Page 91 of Never After Us
I still believe that.
I have to.
My father asked me at dinner why I’ve been distracted lately.He said it in that clipped way he uses when he pretends to be concerned but is really just annoyed.My mother told him I was “being a teenager,” which made him rant about God-knows-what for ten minutes.I stared at my plate and thought about you instead—how your quiet means more to me than all the noise in this house.
I don’t know how to explain this without sounding dramatic (which he says I always am), but I feel something shifting too.Not in a fearful way—more like time is tugging at both of us, stretching and shrinking in unpredictable moments.Some mornings move too fast.Some nights don’t move at all.
And yet ...through all of that, I keep seeing our future.
I see you walking toward me at the bus station.
I see your tired smile and your ridiculous hair.
I see myself running at you so hard people stare, and you pretending you’re annoyed but hugging me so tightly I almost drop my suitcase.
I see us renting a tiny apartment with drafty windows and chipped paint.I see us fixing it together.I see you putting your boots by the door and me insisting on rearranging the furniture at least three times until it “feels right.”You’ll say I’m impossible.I’ll tell you to hush and hand you a hammer.
I see holidays with too many people squeezed into too small a space.
I see a daughter with your temper and my eyes.
I see a boy with your hair who refuses to nap.
I know we’re young.
I know people would laugh at the idea that two teenagers could know anything about forever.But they don’t know us.They don’t know how you look at me right before you say my name.They don’t know how my whole world rearranged itself the moment you held my hand behind the gym and whispered you’d write me every day.
You asked once what I’m fighting for.
I think it’s this—the future we planned in whispers and scribbles, in stolen minutes on the roof, in every letter you send, even when you’re exhausted and scared and trying not to show it.
If you feel something closing in, then hold onto me harder.
Hold onto the life we said we’d build.
Hold onto the girl who is sitting on the roof right now, writing by moonlight, because she refuses to let fear get the last word.
Come home to me, Tommy.
Always yours,
Lina
P.S.If your sergeant yells at you again for reading during lights-out, tell him I apologize.(I don’t, but say it anyway.)
ChapterThirty-One
Alec
The studio smells like polished wood and new equipment.Barret finished this place right before we had to fly to Los Angeles for Dexter, and we’ve been using it since we came back ...almost two months now.
Which is scary if I think about how it’s also been the same amount of time since Mara walked into my world and rearranged things I didn’t even know were loose in my life.
I shouldn’t call it my life—not when half the time I still feel like I’m watching it from the outside.But whatever this thing is between us, whatever rhythm we’ve fallen into without discussing it—more like avoiding the subject.It feels close enough to a relationship that...honestly, if I look straight at it, I might bolt and never come back.
As I always say, I don’t do people.
“So what are we here for?”I ask, because there’s always a reason someone summons the drummer and the grump when they need backup vocals or a new arrangement for a chorus.
