I plonk down onto one of the couches, exhausted. “We probably won’t be able to tell until the sun comes up.”
“Maybe we haven’t gone far enough,” she says, chewing on her thumbnail.
“I don’t think I can face getting back in the car tonight. Let’s see what it’s like in the morning. If it still looks bad, we’ll keep going, okay?”
“I just don’t want it to catch us. It must be a really serious hurricane if everyone left.”
“We’ll be fine for tonight. We need to sleep.”
Hannah drops her head down and rubs at her temple. “I just can’t stop thinking about what might happen, or what the storm might mean. It’s such a mess in my head. All these scenes keep playing out, of ditches and drowning and trees flying around and smacking us.”
“Hey. Don’t think about that scary shit. Think about something nice. Leo’s LifeHack, remember? Whenever you’re upset, do something fun. Come here.”
She mopes over and sits down next to me.
All I really want to do is find a pillow and pass out. Having to talk Hannah down off a ledge is not my idea of fun on a Friday night, but it has to be done. I can’t just say See ya and go to bed.
I nod at the stolen painting. “What’s this chick’s backstory?”
“I don’t know,” she mumbles.
“You don’t have to say it out loud. Just think about it for a minute.”
While she stares, her arms start to relax. Her posture becomes merely straight, not ramrod.
“Better?” I ask after a while.
“Yeah. How do you always know the right thing to say?” she asks.
I bark out a laugh. “Trust me, I really don’t.”
“Well, you’re doing great with me. I swear I’m not usually such a mess. I’m used to knowing exactly what to do. Before all this, I had routines and plans. This is all a little … improvisational for me.”
“I think you’re holding up pretty well, considering.”
She pulls her legs up under her and hugs an embroidered pillow to her chest.
“You know what you need?” I ask.
“To get a grip?”
“Well, yes. But also a song.”
I reach over and snag my guitar case, unzipping and lifting my acoustic out. My bare feet stretch out flat on the wood floors, and I curl my left hand around the neck. I strum a few times, testing chords.
I play her the same thing I played at the bookstore. The song is slow and in A minor. I worry that it’s too creepy, too haunting, but she turns sideways on the couch and drops her cheek against the cushion.
Our eyes lock.
For the entire song, she holds my gaze. I can’t bear to look away. My fingers press and glide on autopilot, because my brain is somewhere else, tumbling down into this stare, into the green of her eyes, into the electric soul-baring thing she does that comes out of nowhere and hypnotizes me.
When I finish the song with three long blue notes, we’re still locked on each other.
A spell descends on the room. The patter of the rain, the glow of the lamp. The smooth lines of her neck, the freckles sprinkled across her nose. We’re so close I can feel the heat rising from her, and my head is light, like I’m breathing through one of those tiny brown straws they give you to stir coffee.
My eyes drop to her mouth. I’m about to lose it. I don’t have a shred of self-control on my best day, and this feels good. So, so good. The purest kind of high, an all-natural intoxication, and I want to feel good.
I reach out to touch her hair, and her breathing stutters. Her ear heats up under my palm as she leans in to me, and her hand comes up to mine, her fingertips fluttering on my wrist.
Our foreheads touch then, and I give in to the dizziness. There’s no stopping this. There will be a kiss, I know that now, but I want to luxuriate in this hazy-drunk moment for a little longer.
We experiment with soft touches, our skin whispering together in a thousand small ways. It’s a breathless dance. A brush of the tips of our noses. A nuzzle under her jaw. All the intoxicating teases leading up to a kiss. Then she smiles, and I smile too, and fuck it, enough teasing, I’m going to—
The pressure in the room changes. With the thwumping noise of a sonic boom, the house goes silent.
Hannah jerks back, eyes wild, panicked, and our hands drop like lead. For a second, I’m think I’ve gone deaf. I work my jaw and rub under my ear, but then I realize I’m not deaf—I just can’t hear the constant white noise of the rain that followed us home.
“The rain stopped,” she says, and I don’t know if she sounds dazed because we were about to kiss, or because the silence is so absolute.
There aren’t even any lingering drips from the gutters. It’s like someone snipped the sound off with a big pair of scissors.
I look down and Hannah’s hand is still on my wrist, her thumb looped under one of my braided leather bracelets. My stomach churns. I was about to do something bad.
I gently untangle Hannah’s fingers and set her aside. The guarded look in her eyes comes back.
God, I wish I could tell her that I’m not doing any of this to hurt her. That it would hurt her more, in the end, if we were to act on whatever this is that makes me want to touch her. I can’t lose her. I can’t be alone again.
I stand up to put some distance between us. “We should try to get some sleep,” I say, my voice sounding wooden and awkward.
“Right. Bedrooms.” She gets up from the couch, swaying woozily. I’m still a little unsteady myself. I catch her elbow.
For a moment, we’re an echo of a time when she caught my elbow, and then she’s gently pulling away and leading the way upstairs.
At the top, there are two doors right across from each other.
“That’s the guest bedroom,” she says, pointing to the one on the left. “I’ll sleep in here, in my grandparents’ room.”
We hear the splat-splat-splat at the same time. Hannah reaches into the dark room and switches on the light. There’s a gray circle on the ceiling and the plasterboard is starting to buckle. Directly below the leak is an old-fashioned four-poster bed, its puffy comforter dark with water.
Her shoulders slump.
“No big deal,” I say. “You take the guest room. I’ll be fine down on the couch.”
“You can’t sleep on the couch,” she says.
“Honestly, it’s fine.”
“No it’s not. The couch is right under this bedroom. What if the ceiling falls through and kills you?” she asks.
Jeez. Who even thinks these things?
“Or what if the downstairs starts flooding, like at the museum?” she adds.
I suppress the urge to take her into my arms. “Shh. Stop imagining bad things. Imagine good things. I’ll be fine downstairs.”
She crosses her arms and looks down at her feet. “You know how you said when I’m in a different room you think I’m going to disappear?”
“Yeah …”
Her voice goes very small. “Can you please just stay up here?”
“What, in the guest bedroom?” I want to add with you? but it’s already there, unspoken in the air between us.
She nods.
I try to smooth it into a joke. “Hannah Ashton, are you trying to get me in bed with you?”
She flushes scarlet. “That’s not what I— I just don’t want—”
“I’m teasing. It’s fine. No big deal. I promise I won’t try anything. We can even sleep with our heads at different ends of the bed. Top to tail.”
Through her blush, the corner of her mouth quirks up. It feels like victory.
The guest room is rose pink and has more lace than I’m strictly comfortable with. I keep up a running commentary so she doesn’t freak out, and so I don’t think about what almost happened downstairs. I tell her about how my brother, Joe, lives like a gawky, stinky caveman, about how happy I was when Gemini moved out last year so I could finally stop sharing a room with him.
“Is Leo short for anything?”
she asks.
“Nope.”
“So your sister’s name is Gemini, but your brother’s name is Joe? How’d he escape the astrological theme?”
“I have no idea,” I say. “My parents were either on more drugs when they had him, or a hell of a lot less, picking the world’s most normal name like that. Or maybe Sagittarius was taking it a bit too far. Leo and Gem can just about pass for names.”
I’ve barely thought about my family. First I was too busy trying to ignore being dead, and then I was too busy not ignoring Hannah.
Maybe I’ll see them again after all. That rain felt so real that I’m starting to think Hannah’s right, and that everyone did evacuate ahead of the hurricane.
While Hannah’s busy getting things out of a closet, I wander over to a heavy oak bookshelf full of stuffed animals and fairy tales. On the top shelf, there’s an open music box with a little dancer frozen in front of three tiny mirrors. I run my finger over the ballerina’s tutu, then I spot a pink notebook with worn edges. There’s a sticky note stuck to the cover, with scrawled old-lady handwriting: Ask Hannah if she wants to keep her writing.
Interesting.
“Do you want a foam pillow or a feather one?” Hannah calls from inside the closet.
I snatch my hand away from the bookshelf and clear my throat. “Uh, foam.”
“Would you rather have a blanket instead of the quilt? Do you need a glass of water by the bed?”
“All right, cool it, Grandma,” I say as she bustles out. “The quilt’s fine. I’m good.”
It’s amusing, but it’s kind of nice too. No one’s ever asked me this kind of stuff before.
She moves a bunch of decorative pillows off the bed and pulls back the quilt. I toss my pillow down by the end and get in as casually as possible, jeans and all. In a second, she’s going to be here too, under the covers, right next to me. Do not think about it, do NOT even think about it.
She climbs in gingerly and clicks off the light on her side. We’re so close I can feel the warmth growing in the space between us. I’m flipping between want, which I’m familiar with, and something that scares the absolute shit out of me. Something steady and easy and peaceful.
I’m so confused.
“Hey, Leo?” Hannah whispers.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks again for driving. Are you okay? I should have asked.”
“Better now,” I say. “Thank you for checking.”
“Okay. Good night,” she whispers.
“Sweet dreams, Hannah.”
I lie there, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. I thought I’d be the one snoring and she’d be awake and worrying. Five seconds ago, I thought keeping my mitts off her was what would keep me awake, but instead I’m full of a warm glow, a sense that someone actually cares about how I feel. That I’m not here just to entertain her or charm her.
Hannah’s breathing stretches out as she falls asleep. I match my own breathing to it, and everything that was aching just … stops aching.
I always thought Leo’s LifeHacks had to be high-octane and loud enough to drown out the noise of my defects, but maybe the distractions can be soft and quiet. Maybe they can be cups of tea and a choice of pillows, holding hands and doing hard things to make someone else happy. Maybe this is why I let her talk me into going after that beam of light, why I drove all the way out here for her.
If Hannah had met me before all this, she would have gotten an entirely different Leo. No one’s here to warn her, to tell her that I’m a flake, that I only think about myself, that I’m a loser who’s going nowhere. I like that I’m getting a clean slate with her. It sounds weird, but it’s like I’m getting a clean slate with myself too.
I shift under the quilt, not so afraid to get closer to her now. She still smells like pears, which is ridiculous because she’s had about ten showers’ worth of rain.
Tomorrow, when we wake up, I’ll make her coffee, and now that the rain’s stopped, we can go for a walk. We can hang her stolen painting up, and I can get back to work on coaxing that power chord smile out of her.
Something wakes me before dawn.
My legs are numb with cold and sleep, and my eyes are swollen and hot. When I open them and blink out into the darkness, my eyelids feel sticky.
I dreamed of traffic lights again. Their glow, on my skin, glazing me acid green and sickly yellow and feral red.
I shake the image of the traffic lights from my mind, forcing my eyes to adjust to the night.
The room is still and blue around me, and it takes me a second to remember where I am.
I lift my head and look over my shoulder at the boy-shaped figure twisted up in the quilt behind me. That’s why I was cold. Leo stole the covers.
His head is still at the wrong end of the bed, and his knee is touching my lower back. The touch is light, but I can feel the pressure of it through my shirt. Warmth multiplies between us.
Oh my god. I’m in bed with Leo Sterling.
The tips of my ears go red-hot. I scoot away, right to the edge of the bed, and the knee-sized circle of heat dissipates.
But it’s too late. I’m suddenly hyperaware of every noise, every vibration in the air, every shift of shadow in the room. The candle-smoke smell of him is everywhere.
I try to go back to sleep, but being still makes me want to crawl out of my skin. I have to roll over.
It takes me five whole minutes to do it, but Leo doesn’t stir. His shins are right in front of my face now, wrapped tight in the quilt. If I tilt my chin down, I can see the rise and fall of his chest.
The song he sang for me downstairs lingers in my head. While he played, he stared so deep into me I thought I would implode. And the music … I’ve danced in front of a forty-piece orchestra, felt the timpani shake the floor beneath my feet, but I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to music.
Moonlight slants in through the blinds, cresting over the slope of his nose. His eyelashes lie on his cheeks like paintbrushes, and his skin glows in stripes of blue-gray light. Even though I know the light is coming from outside, it looks like he’s creating it.
I think …
I think this is more than like.
I tried so hard not to, but I’m falling for Leo Sterling.
Everything slows. Even the ticks of the old-fashioned alarm clock on the bedside table. Leo is breathing and I’m trying not to breathe and I have to get out of this room before I give in to this tidal-wave urge to put my head at the other end of the bed and pull my half of the quilt back until we’re under it together, face-to-face.
No. Do not even think about it, Hannah.
I slip out of bed and grab my phone before fleeing to the adjoining bathroom. Behind the closed door, I squinch my eyes shut against the hard light and press my palms against the cold white countertop. I drop my head and heave for breath.
When I look up, I barely recognize the girl in the mirror.
I’m not supposed to like guys like Leo. He doesn’t fit into my plan.
The thing is, I know exactly who does. For the past three years, I’ve been autopiloting a crush on my pas de deux partner at the Academy, Jerome Fletcher. His family is just like mine: His mom’s a ballerina, his dad works in a skyscraper, and he’s their perfect, polished only child.
I suppress a groan as I slump onto the closed toilet seat. I’ve got to stop thinking about Leo curled up on the other side of that door, hair sticking out at all angles, warm and alive and imperfect. To distract me, I pull out my phone to look at Fletch’s Instagram. In his profile picture, he’s midturn. Perfect white smile, smooth brown skin, unbelievable quads. He’s certainly not hard to look at.
I used to imagine some airbrushed future of us as ballet royalty, but my crush on Fletch feels like ancient history all of a sudden. A pale imitation of a crush. Because with Leo it’s completely different.
When I look at Leo, everything in me says yes. Yes to his face, his clothes. His voice. His words. Even his shoes. How ridiculous
is that? Most of the time, when I meet someone, it’s a tentative okay. Later I might think, Hmm, sure. Maybe. But eventually, they all do something that makes me think no. But with Leo, it’s all yes. That handful of times that I saw him at school, and every moment we’ve spent together over the past few days, it’s always an all-caps, fluorescent YES.
It’s idiotic. I’ve known Leo for two days. #Instalove. I’ve seen it. I’ve judged it. Maybe it’s some weird psychological phenomenon, like Stockholm syndrome or something—maybe I’m getting attached to him because he’s the only other person here. If we weren’t the last two people in Houston, I wouldn’t know anything about him except his name.
I’m about to hyperventilate all over again. I crunch forward and put my head between my knees, grabbing on to the cool edge of the bathtub. My feelings come into hypersharp focus.
Leo’s not who I’m supposed to like, but … I’m tired of fighting it.
Instead of doing what I’m supposed to do, I’m going to do what I want to do. I’m going to go back out there and be open to whatever. Be myself—whoever that is.
The decision makes me feel light-headed.
I get up and stand over the sink to wash my face, rinsing the hot color from my cheeks. Then I brush my teeth, because that’s what people do first thing in the morning. I’m definitely not doing it for any other reason.
After, I stare myself down in the mirror. I want Leo to see more than just Ballet Chick. I reach up and start untangling the bobby pins from my bun. My hair is thick and coarse and springs out in a frizzy poof, stiff from the hairspray.
I close my eyes and take a breath, preparing to go back into the bedroom.
I open the door, tiptoeing through the room in the dark. I want to shake Leo awake and ask him for a hug like the one he gave me in my basement yesterday. Instead, I get an extra blanket from the trunk in the corner and sneak into bed. I click my phone on, and when I see the time, my whole body goes cold.
It’s eleven a.m.
I blink, but the numbers don’t change. They can’t be right. I switch to the clock app and look at the world times. Houston, Central Time: 11:04 a.m.
But … the room is dark. The sky outside the window is dark.
You & Me at the End of the World Page 14