“I finished the novel,” she says. She’s crying. She’s more emotional than with other books she’s read, and if she means her own novel, surely they would be happy tears? These don’t look like happy tears.
Still, it doesn’t matter why she’s crying, because she’s crying. Instinct takes over, and I cross the room, pulling her into my arms the way I have dreamed of so many times before, with so many different tenors of emotions and desire.
But there’s only one thing I want right now: to stop the pain that is making her fingers curl around my shirt. It’s been so long since she let me see her vulnerable like this. We were so young the last time.
Autumn’s sobs reverberate in my chest as she presses her sweet face against me, and it is proof I am awful. I am taking such pleasure in comforting Autumn. 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.
She’s in her bathrobe, but I try to push that thought aside.
She starts to quiet. Her breathing slows. I want to stroke her hair, her back, kiss the top of her head. I can’t. I won’t. Autumn.
I feel her shoulders slump, followed by the faintest of whimpers. She’s done crying. I could move, but I don’t. I hold her gently, careful to make sure she’s in control, and she can pull away with the slightest of movements.
“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?” I ask. I’ll be around if she needs me.
“It’s like they’re dead,” she says.
Of course. Jamie and Sasha. The two people who kept her anchored through her ups and downs the past four years. She had her time and space to be numb, but now, finally, she is truly grieving the end of their friendship. Still, I give her the opening to explain it.
“Like who is dead?”
“Izzy and Aden.”
I only have time to think, Who? before she says, “My main characters.”
Her novel. The one she’s finished. I don’t understand why that has made her cry like this, but I’m so relieved that I laugh and say aloud to myself, “I thought something was really wrong.”
She raises her head off my chest, and I let one of my arms fall away as she faces me. In the dying light, her tear-filled eyes are luminous. Her lovely face is pink and puffy. She looks so sweet and so absolutely devastated.
“Something is wrong!” Her voice quavers and her lips quiver. “Can’t you tell I’m upset?”
I laugh. I can’t help it. I laugh because she isn’t crying about something from the real world and because I’m so happy that she finished her novel. Her devotion to her writing is beautiful, like the rest of her.
Then she punches me. It isn’t very hard, but it hurts a little, and it makes me laugh again.
“Stop laughing at me,” she insists.
“Sorry,” I say, trying to swallow my mirth. “It’s just really obvious that you’re upset.” And you’re just so wonderful that it makes me terrible, I do not say. “And I meant I thought something was really wrong. Like Jamie had called you.”
“Who cares if Jamie called me?” she says.
I feel my grin widen again, but I can’t help it.
“Who cares about Jamie?” she says and begins to cry again.
I use the excuse to pull her close. Who cares about Jamie indeed?
“You don’t understand,” I feel her moan above my heart.
I take a deep breath of her scent.
“I know,” I say.
I understand this much: Autumn lives in this world and the fictions of her mind or those written by others like her. Whatever it is that puts us together as people, be it God, genes, or destiny, Autumn was made to tell stories. She’s going to be an amazing writer. She’s always been amazing. Whatever this novel is about, it’s going to blow my mind. I know it.
“But I can’t wait to read it,” I say. I’m smiling again, and I know she can hear it in my voice. She knows me almost as well as I know her.
“You can’t read it.” We’re leaning into each other like two sides of a triangle. She’s still sniffling.
“Why not?” She said something before about how I might take elements too literally, how I’d draw parallels to her real life. Maybe there’s stuff in there about Jamie or her dad, or rather his absence. Maybe there’s something about Sylvie? That seems unlikely.
The thing is I know that she wants me to read it. She knows what she wrote is good, in the same way she knows that she’s pretty. She knows it’s good, but she’s terrified that it’s not as good as she hopes. At least that’s what I assume, because that’s what she said about the final draft of her four-part poetic drama about the faerie-dragon wars she finished when we were almost twelve.
“Not all dragons want to wipe out faeries, only some of them, and the other dragons are finally joining the faeries’ fight,” Autumn explained to me as if these were current events.
I wasn’t enthused by faeries, but I figured I wouldn’t hate her story. When I read her superlong poem, though, it was so much better than what I had expected. She surprised me. It didn’t sound like something a kid had written, and I told her so afterward. I told her how I found myself caring about that dragon prince way, way more than I had expected or even wanted to. It was the truth. She was triumphant, and it was wonderful to see.
It’s turned dark now. Her breathing is quiet. She could move if she wanted to. Why hasn’t she moved?
“Okay,” she says. “You can read it after dinner.” She lifts her head off my chest, and both of my arms fall away.
“All right,” I say. I don’t need to tell her that I ate dinner a while ago. Meals don’t have time or meaning for us this summer. I hop off the bed and hold out my hand to her.
“Um, I need to get dressed?” she says.
I drop my hand.
“Oh.” I try to laugh. “I forgot. How about you meet me in the car?”
I guess I can’t be too bad of a guy if my concern for Autumn’s emotional state could make me entirely forget her state of undress.
seven
Outside, with the moon and streetlights, it’s brighter than inside her house. I get in my car and start the engine, turning my headlights on so that her back porch is illuminated like a stage. It isn’t long before she makes her entrance. Autumn’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, casual and untouchable. She carries her laptop. Is she bringing it now so that she doesn’t lose her nerve later? Autumn shades her eyes as she heads to the car.
“So where are we going? Tacos? Burgers? Chicken?” I ask as she sits next to me in the passenger seat. The flush is gone from her face.
“Oh?” she says, as if she had forgotten that dinner involves food.
“This is a celebratory drive-through run,” I tell her. “We’ll stop at that gas station that sells those candies that you like, the one that looks like hair gel in a tube and the one that comes in the paper packets that looks like laundry detergent.”
She doesn’t laugh. “Okay.”
“I mean, it’s great that you finished your novel, even if you feel like you’ve”—I try to choose my words carefully—“like you’ve lost your main characters?”
“Yeah,” she says with a nod. She turns and faces forward, looking out the windshield. “I didn’t know it would hurt this much.”
“You’ll still have to edit it, right?” I take the car out of park. “And when it’s published, they’ll live forever within other people, you know?”
She gives me an annoyed scoff.
“What?” I ask.
“You can’t just say, ‘When it’s published,’ Finny.”
I catch a glimpse of her face before I turn in my seat to navigate down the long driveway. She’s gazing out the dark window.
She sighs. “It’s probably never going to be published. That’s simply a fact.”
“No, no, no.” I wait for a car to pass before I turn onto Elizabeth Street and continue, “That’s not a fact. A fact is that you’re good. A fact is that you’re going to let me read it.” I’m starting to feel giddy. It must be an aftereffect of holding her.
She sighs again. I risk another glance. Autumn is curled up in the seat, leaning against the window. I want to tell her that it’s not safe to ride with her feet off the floor, but I don’t want to be bossy, and anyway, I’m a good driver.
“So where are we going?” I ask.