Before & After You

by Michelle Chamberland

  Because I did love him.

  It was stupid, and inconvenient, and the worst timing on the planet, and God really must’ve hated me, but there it was. I loved him. I couldn’t have helped falling for him even if I’d tried.

  And I think I had tried, but I still fell for him anyway.

  I loved his crooked smile and his green eyes that easily swum into the depths of my soul. I loved the words he sang from his lips but the ones he spoke even more. I loved the way he viewed the world as if it were full of unlimited possibility and not all the ways it had tried to break him, and I loved his unfailing belief in a better future…his ability to twist all that negative into the positive.

  Looking at him now, I knew it was the kind of love that would stick with me long after he left. All these little pieces of himself had slowly sunk their claws into me, burrowing themselves deep, altering the way I viewed life, too—the way I viewed myself—through a glass half-full instead of one that was mostly empty.

  “Jess?” Greyson stepped forward, hesitantly reaching his arm out. His fingers slid around my elbow as he stepped another foot closer.

  I took a deep breath, and our eyes locked together. I had no idea what he was going to say, but his eyes…in his eyes I saw a few things I was absolutely sure of: Resignation. Relief.

  But what did that mean?

  “I fell for you, too,” he said, and his words stopped traffic. The thoughts and sentences and images that traveled through my mind in a blur just—halted.

  “What?” I whispered, my breaths coming deep and fast. He always did that, made my mind spin and my heart race, and it felt like I was floating, right up and outside of myself. Was he actually saying what I thought he was saying?

  “I tried.” He swallowed, stepping even closer, sliding his hand into my hair and landing at the base of my neck. “I tried really hard to keep it from happening, but you made it too fucking easy to fall in love with you.”

  My eyes watered, threatening to spill over. Because holy shit, but I never thought I’d hear those words come out of his mouth. They had looked so good, too, on his lips.

  And his hand was now in my hair, and he was standing zero inches away from me, and I wanted to take the adoring way he was looking at me and bottle up the way it made me feel: like I’d found a slice of magic in an ordinary world—in my world.

  But that same world around me grew dark without my permission. My sun hid behind heavy clouds, and rain started to pour while thunder sounded in the distance, because I was smart enough to realize…that just because he’d fallen for me, too, it didn’t mean that anything between us could change.

  Fifty-eight Before

  THE HOURGLASS WAS still bleeding sand from one glass orb to the other. Our time was still running out. He was still leaving.

  We still couldn’t be together.

  I pulled away from the bubble he’d sucked me into. His bubble of: We fell for each other, and that’s all that really matters right now. Because it wasn’t all that mattered.

  What the hell had I been thinking, spilling my guts like that back there? Making it so obvious how I felt about him?

  I know I definitely hadn’t been thinking that he felt the same way. It wasn’t even in my realm of possibility.

  Liked me, sure. I knew that much was obvious. I’d have been an idiot not to have seen it. But he had a really effective way of shielding anything much deeper than that.

  My mind spun for the second time in as many minutes.

  This is a cruel, cruel fucking joke, Universe. I laughed darkly.

  Greyson’s eyes narrowed. “What’s so funny?” he asked. His guard had gone back up, too.

  I hadn’t meant to laugh. But seriously, God?

  “It just figures…” I said. “That I would finally get what I want without actually being able to have it.”

  He stepped closer, shaking his head. “That’s what I’m trying—”

  I stepped away from him again. “I guess that’s one of life’s greatest jokes, though, isn’t it?” I interrupted. He took another step towards me, fingers brushing my arm as I moved another foot back. “Handing out love at the absolute worst of times,” I finished, lost in a world of my own thoughts.

  “I don’t think so,” he disagreed, and I pulled my attention back to him, studying every curve and line of his face. I could see that he meant it. He was insane. “If anything, I’d say it’s the opposite. That it’s one of life’s greatest gifts…

  “…It’s when shit is at its worst that we need love most.”

  I let his words tumble around in my mind. Let them sink into my consciousness, tasted them on my tongue.

  They were bullshit.

  “No.” I shook my head, the weight of our conversation fully hitting me. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to feel this way—I don’t want to love you, when I can’t have you.” And fuck, but I knew I was going to cry if I stood here one second longer.

  “You have me. That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” he implored. “You have me.”

  “No, I don’t!” I yelled, loathing the tear that rolled down my cheek. “Not forever. Not in the ways that I want to. Not in any of the ways that matter,” I finished softly, my heart aching.

  That made him angry. His jaw clenched, again and again, his hand balling into a tight fist and releasing. He stepped right into my space. “This?” he gestured between the two of us, taking a deep breath, “What we have here? It matters to me—a fucking lot.”

  “Right,” I breathed. That’s why you pushed, and pushed, and pushed me away this entire time. I wiped away another tear. “I’d say prove it, but—” He gripped the back of my neck, pulling my body flush to his, and smashed his lips against mine. Bruising. Consuming.

  Out in the open, in front of the entire school, for the whole world to see…he was kissing me.

  I couldn’t help it. I sighed, and it collided with his next breath.

  He kept kissing me. Kissing me, and kissing me, and kissing me. Like it would last forever. Like it would never end. I didn’t want it to end, but at some point, it did.

  He pulled away but kept his eyes on mine, hands wrapped firmly around my shoulders. “Why does it have to be written in the rules that we can’t take the time we have left and make the best of it?” he said, adding a soft, “I’m willing to try if you are.”

  And, yep, there it was again. The drip, drip, drip of the sand creeping up on us. I didn’t have any fight left, though; I didn’t have anything left to say. I wanted him. Any piece of him, for any amount of time, for however much it would hurt later…I wanted him.

  “The way I see it…it’s going to suck either way, so why not be together—now—while we can?” he asked, still holding onto me. “And after…when I’m gone…we can call each other, or write, or something. I don’t know.” He shook his head. “But it doesn’t have to be the end.”

  I swallowed thickly, slowly pulling at the strings of my acceptance, dragging it through my doubt and fear and unease, and releasing it with a resigned breath…and a small, almost imperceptible nod. I knew full well that I was more than likely agreeing to heartbreak, but the thing was…my heart was already broken. It already ached for the day he’d leave. So he was right. We might as well take advantage of the time we had left. And maybe, just maybe, I’d be lucky enough to get some time after that, too.

  He smiled at me then. More genuine and heartfelt than I’d ever seen, and then he pulled me into his arms, simply holding me there for a long while. His breaths hummed in his chest, singing in my ears. I could stay right here, all day—for an eternity, I thought to myself.

  But the minute-bell rang too soon. I peeled myself away from him and picked up my backpack that had somehow found its way to the ground, turning back towards Greyson after I slid it on. “See you at lunch?” It was the only thing I could think to say. Good one, Jess.

  “Yeah,” he bit his lip, smiling shyly, “I’ll take us somewhere off-campus.”

  “Oka
y.” I nodded.

  But we both still stood there, trying and failing to hide our smiles like two scared, love-sick idiots, while the quad completely emptied out. My cheeks warmed, and my chest did, too. My heart was pounding like crazy. I felt our smiles melt into my bones and slink into my soul.

  I looked down at my feet, sucking in an overdue breath. “Okay,” I repeated, and finally found it in me to turn and walk away.

  Greyson slipped his fingers around my wrist and gently tugged me back towards him. “Wait.”

  “What?” I asked nervously. Since when was I so nervous around him?

  Probably since you admitted in so many words that you love him, and he chased you out of class and told you he loves you too, and then you yelled at him a little bit, but he kissed you anyway, and then you both agreed that you want to be together, and now he’s looking at you like…that.

  We’d gone from one extreme to another, and I don’t think a single one of my thoughts had even had the chance to settle yet.

  “I was thinking that I’d like to kiss my girlfriend again before I have to go to class,” he said, and his words stopped me in my tracks. Along with the heart-melting smile lighting up his face.

  “Come again?” I said. I couldn’t help but smile back.

  “I said I’m going to kiss my girlfriend again,” he repeated, and what was it with boys and them not asking me if I actually wanted to be their girlfriend? But why did I like it so, so much when Greyson did it?

  I was going to say so—the former—just to give him a hard time, but his lips shut me right the hell up.

  I might’ve whimpered. Just a little.

  His mouth curved up in a secret smile against my mine in response, and it immediately became my favorite thing in the entire world—his smile that I couldn’t see but could wholly feel against my own.

  And then the way his fingers dug into my hips as he pulled me right up against him…that became my second favorite thing.

  The rise and fall of his chest on mine, the beating of his heart pounding against my own, the way he slowly tilted my head back and slipped his tongue between my lips and into my mouth, deepening our kiss: third, fourth, and fifth.

  It washed everything else away.

  But I still wondered, for a brief moment, in the middle of that kiss, how many favorites we would accumulate in the time we had left.

  Fifty-nine Before

  WE SPENT ALL of our time together after that. Hanging out, taking long drives to nowhere in particular, talking under the stars and the moon like we used to. Watching movies, going out to eat, swimming—in his pool, and in mine, too. Working on homework. Drawing, writing.

  Holing-up in our rooms, doing all that making out I’d dreamt about too many times.

  I think he’d kissed my mouth in all the ways possible by now.

  And things had been…more than a little heated between us these past few days. I’d felt a lot of him, against a lot of me. Shirts and pants went pretty quickly at this point too, and so did our hands, roaming up and down, and over and around, grasping, and sliding over, and feeling.

  Feeling, feeling, feeling. Catching up for lost time.

  Things always stopped there, though. Every time. One of us inevitably and reluctantly hitting the breaks before the other one did.

  I honestly wasn’t sure I could handle giving him that part of myself, though, just to watch him soon walk away with it. And I think he felt the same way, too.

  So there we were, having slipped back into our clothes for what felt like the hundredth time that week, still catching our breaths. He’d handed me his notebook, and I was slowly flipping through it.

  I landed on one mess of a page titled, “Jess,” and looked up at him with wide, surprised eyes.

  He nodded with a shy smile, his silent go ahead.

  My heart raced, and my mind spun. I didn’t know what to expect, but I know what I definitely didn’t expect:

  I think of kissing her at least twice a day,

  or maybe twice an hour,

  but give me two seconds of her lips,

  and I can fill an hour,

  singing about the way

  one kiss can reach inside your soul,

  can feel brand new yet entirely old,

  can fill a hole in your chest

  you didn’t know should exist,

  until the touch of her kiss,

  and the taste of her lips

  left me yearning for this.

  I stared at the page long after I finished, afraid that if I looked up at Greyson, I’d pounce on him and rip off his clothes and give him everything I knew we both wanted.

  Because there were so many other words on that page, too.

  Her eyes show you the stories of her past

  she doesn’t want to tell.

  And,

  I found a future in her smile.

  I want to stay there a while.

  And,

  I don’t want to let her go.

  And,

  I wish this pencil in my hand could draw her mouth.

  I’d draw the shit out of her mouth.

  I laughed out loud, somehow breathless and full of life at the same time, and handed him one of my sketchbooks. He sat up against my headboard and opened it, his eyes widening at the first drawing: his mouth. And then it was his turn to laugh.

  “I see you conveniently omitted that you’re obsessed with me too,” I said, “when you teased me relentlessly about that.” I gestured to the collage of pictures on my wall. I don’t know how I’d forgotten about them the first time he walked into my room. But there they were, and I’d been slightly mortified, seeing as how he didn’t drop it for two days. Or ever.

  But also…I remembered how he’d stepped closer that day, taking a deeper look and getting lost in the sea of other pictures I’d taken. And the way he’d looked at me in awe, a lot like Elizabeth had, before asking if he could keep one of them.

  “Sure,” I’d told him, assuming he wanted one of his team shots, but he’d plucked down one of me instead. A black and white of me sitting still on a swing, head resting on the chain. I was looking directly into the camera, eyes dark and filled with a myriad of emotions.

  Sara had taken that one.

  “Yeah, but now I have Exhibit B of your obsession with me,” he waved my sketchbook in the air, pulling me from the memory. “Should I be worried?” he teased. “You’re not gonna, like, hog-tie me and keep me in your closet, are you?”

  “Shut up.” I shoved his shoulder, but he wrapped his fingers around my wrist and pulled me closer.

  I landed in his lap, and we both quickly inhaled, all humor fleeing from our eyes, our minds, the room.

  And then he kissed me, and I kissed him back, and I thought to myself, I could do this forever. But the darkest corners of my mind still whispered back: you’re on borrowed time.

  Sixty Before

  BUT…WERE WE? On borrowed time?

  I wasn’t sure. It didn’t feel like it. Not after we’d talked that day in the middle of the quad and had decided to be together. Not after all the time we’d been spending with each other—laughing, and kissing, and talking, pretending like the rest of the world didn’t exist.

  But there was still this nagging feeling, a clawing weight in my stomach, telling me I was wrong. That good things like this didn’t last.

  That they couldn’t.

  That they wouldn’t.

  A whistle blew, loud and reverberating, tearing me away from the thoughts I didn’t want to be dwelling inside of anyway. I welcomed the distraction with open arms, fully focusing my attention on Greyson and his teammates out on the football field.

  I know I’d once said that I hated his football pants—that they were stupid. Irritating. Obscene. Or something along those lines—but I was lying. I was a dirty, filthy liar, because those pants—those pants—were anything but. I pulled out my sketchbook and immediately started drawing him, in full gear—like the total creeper I was.

&
nbsp; But if no one ever knew that I had an entire notebook full of only Greyson drawings, did it still make me a creeper?

  Does a bear shit in the woods, Jess?

  I don’t know. Does it?

  I couldn’t help but smile, but my smile slowly melted away as I pressed pencil to paper.

  Small flicks, and curved strokes.

  A heavy hand on the shadowing around him, pulling him center-focus.

  Everything else faded out. I was adrift, lost. In that drawing. In the contrast between the quiet breeze blowing through my hair, the soft sounds of my pencil scratching against paper, and the echo of loud grunts and tackles on the field below making their way up the bleachers.

  After a while, or what had felt like only minutes, really, another whistle blew in three short bursts. I looked away from my drawing to find everyone walking off the field and towards the locker rooms.

  Everyone but Greyson.

  He slid his helmet off and called me over, beckoning me with a single finger.

  I didn’t know what it was about that one move. Whether it was simply him, all sweaty in uniform, or if it was the look in his eyes and the tilt of his lips as he watched me fumble with my things, but…it did something to me.

  Kicked my heart into overdrive. Forced my breaths to stall somewhere between my lungs and my mouth.

  I slowly made my way down the bleachers one measured step at a time and didn’t stop until I was standing right in front of him, less than a foot away, looking up into his green eyes.

  He smirked. “Want to learn how to kick a field goal?”

  “What?” I said, somehow anxious and confused and lacking oxygen all at the same time.

  “I’m going to teach you a little something about football, and then in exchange, you can show me how to draw,” he said.

  “Okay.” I laughed. “I mean…why not.” I shrugged, as if I wasn’t excited about it. As if there wasn’t a giddy version of me laughing and giggling and rattling pom-poms inside my chest.

  He smiled. A knowing smile. Crooked and perfect.

  “But let’s not expect me to be good at this,” I added with a finger pressing into his chest. “Because then you’re just in for disappointment.”