I told myself that she’d had a bad date or something, and crept back upstairs and put my headphones on. I LifeHacked my way out of the situation, just like she taught me, because it would have been too hard to go in there and hug her. Talk to her. But maybe it wasn’t a bad date, maybe a lot of small things built up and spilled over like it just did for me.
Hannah and I are sitting on the floor across from each other. I’ve got my hand on her knee, and when she reaches out to touch the soft skin on the underside of my arm, drawing patterns there with the edge of her fingernail, I shiver.
Just friends, Leo.
Her fingertips flick up to my bicep, where my one and only tattoo peeks out from under the edge of my sleeve.
“I’ve been wondering what this is,” she says softly. “Can I?”
The raspy hum of her voice makes it hard for me to speak, so I just nod. She shifts my sleeve up, tracing the lines of ink. I shiver at the touch.
“A lion,” she says, tracing the abstract lines of it.
I don’t know what I’m going to do if she keeps touching me like that. I grasp for a change of subject. “I guess ballerinas don’t have tattoos, huh?”
“Actually lots of them do. Most dancers are so fierce and so sure of themselves. Not like me.”
I find her hand with mine, coaxing her away from my tattoo. I circle my thumb over the inside of Hannah’s wrist, using my imagination to paint ink onto her skin.
It’s a simple black outline of a heart, no bigger than a quarter. Around the edges, I add a watercolor splatter of paint in every color of the rainbow.
“There,” I say. “That’s to remind you not to keep all your ideas inside you all the time.”
She takes my arm back. Under her fingers, colors spread like dye until I have a matching heart on my wrist. But instead of spilling out, all my colors are inside my heart.
“And that’s to remind you not to ignore what you’re feeling,” she says. “To keep some of it inside for yourself.”
We’re quiet, just staring at the tattoos. They’re a perfect set, like a lock and a key.
My feet start to go tingly and numb, and I suddenly remember that we’re sitting on a hard wooden floor in a room that isn’t really real.
We help each other up. My head’s throbbing from all the crying, but everything else feels lighter. Once we’re on our feet, I pull Hannah in for a hug.
“Thank you,” I murmur into her hair. “For letting me cry all over your shirt.”
“Anytime,” she says quietly.
She’s holding me as tight as I’m holding her. This is totally just a friend hug, right? But friend hugs are only supposed to last a second or two, and I’m finding it really hard to let go.
When she starts to pull away, I catch her, one arm still twined around her waist.
Hannah looks up. My stomach flips, and we’re caught there, staring into each other’s eyes, stuck in time.
It feels like one of us should laugh at how awkwardly long this moment is getting and peel away.
With Hannah looking at me like this, I know that someone’s not going to be me.
I’m suddenly intensely aware of all the places where Leo’s body is touching mine.
My hands on his shoulders. His stomach warm against mine. His arms tight around my waist.
He swallows, and his Adam’s apple bobs. The I like him, I like him, I like him rises up, refusing to be pushed aside.
For this one moment, I don’t care that the world is falling apart. I don’t care that we’re dead.
He brings a hand up to cradle my face, and it’s suddenly hard to breathe. The air between us is dizzy and thin. His thumb moves at the corner of my mouth, ever so slightly, and our faces are so, so close.
I’m going to kiss him.
It would just take one tiny move, just the slightest rise up onto my toes.
My eyes must give me away, because suddenly he’s looking at me with such a serious intensity, like he’s going to let me kiss him, or like he’s going to do something about it if I don’t. He leans down, and every inch of my skin feels like it’s somehow both melting and sparking.
And then …
My phone chimes.
The bright noise turns me to stone. I haven’t heard that chime in seven days. With a smashing wave of adrenaline, I’m twisting, grabbing, pulling my phone out of my pocket, fumbling with my passcode, and—
It’s a calendar notification.
SOUTH TEXAS CITY BALLET
CORPS DE BALLET AUDITION
4 P.M. SALIX STUDIO
Oh god.
It’s today.
It’s right now.
Leo’s staring at the screen too. He tries to tighten his arms around me, but I pry myself free and stumble to the wall. I slide down against it, a puddle of shock and numbness and cold.
He follows, tugging my phone from my hand and putting it facedown on the floor. “I’m so sorry,” he says softly.
One stupid calendar notification, and now everything has changed. I’m missing the biggest audition of my life, because I have no life. And I never will again.
I feel like my whole self has been ripped out of me. No audition means no ballet, means no career, means no me.
But it’s not just ballet. It’s everything else too.
This emptiness is all it’s ever going to be. Houston, Texas: population two.
I can barely breathe as it all finally hits, as the truths I’ve been protecting myself from come crashing down around me.
“Tell me what you’re thinking. How can I help?” Leo asks, and it’s so sweet, the way his concern is knitted between his eyebrows, and I can’t help but think of that sleepover conversation with Astrid so long ago and how we thought we knew this boy.
“I don’t think there’s anything you can do. Just—be here?”
“Okay. I can do that.”
A thick silence settles over us. Leo reaches for his guitar like it’s a life jacket. He settles it on his lap, but he doesn’t play, just fiddles with the knobs and stares at the same spot on the floor that I’m staring at.
There’s something that needs to be said. Something we’ve both been working hard to pretend isn’t true.
“Leo, I think this is …” My voice fails, cracking into nothing. I clear my throat and try again. “I think this is it. I don’t think we’re going to find anyone else.”
The room goes still.
“We’re really alone,” I whisper. “And I don’t think it’s going to change.”
There’s a charged moment of processing. And then he says, in a voice as unsteady as mine, “I know.”
A black hole starts gathering somewhere near my stomach.
I’ll never see my beautiful ballerina mother again. Or my rock-and-roll dad in his corporate disguise, or zany bombshell Astrid or my sweet Southern grandma. Leo won’t see his band or his friends or Asher or his family. We won’t ever meet the thousands of other people we were supposed to meet in our lives.
The first tear is rolling down my cheek when Leo Sterling’s fingers, glinting with all of Leo Sterling’s rings, weave through mine.
“Hannah. Look at me.”
He twists so we’re almost fully facing each other, shifting his guitar on his lap between us. And then he brushes his fingertips under my chin, so gently, turning my face up to his. Our foreheads press together, and I stare into those blue-gray eyes.
“You want to know what I think?” he asks.
I nod, sniffling.
“I think we can do this. We’ve been doing this, for days. We’ve been surviving.”
He’s right. We’ll just have to keep taking turns holding each other up. Sometimes it’s easier to be strong if someone else is showing cracks.
He leans into me. Three days ago, he didn’t even know my name, and now there’s a tear-damp place on my shirt where he buried his cries. His shoulder is solid and real, and I’m suddenly just so grateful I have someone to be here with. And for it to be him, out
of all the people it could have been—it’s just the loveliest, most heartbreaking, most magnificent thing.
Acceptance washes over me, warm and calm, and the claws of all the lies I was telling myself retract—hurricane, evacuation, they’re coming back for us. The claws leave wounds behind, but now at least they can start to heal.
I can finally accept that this is all it’s ever going to be.
Hannah’s fingers fit so neatly between mine. We’ve been sitting here like this for too long, but I can’t drag up the willpower to let go of her hand. Not when we both need something to cling on to.
I should be relieved that her phone went off and stopped whatever almost just happened, because I would have screwed everything up with her eventually, but I’m not relieved at all.
She tips her head back against the brick wall and looks up at me with this exquisitely sad, resigned expression.
You know what? Fuck the consequences. I’m so done trying not to touch her.
Slowly, so slowly, so she doesn’t spook, I untangle my fingers from hers and drift them over her wrist. Up her arm, light as a feather. She breathes out a little raggedly, eyes drifting closed until her lashes fan out on her cheeks.
Good lord, this girl. I don’t care if the guitar I’m holding costs ten grand, I’d chuck it across the room to get it out of our way if I thought the noise wouldn’t scare her off. I want this moment to last forever. It’s better than food, than drugs, than whiskey, than music. This is what I’ve been looking for since I woke up alone: the ultimate distraction.
But after all that we’ve been through together, she’s way more than a distraction, and I want this to be more than just hot, messy make-outs.
My fingers wander over her shoulder and onto her long, long neck, to the smooth skin there that’s been tempting me for days. My whole body flashes hot.
A little jolt of surprise goes through her, but then she just … relaxes. Melts. And I knew the sharp lines of her shoulders would soften like this, and it is so, so delicious to see it happening.
Maybe I’ll ruin everything later, but I can’t stop now.
Leo touching my neck makes everything in me burn.
He sweeps his thumb over my skin once, twice, then pulls back and looks at me with a tenderness that unlaces me, and all the kindness that no one thinks he has in him, and the joy is too big for my body. I’m smiling, and he’s smiling, and we’re both a little stupid and giddy to be on the edge of whatever’s about to happen.
And suddenly I know: We’ll be okay. As long as we’re together, helping each other up when we stumble, we’ll be okay.
Leo’s hand feels big and warm as it cradles my head, as his fingers slide into my hair, tugging until my face tilts up to him. My eyes flutter closed, everything in me overwhelmed by all the sensations.
His mouth is almost on mine, and the moment spins out, golden and exquisite, and I want to be here for this, I want to see this, so I open my eyes and that’s when—
—Leo flickers.
I snap back. Blink hard.
For a split second, he was just not there. Like he was a hologram and someone waved their hand over the projector.
And then he flickers again.
But this time he doesn’t flicker back.
For a moment, his guitar hovers in empty space. I gape. That’s impossible.
Then it drops to the ground with a splintering crack.
What.
The.
Hell.
“Leo?!”
I scramble onto my knees and shove his guitar out of the way. It skids over the floorboards, crashing into the wall with a twang.
“Leo? Where are you?!” I run frantic hands over the floor where he was sitting. Still warm. I don’t understand. He was right here a second ago. I’ve got to do something before my mind—
Shit. Too late.
Because my imagination is already oh-so-helpfully supplying me with a video reel of what this city would look like without Leo. It shows me staggering through the shadows of my empty house, palms laid against obsidian-black windows, too afraid to leave. It shows me curled up around the pillow he slept on, my eyes empty and my cheek imprinted with guitar strings.
Oh god, I can’t be alone again. I can’t survive this city without anyone. Without him.
Stop. STOP IT.
I let out a roar. My scream ricochets around the empty room—and collides with something soft. Just as fast as he blinked out of existence, Leo’s back. I’m right in his face, my nose millimeters from his.
I nearly knock him over with a tackle-hug.
“Oh my god, you’re back! What was that? Where did you go?” My hands can’t get enough of the solid Leo-ness of his shoulders, the warmth under his black silk shirt, the candle-smoke smell of him. He clings to me, wound tight and shaking.
The air around us is thick with fear. Loud with the thump of our hearts. Maybe that was just a glitch. It’s over, and we can get back to our lives. Afterlives. But now I can’t imagine picking up where we left off, playing songs and staring at each other like we’re not in the middle of one long nightmare, like he could be snatched away again at any second.
When I can finally bear to pull away, Leo crumples, clutching his head.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Are you hurt?”
He nods. “Headache. Oh fuck.” He gasps as pain twists his face.
I lean back to give him room, but he clamps a hand on my arm to keep me close. He’s ashen, eyes squeezed shut.
“What’s happening? What can I do?” I dart a glance around—for what? I don’t know, first aid kit? Ice pack? Something to make this headache go away.
“Leo, tell me what to do. Please, tell me what’s happening.” My voice is shaking. I’m shaking. I don’t understand. You can’t have a medical crisis if you’re already dead.
“My head feels like it’s exploding,” Leo grates out. “Everything’s white.”
We need a doctor. Some help—someone, anything.
He takes a ragged breath against my collarbone. “Hannah—this is bad. I think I’m going.”
My insides go numb with dread. “What do you mean you’re going?”
“I don’t know,” he says, voice cracking over the words.
“Stay,” I plead. “We’re dead already, Leo. There’s nowhere to go.”
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this has been an in-between place all along. The waiting room before whatever comes next. Maybe this has all been a weighing of the hearts, and this is the real end.
“Don’t go back to the basement,” he says. “Paint the sky. The city’s yours, okay?”
I choke down another lung-clenching sob before it can escape. “The city’s boring without you. You have to stay.”
Leo presses his forehead to mine. “You’ll be okay. You can do anything. Whatever you want. Write about me, okay? Write us a life.”
“Stop it. You’re not going anywhere.”
“You know I wouldn’t trade this for anything, right? Even if it has been a fuckin’ trip.” His words come in cracked whispers, in bursts and stops and starts. “You would have been Ballet Chick forever, just a girl I passed in the hallway.”
“Stay with me. Please.” I hiccup through a sob.
“Thank you for letting me be me,” he says. “You know I—”
His words slice off into nothing. I lunge forward, but there’s nothing there but air.
No, no, no, no, no.
I can barely breathe.
I try counting, but my mind is reeling, can’t keep track, can’t remember what order the numbers go in.
He’ll come back. He has to.
I double over, pressing my hand over my mouth. Stagger down until I’m a heap on the floor, curling around the dark space growing from the middle of me.
The tattoo on my wrist begins to run, the colors dripping down my fingers.
This can’t be it. This can’t be real.
But it is.
He’s not coming back.
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“No,” I gasp. It hurts so much. More than anything.
I’m the last person in the world.
The whiteness is blinding. There’s a high-pitched beeping coming from somewhere, screeching through my skull. My head is splitting open, cracking wide, and the pain is so intense, so soul-shredding, I yell and scream and squeeze my eyes shut against it.
This has to be hell. I always knew that was where I was headed, but fuck.
And I can’t feel Hannah anymore. Without her here to hold me, I’m spinning wild through the pain. If I can’t figure out which way is up, I’m going to puke.
God, what is that noise? My eyes fly open, searching, but everything is searingly bright. One thing is clear, though: I’m not on Hannah’s dimly lit stage anymore.
“Ah, Leo, glad to have you back with us.”
I jolt up, my whole body going tense.
“Who’s there?” I demand, blinking hard.
Through the bright blur, shapes come into focus. Finally my vision clears enough for me to see where the deep, masculine voice came from.
Two people are looming over me: a tall man with a shaved brown head and a white woman with a frizzy orange bun.
Who the fuck are these people? I’ve never seen them before in my life.
Panic pulses through me. Where’s Hannah?
I squint and bring a hand up to my forehead. The light pulsing down from the ceiling is so fucking bright. If this is hell, why is everything so white?
“It’s okay, Leo.” The man reaches out, and my adrenaline spikes. I want to jerk back, scramble out of his reach, but my body is slow and sluggish.
“What do you mean it’s okay? Where am I?!”
“Leo, you’re in the intensive care unit at Memorial Hermann.”
I stop breathing. That can’t be right.
Memorial Hermann isn’t hell.
It’s a hospital.
I sit in shock as the man and woman talk over me.
“Blood pressure normal, other vitals stable,” she says.
You & Me at the End of the World Page 19