My pulse skipped as reality finally hit. Fuck, what was I going to do? If I was being honest, I’d been avoiding thinking about the whole sleeping situation. None of us who were stranded were likely to get much sleep tonight, but Melanie and Dad and Mom and even Owen could all stretch out on the floor, bunch their jackets up as pillows and pretend they were comfortable. I had no such options. I’d have to tilt back in my chair and try to rest, but this thing was not made to be sat in for twenty-four hours. It would hurt. It was already starting to hurt, frankly. My hips, my back, my neck. I’d live, but this was gonna suck.
lol, as mom likes to say, he doesn’t “cook” so much as “heat up”
well his ramen is heavenly
WAIT
W A I T
Owen’s with you at the shop? And you’re talking??
well
“talking” might be a little extreme
Melanie had been pestering me to talk to Owen and make amends for months now. I think she thought things would blow over at the beginning. Now that it had become clear that wasn’t about to happen, she’d been dying for me to budge. I knew it was weird for her to have her best friend and twin brother on such bad terms, but it’s not like any of this was my fault. I wouldn’t be the one to cave.
Ugggggh Mrs. Pritchett says it’s “lights out”
Talk to Owen, you goober! Love youuuu!
love you too. sleep well.
I glanced at the time again (11:25) and decided to try to get comfy. At least I was dry and warm, which was probably more than Devi’s suede boots could say. I turned the lights off and tucked myself into the corner behind the front desk, right under the heater vent. With the press of a button, my chair reclined, stretching my grateful spine and hips. I used my jacket, long since dry from the walk over, like a blanket. Outside, all was black and white, the world’s usual shapes and shadings erased for now. I’d never really understood the breathless fascination with snow, but watching the hushed drifts slowly layering themselves into existence as my muscles relaxed and my eyes grew heavy, I could finally see the appeal.
And then, right as I was about to tumble into sleep, the power cut out.
I sat in front of the greenhouse door, imagining I could already feel the warmth of the heavy-duty gas heater. Behind that door was an oasis. Eighty degrees and gentle humidity, 365 days a year. I raised my fist and let it hover.
The store might not get too cold. But Mrs. Otsuki always kept the thermostat at sixty-eight degrees, so there wasn’t much warmth stored up to begin with, and a quick look at my weather app said we’d be dipping into the teens before long. A chill raced through me at the thought of spending the rest of the night without heat—immediately chased by another chill at the alternative.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in the greenhouse. Even before the rift, I didn’t spend a ton of time back there. The aisles were cramped and there were always hoses or tools or trays of this and that lying around, making the floor near unnavigable for me. I didn’t mind, though. Even when we were kids working in the garden, me handing Owen seeds or pointing out weeds for him to pull or just making friends with the ladybugs, I was never as interested in the growing process as he was. I was only in it for the end product.
Well. And the company.
Pull your shit together, Eleanor. Knock on the damn door.
The door swung open after just one knock, like he’d been waiting for me. He stood aside and gestured me in with the sweep of an arm. Thankfully, he was fully robed this time.
A blast of warmth greeted me as I entered. I hadn’t realized how chilly I’d been, even before the power went out. Hours of sitting next to the front window, cold seeping steadily through the glass, had turned my skin cool as marble. I shivered and moved toward the heat.
“You redecorated,” I said, my gaze roving over the room’s strange new configuration.
Wooden benches that acted as nurseries for all the dozens of plants normally stretched the length of the structure in six long rows. Now, they were shoved awkwardly toward the edges of the room, a pile-up three benches deep on both sides, leaving a narrow open space in the center. There, Owen had placed an overstuffed chair draped with at least four blankets and a low, round coffee table topped with a steaming teapot—and two teacups. Next to it, an old-school lantern glowed, its soft flame defiant under a glassed-in, moonless midnight.
Owen slipped past me, letting the door close behind us. “I told you I was working earlier.”
He bent over the gas heater, adjusting some setting or other, either for the plants’ sake or ours. My money was on the former. Plants are surprisingly hardy, he always said, but just because they can endure a lot doesn’t mean they should have to.
While he tinkered, I stared at the little tableau in front of me. A clear path led from the door. No tools lying haphazardly around or spilled soil waiting to gum up my treads. The concrete floor looked dewy, recently mopped. And at the end of this runway, he’d placed one chair next to a table next to a perfectly wheelchair-sized empty space. He’d done all of this for me. What, in case the power went out? Or did he think I’d come back here just because? Did he want me to? I imagined him in here earlier, shirtless and sweaty as he moved every piece of furniture in this room, as he picked up the mess that always littered the floor, as he found a charming little teapot and an absurd gas lantern of all things—and I felt anger coil deep in my gut.
He sat down, sinking comically deep in his plushy armchair, and started pouring what smelled suspiciously like peppermint tea.
“Drink?” he said, holding the tiny cup out to me.
I was still loitering near the doorway, tucked into the shadowed border of the room. “You hate peppermint tea,” I said.
He set the cup down and picked up his own. “I don’t hate it.”
“You don’t like it.”
“So?” he sighed, mild irritation creeping into the word.
“So, you know it’s my favorite,” I snapped, unable and unwilling to sugar my voice. “So, what the fuck, Owen?”
He stared at me for a minute, an expression I couldn’t quite read. He grabbed the cup and crossed the twenty feet between us in a few long strides, eyes never leaving mine.
“Drink the tea, Eleanor,” he said, thrusting the cup in front of me so forcefully some of the hot liquid sloshed out and over his fingers. He didn’t seem to notice. “Or don’t. I don’t care.”
It was the strangest standoff I’d ever experienced. The two of us glaring at each other over the rim of a floral-printed teacup, steam drifting up between us. If the air hadn’t felt so charged, I would have laughed.
I took the cup. Owen stalked back over to the improvised seating area, and I followed.
We sat in silence, each of us nursing our tea, which was—like the ramen—delicious. Hot enough to feel all the way to your belly, but not enough to burn, and steeped to perfection. Strong, no hedging. The scent of peppermint wreathed me and created a surprising harmony with the myriad garden smells: wet soil, rose and jasmine, the crisp of clear water. And all around us, snowfall.
If I ignored the boy across from me, it was almost peaceful.
“I’m not stuck here, you know,” he said, mildly.
“What?”
“Earlier. You said I was stuck here with you, but I could leave anytime. The house isn’t all that far. Maybe a mile? It’d suck, but I could make it.”
All hints of peacefulness evaporated. “Fuck you, Owen.”
He leaned forward, elbows pressed into his knees, hands clasped tight together. “Why don’t I leave, Nori?” His voice was soft, almost curious, as if he’d asked nothing more offensive than how the weatherman had gotten the forecast so wrong.
My eyes prickled. I willed them dry. “I don’t know,” I said, my voice shockingly steady. “It’s not like it’d be the first time you bailed on me.”
A spark of something flashed in his eyes. Again, I couldn
’t read him. When had he lost his legibility? When he’d cut me off? Or maybe before, when he’d first started pulling away.
He took a breath, but I interrupted him before he could speak. “Go home, Owen. You want to go? Go. Nobody’s stopping you.”
He threw his hands up. “You’re not listening. I don’t want to leave you.”
“Of course not,” I spat. “Can’t possibly leave the little crippled girl alone.”
He growled. Like, honest to god, growled. Something flipped low in my stomach at the sound.
“I. Don’t. Want. To. Leave. You,” he said, enunciating each word so hard he practically chewed them up.
Without warning, he slipped from his chair and knelt before me, just like he’d done earlier. I only realized my hands were shaking when he cupped them and slid the trembling teacup gently out of my grasp.
He wrapped his hands around mine again, his skin warm and rough to the touch. My breath hitched. “I’m saying I want to be here, Nori. I’m not staying because of the snow or because I feel obligated to. I know you don’t need me. You’ve made that abundantly clear over the past year. I’m here because I want to be.”
Abundantly clear, he’d said. You’ve made that abundantly . . . over the past—
I snatched my hands away.
“Don’t you dare. You were the one who left me. Or do you not remember standing me up on my birthday of all days.”
He stood sharply. He was so close it hurt to look up at him. I glared anyway, neck be damned.
“Why are you so impossible?” He punctuated the final word by spinning on his heel and pacing away from me.
I shouted after him, “You don’t get to be angry, Owen. I didn’t start this. You’re the one who left me crying and alone in that theater.”
He leaned over one of the benches, head down, back to me. He exhaled long and slow. As the air left him, he looked more and more . . . defeated.
“What about Becca?” he asked quietly, almost pleadingly.
The question threw me, confusion edging out the earlier anger. “My ex? What about her?”
“Wasn’t she there? On your birthday?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
He was quiet for a long moment, leaning over his plants in the dark. When he finally spoke, his voice had a strange, thin quality that, for some reason, brought to mind the dandelions Melanie and I used to braid into crowns and pile onto Owen’s head, like birds building a nest.
“I never meant for us to stop being friends,” he said. “I needed some distance, and I didn’t go about it the right way, I know. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t think you’d even notice. I’m sorry, Nori.”
I took the opportunity to study him. His shoulder blades arced toward each other over his spine, as if trying to hold him up. The hair at the nape of his neck was curled slightly from the humidity. He didn’t move, seemed barely even to breathe. I imagined, somewhat wildly, that if I kept my silence, we might stay this way forever. His plants would grow, and our bodies would age, and the sun would twirl its way around and around these glass walls, but we would remain cemented in place, figurines in a terrarium.
“What did I do?” I couldn’t keep the shake out of my voice this time. “What did I do wrong?”
He turned, brow furrowed. “Nothing. You did nothing wrong.”
“I had to have done something wrong. Because if I didn’t, then that means you just got tired of me.” I felt the tears coming again. I didn’t try to stop them this time; we were past that now, for better or worse. “You just didn’t like me anymore and tossed me aside.”
Owen crossed the room almost before the last word left my mouth. For the third time that night, he got on his knees in front of me. My heartbeat thrummed way up in my throat. He lifted a hand—tentatively, slowly enough that I could stop him if I wanted—and wiped the few spilled tears from my cheek.
“Is that what you’ve thought this whole time? No wonder you stopped speaking to me.”
“What the hell else was I supposed to think?”
He laughed lightly. “Fair point.” Owen pulled his hand away. I flushed hard when I realized I had leaned forward, following his retreating touch.
“Do you remember when we were little,” he said, “how I rubbed dirt all over me before we played in the garden?”
I laughed. “All over your arms, your legs, your face.” I smiled as the image of little Owen came back to me. “You looked ridiculous.”
“Mom would get so mad. ‘Now you’re gonna have to shower again. Are you gonna pay the water bill this month?’” His impression was scarily spot-on. “Do you remember why I did it?”
I searched back through the haze of memory for the exacting toddler logic he’d used. “You said you wanted to be a part of them, not apart from them.”
“Prepositional wordplay. So precocious,” he said, rolling his eyes at his younger self.
When he looked at me again, something changed. The air between us warmed from more than the gas heater, and I realized how truly little space there was between us. He licked his bottom lip. My breath caught.
“When you started dating Becca, it was like . . . Not like a light switching on. That’s not it at all.” He glanced around, frustrated, before his face lit up in triumph. “You know what it was like? It was like the day after an unheard-of snowstorm. There’s been nothing but gray, gray clouds all day, right? But the sun comes up the next morning and the sky is so blue and the ground is so white and the light reflects off of absolutely everything. The entire world is sunlight, and it’s so brilliant it burns, but if you look away you worry you might never see sun like this again.”
“Owen, you’re making less than zero sense right now.”
He took a breath, then reached out and took my hand. None of this made any sense.
“When you started dating Becca, I realized I didn’t want to be apart from you. I wanted us to be together. But you didn’t want that, and I didn’t know how to be a good friend to you with all of this . . . sunlight in my eyes. I’m mixing metaphors, I’m sorry.”
My chest hurt. Literally. It took a second to realize the sharp burn behind my ribs was my lungs demanding air. I’d stopped breathing sometime during his speech. Air deprivation wasn’t exactly helping me process. I closed my eyes and pulled a deep, slow breath through my nose. Owen, ever patient, didn’t ask what I was doing or repeat himself or demand I respond. He simply waited with me.
“How did you know?” I finally asked, my eyes still closed.
When I opened them, his head was tilted in question.
“How did you know I didn’t want to be together?” I clarified. “That I didn’t want you?”
Owen blinked a few times, then a few more. It was satisfying to see him look as flustered as I felt. His hand was still holding mine, and I squeezed gently, pulling him back to me.
“Becca and I weren’t ever official, but I did officially break it off the week after my birthday. Did you know that?”
“I did, but—”
“I broke it off because sitting in the dark in that theater, I had never felt more alone. I was heartbroken, Owen, and I hadn’t even realized I’d given my heart to you in the first place.” I paused and felt my blood pulsing in my wrist, right under Owen’s thumb. “It was a lot to process all at once, honestly.”
He looked up at me with the most hope and fear I’ve ever seen mixed into one gaze before.
“And then you didn’t say a word. Not one, Owen.”
“I know, I’m—”
“No,” I said. “It’s my turn to talk.”
He looked up at me sheepishly. “Yes, ma’am.”
I ignored the way my body reacted to that and kept on. “You shouldn’t have assumed. You should have talked to me.” The words rang false even to my own ears. I blew out a heavy sigh. “But I did the exact same thing to you. I assumed you hated me, and I flat-out refused to talk to you. You
started this but I made damn sure it continued. Why didn’t we just talk to each other?”
“We’re talking now,” he said reasonably. His fingers dragged along my palm, almost absently, but the way his eyes lit up at my sudden inhale proved he knew exactly what he was doing.
“I think . . .” I swallowed hard and tried again. “I think we’ve done enough talking. For now. Maybe.”
He nodded solemnly and raised himself higher on his knees. Our eyes held as he ran his knuckles lightly under my jaw and leaned forward. “Is this okay?” he said. “I mean, can I . . . ? I don’t want to assume.”
“Owen Otsuki, if you don’t kiss me right this second, I swear—”
He kissed me. No more hesitating. He tasted like peppermint and ginger. He felt like home. I parted my lips and he pressed harder, harder than I think he meant. My head snapped back from the force and I gasped in panic. Owen caught me, his hand firm on the back of my neck, bracing me.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked. “Are you okay?”
He held me steady, his fingers on my scalp a promise.
“I’m more than okay.”
I was safe. I ignored my body’s instincts and relaxed into his palm, letting my head fall back toward the slanted glass roof. Snow was still falling. I nearly opened my mouth to catch the flakes. I felt delirious, unreal. But then Owen’s mouth feathered along the side of my exposed throat and I snapped back to myself. I was real, this was real. Here in this body in this room in this moment with this boy I’d loved in one way or another my entire life.
He gently tilted my head upright and kissed me proper again. I stopped thinking altogether at that point.
When we finally broke apart, he rested his forehead on mine. We sat there for a long moment, just breathing, his hand in my hair and mine on his forearm.
I pulled away first. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Is this why Melanie’s been on my case about talking to you? Did she know?”
Up All Night Page 6