We’re surrounded by sleek, metallic skyscrapers. Through the glass, the lights of downtown Houston seem magnified, multiplied.
“This is gorgeous,” I say, marveling at the after-hours magic of the place. I couldn’t have imagined anything better myself, even with the things we could do in the empty Houston.
Leo comes up behind me. I can feel him, warm and real and so close.
His fingers catch at the curve of my hip. The touch is so hesitant, so light, but it sparks through every inch of me.
Slowly he pulls me away from the window.
“I have something for you,” he says, guiding me to the corner of trees.
He’s as jumpy as usual, all energy and frayed edges, and he’s not paying attention to the ground. His shoe catches on the uneven edge of one of the stones on the path. He trips, starts to stumble, but before I can even think about it, my arm shoots out to steady him. It feels like a reflex, like something I’ll do again and again.
Leo flips his hair out of his eyes with a sparkling smile, not a trace of embarrassment to be seen.
“Thanks. Lucky one of us has good balance, huh?”
He leads me to a bench tucked between two sago palms. We sit, turned into each other. I’m exquisitely aware of the foot of space that’s still between us.
“Close your eyes,” he says.
I do, but I flinch when he puts something cold in my hands.
“Okay, open,” he says.
I look down. It’s a can of Dr Pepper.
I laugh, flashing back to that day outside the bookstore, when I was a basket case after the eclipse.
“Is this our thing, then?” I ask.
“Sure. I like us having a thing,” he says, smiling.
I’m touched. For us, getting the other person a drink is a small way to say I care. It always has been, from that first Dr Pepper he handed me to keep me from falling apart.
I take a sip. It’s sweet and fizzy and goes to my head. I pass it to him, and in taking it, he leans closer, just enough so that our shoulders are brushing. I nearly shiver at the touch.
He smells just like he did in the empty city. Candle smoke and heat. How could I know what he’d smell like? The weirdness of our whole situation bubbles to the surface.
“Leo, where the hell were we?” I whisper.
He lets out a long breath. “I have no fucking idea.”
“But it was real, right?” I ask softly. “When it was just you and me?”
Our eyes meet, and just like on that first day, a buzzy hum crackles to life in my veins.
“It was more real than anything else in my life, Hannah.”
I shift a little closer, tracing my finger at the edge of his shirtsleeve.
“You know, I was thinking—I didn’t see your tattoo in the coffee shop. But it’s a lion, right?”
He swallows, never taking his eyes off my hand. I push his sleeve up. The tattoo looks exactly like I remember, when I first saw it on a made-up stage in an impossible place.
And then Leo’s fingers are on my shoulder, seeking out my skin.
“I remembered what your freckles looked like too,” he says, and I’m sure his voice is more hoarse than usual. “I thought they looked like a constellation.” He draws a line between them like stars. “You know, before you woke up—I was so scared that I’d made it all up. That I’d made up a whole person. I was terrified that you’d wake up and not know me at all.” He huffs out a laugh. “And then you actually didn’t, and that about killed me, Hannah.”
I catch his hand, stilling him. “You didn’t make me up,” I say softly.
I feel almost hypnotized, and I’m so, so aware of every vanishing millimeter between us.
“Do you think anyone will ever believe it except us?” I ask.
“Nope, not a chance.”
He shifts closer, his arm draping across the bench behind my shoulders. In a desperate bid to get closer, I pull my knees up onto the bench so I can face him fully.
His knee presses against my leg, and where we’re touching it’s all melted warmth, comfort with a fizzing edge.
“You know the best part about everyone being gone?” he asks softly. “I got to start over with you. I could try to be me, whoever that is, and not just play the part that had been cut out for me.”
“Same,” I whisper.
He’s so close now; it’s making it hard to breathe. His blue-gray gaze is so intense. I couldn’t look away if I tried.
“Hannah …” He clears his throat. “You know I’ve never had a girlfriend, right? I mean, I liked people, but it never went any deeper than that. I tried very hard to be just friends with you. It was impossible.” His fingers drift up, feather-light across my jaw, brushing under my chin. “Everything I felt for you in there—it’s real out here too. I don’t want to be just friends. I want everything, Hannah.”
It’s almost too much to take. I have to look down at my lap, and that’s where I’m still looking when I whisper, “I want everything too.”
I can feel his eyes on me. His stare is searing and intense, and I’m heating up from the middle out.
“Hannah.”
I look up.
The air around us shifts into something blazing and urgent.
His eyes flash, and heat drops through me.
And then he surges forward, and I’m clashing to meet him, and—oh god, finally—his mouth is on mine and we’re kissing, we’re kissing, we’re kissing.
Leo’s mouth is everything, hot and slick and delicious, and I’m lost in these feverishly deep kisses that feel like my heart might burst right out of my body. A second later, he catches my bottom lip between his teeth, and oh, I had no idea kisses could be like this.
His hands move over me, fingers digging into my thigh, pulling me closer, and all the anticipation that’s been thrumming through us since we shook hands in the bookstore finally catches and flares across me. Everywhere he touches turns to liquid, melting heat.
“Fuck, you’re amazing,” Leo whispers against my mouth. He sounds like he’s breaking.
My own hands are out of control, tangling frantic and wild through his hair, and I’ve wanted to do this for so long, and god, it’s so soft. I twist into it and tug him closer in a way that has him gasping sharply against my mouth.
He pulls back, looking a little stunned. His eyes are so dark it makes me shiver.
He recovers, presses kisses along my jaw, up under my ear.
“Oh my god,” I say. He’s going to melt me, in every single place he’s touching me. My voice isn’t clear or high-pitched at the best of times, but I sound destroyed.
Leo notices. “God, have I ever mentioned that your voice makes me insane?” he asks. “I want to record you. Just talking.”
We kiss and kiss and kiss, burning through days and days of holding back.
When we finally stop, I’m limp, utterly swamped with glittery, fizzy amazement.
I drop my forehead to his chest. His heart is beating hard and fast, and he clings to me like he’s as wrecked as I am.
“Shit. You … are very good at that,” Leo whispers, breathless.
You’re not so bad yourself, I want to say, but I can’t speak yet.
I wonder if there will be a Hannah-shaped mark on the bench when we get up. This is where Hannah Ashton spontaneously combusted, it will read, on a little plaque next to a black soot outline of my body.
We hold on tight until we’ve come down from the high, until our breathing gets less ragged and the heat melts into something softer.
I finally find my voice. “Can we please do that all the time?” I say, dazed.
“Absolutely,” Leo murmurs, rubbing soothing circles on my back.
Slowly, the outside world filters back in. The bench, the atrium, the hospital.
Oh. We can’t just do that all the time.
“Fuck,” I say, and Leo jolts a little at the sound of me swearing. “What do we do now?”
“What do you mean?” He’s
distracted, pulling his hand through his hair in a failed attempt to look like we didn’t just make out like weasels.
I groan and drop my head back against the bench. “This is going to suck.”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, it’s so stupid. In there, we could do whatever we wanted to, and now it’s like, Rewind! I’m a teenager with parents and a bedtime and homework and school again.” I shudder at the thought.
“It is a little messed up,” he agrees, mouth quirking at one side in amusement.
“We’re going to have to do stuff like make out in the back seat of your car,” I say miserably.
He laughs and tips my pouty chin up. “I think you’ll still enjoy it. But if we have to get a little creative, it’s no big deal. You’ll just have to throw rocks at my window and sneak into my bedroom every now and then,” he says, his eyes dancing.
I sigh, dropping my head to his shoulder dramatically.
“Do you think we’ll be able to figure all this out? Now that it’s not just us?”
“Hannah. We survived a meteor, and a demon bouncy castle, and a flood. I think we’ll be able to handle dating.”
He presses the Dr Pepper into my hand. I have no idea where he put it while we were kissing, or how it didn’t spill. I take a swig.
For a few moments, it’s just companionable silence as we pass it back and forth. It’s so easy to be with him.
“What do you think would have happened after that night at the coffee shop?” I ask. “If we hadn’t got in the wreck?”
“I don’t know. I guess I would have dropped you off at home, and … that might have been that.”
I don’t say anything. My heart is in my throat.
“To be very clear, I’m glad that it wasn’t just that,” Leo adds.
“We’re so lucky our injuries weren’t worse. Other than this hideous cast, we’re fine.” I turn and brush Leo’s hair out of the way, examining the purpling bump on his forehead.
“Not so bad, right? My doctor said he was surprised I was out for so long.”
“Mine said the same thing to me.”
“Maybe the universe thought we needed an intervention, Ballet Chick,” Leo jokes.
I frown. What if he’s right?
God, and speaking of Ballet Chick …
“I told my mom I wanted to quit ballet,” I say.
Leo’s eyes go wide. “You didn’t.”
“I did.”
His face transforms, lighting with surprise and pride and joy. “Hannah, that’s fucking huge! Oh my god, I’m so impressed, that must have been so hard. How did she take it?”
“Not well, at first. But I think it’s going to be okay. My dad was really awesome about it. Oh, and hey, I think they actually like you,” I add. “How the hell did you manage that?”
Leo breaks into a crooked grin. “Do you really have to ask? I’m so charming.”
I laugh. He snags a hand under my knee and lifts my legs, draping them sideways over his lap. He props up my cast, trying to make sure I’m comfortable. Being with him feels so right that I can barely believe this is my life.
“So. No more Ballet Chick, huh?”
“Nope.”
“I’ve got news for you too, actually. You know that song I was singing when you found me in the music store?” he asks.
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to record a demo of it and send it to Bruce’s producer. I’m going to see him at SpandexFest this weekend—with you, if you’re up for it?—and talk to him some more about it. Maybe I can shadow him on some of his gigs, learn the ropes, that kind of thing. There’s got to be a job for me that has something to do with music.”
“Oh, Leo, that’s amazing. It sounds perfect.”
Something hopeful and beautiful rises in my chest.
“And, um, where exactly is Bruce based again?” I ask.
“LA. There’s a lot of music stuff out there, but I’ll only go out there for shows, if you want—”
It’s those little words—if you want—that have me pulling my phone out of my pocket. I open my web browser and pass my phone to him.
It’s the application requirements for the creative writing program at a university in California.
In Los Angeles, to be precise.
Leo doesn’t say anything.
“There’s still time to apply,” I explain, suddenly nervous. It’s one of a few colleges that has a later May deadline. “I think I have something I can use for this first requirement, but I’ll need to write something for the other two prompts.”
“Is this really where you want to go?” Leo asks. He looks so sweet and stupefied I want to grab his hair and kiss him silly.
I nod. “It’s an amazing program. I’ve been looking at a lot of schools, trying to think about what I’d choose if you weren’t in the equation. That really is one of the best ones. And besides,” I say, shrugging, “you are in the equation.”
“What a coincidence. You’re in my equation too,” Leo says.
He trails his hand over my collarbone, sweeping soft touches over my neck.
Then he’s dipping his head and touching his lips there too, and it’s the best feeling in the world. He presses once, twice, and then he raises his head and we’re kissing again in earnest.
This time it’s slow. Soft and lovely and delicate, like inhaling the fumes of every daydream I’ve ever had.
We savor each other, like we’ve got all the time in the world, and his hands cradle my face like I’m made of glass.
Inside me, flowers are blooming. Spinning snowflakes of every color, buds bursting out of the ground, white-hot sparklers in the dark. I’m floating, just like I was in my backyard, but this isn’t an end—it’s a beginning.
My heart is a lushly unfurling rose, and the feel of his mouth on mine is so perfect. Kissing him feels like the only thing in the world that make sense.
It tapers off sweetly, with us there on the bench with our eyes closed and our foreheads pressed together.
I feel like an entirely new Hannah. I think about us, striking out in LA, writing music and stories in the sunshine, and it actually seems like we could do it. It’s going to take a huge leap of faith, one I would have never even considered if I’d never met Leo. It’s an enormous life change from ballet, and I’m still freaking out, but it’s also so, so freeing.
Leo clears his throat. “LA, huh? Let’s do it, Writer Chick. You and me.”
Before I have a chance to respond, a beam of light flashes through the leaves behind us.
“Oh shit,” Leo whispers, ducking down and peering through the trees. “I think it’s a security guard.”
“Anyone in there?” a voice calls out.
Leo and I commando-roll off the bench and slide behind the trees. The security guard is by the café counter, shining his flashlight over gleaming coffee machines and juice glasses. I stifle a nervous giggle, and then Leo’s pulling me through the plants until we’re finally back in the bright hospital hallways.
We break into a run, laughing like loons.
“Hey!” the guard shouts, but we’ve got a head start. We make it into an elevator just as the doors are closing.
We spill out onto the ninth floor, breathless and flushed and lit up so happy.
Leo drops me at my door, stealing a glance at the nurses station. It’s empty—for now.
“I should go,” he says.
But the adrenaline’s still surging through me, and I grab his shirt and haul him to me for another kiss.
When I pull away, I’m smiling so much it hurts my face.
Leo sucks in a breath beside me. “Oh wow,” he says. “There it is.”
“There what is?”
“When we were in the empty Houston, I was trying to get you to smile like this. Power chord smile.”
Before I can ask him what a power chord smile is, he presses another fervent kiss to my mouth, one that has me seeing starbursts.
“One more thing before I go,”
he says.
His eyes sparkle.
“Hannah Ashton, can I have your number?”
The fact that you are holding this book is a quiet but awesome form of modern-day magic, and I am so grateful to all the people who had a hand in getting this story out of my mind and into the world.
Thank you first to my razor-sharp, totally lovely editor at Scholastic, the extraordinary Jody Corbett. You took one look at this story and knew exactly how to make it shine. I’m so in awe of your skill and insight, and I’ve loved every second of working on this book with you.
Massive thanks also to everyone at Scholastic who helped turn this story into something you can hold. Josh Berlowitz, Jael Fogle, and Janell Harris made sure it became an actual book, and Maeve Norton created the absolutely dreamy cover art—it might always be my phone lock screen. To David Levithan, Ellie Berger, Erin Berger, Rachel Feld, Shannon Pender, Alex Kelleher-Nagorski, and the entire sales team: Thank you for all your hard work and for loving this book from the very first acquisitions meeting.
Huge gratitude to the awe-inspiring team at Madeleine Milburn—not only my fiercely smart agents, Alice Sutherland-Hawes and Chloe Seager, but also Liane-Louise Smith, Sophie Pélissier, Hayley Steed, Georgina Simmonds, Georgia McVeigh, and Giles and Madeleine Milburn. Thank you all for taking such wonderful care of author-me.
To the teams at my international publishers, Carlsen Verlag in Germany, Rizzoli in Italy, and AST in Russia: Thank you for believing in this story. I am starstruck that you wanted to translate my words into your beautiful languages.
I am immensely lucky to have found the most fabulous group of writing friends and critique partners in “Storymill.” Liz Flanagan, Sally Ashworth, Tara Guha, and Kate Sims: You are such kind, intelligent women—not to mention outrageously talented!
To K. C. Karr: There is not enough gratitude in the world. Thank you for choosing my story, for asking the hard questions, and for pushing me to my limits. Huge thanks also to Stuart White for creating the incredible WriteMentor community that led me to Sharon M. Johnston and K. C.
To all the best friends I’ve had along the way: You are all way more interesting than me and I’m honored to have spent time fluttering at the edges of your lives. Extra thanks to the two who aren’t with us anymore, Jared Neff and Hannah Henson. And to the one nearest to me as I wrote this book, Elizabeth Aggett: Thank you for reading this book so many times and pretending to be my agent before I had a real one.
You & Me at the End of the World Page 26