my phone. He’d been calling and texting and I just turned it off.
“What the hell, Hannah? I don’t want—”
“Me.”
He pulls off his hat, runs a hand through his hair. “That’s not what I’m saying. Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what? Say the truth?”
Stupid. I was so stupid to think that he would want me. Why would he? Micah certainly doesn’t. Cathy. Her name is Cathy.
Maybe it’s because she’s going to college. Not a C student like me. D student, actually. All those jokes with my dad I didn’t get. All the references. The books he’d read to impress Dad, letting Mom smudge him even though sage makes him sneeze. I’m Just Hannah. A going-nowhere, average girl who just wants to have kids and make soup and read tarot cards. Just a basic bitch. I asked Micah what he saw in me, not too long before we left for Boston, and he said, “The future.” And, at the time, I’d thought that was romantic—like we’d be together forever and he sees his whole future with me. But now I realize he didn’t see me. He saw a life with me. But those are not the same thing.
My sister’s birthday, and what did I do? Spent it getting fucked up with a guy who doesn’t even want to kiss me. What an idiot I was, to think he’d kiss the hurt and the guilt away.
Drew must have been watching me all night, trying to figure out how to get rid of me. Now that I think about it, he didn’t have a drink. Or take a hit of that joint. So it’s been me, looking like a drunk junkie whore loser all night.
Drew steps closer. His lips part. A puff of breath floats through them, toward me.
“The truth is that I want you, Hannah. More than anything I’ve wanted in my entire life.”
Some words are like diamonds. You can drape them all over you. Sparkle like an August night.
I step toward him, and my foot lands in an icy puddle. The cold reminds me: At the end of the day, diamonds are just rocks. And we’re the suckers who empty our pockets for them.
Micah wanted me, too, at first. I could feel it, the way he couldn’t keep his hands off me. Drew can’t even touch me—look at him, look at him not even wanting to touch me, like I’m contagious or dirty. Because maybe I am. Dirty.