by Julie Kriss
“There’s no going back,” he said finally. He turned and looked at me, his dark eyes finding mine. “There’s only forward.”
My heart skipped a beat in hope. “Okay.”
He shook his head. “You have to be sure. Are you? Is that what you really want?”
“Yes.”
“Tessa. You said it’s hard, and you were right. This shit is hard. I’m fucked up, deeply and permanently. You have an idea of how much.”
“Fuck that,” I said, my voice rough. “You put every other man I’ve met to shame. You’re a thousand times the man they are. And in case you haven’t figured it out, I’m completely in love with you.” I took a breath. “So, yes, it’s hard, but I can do it. We can do it. We’ll just have to make our own script, right?”
He was watching my face, his gaze traveling the line of my jaw, the curve of my cheek, then meeting my eyes. “That’s the idea,” he said softly.
I held his gaze with mine. “Then I’m in.”
A smile touched the corner of his mouth, and my heart skipped another beat.
“Okay then,” Andrew said. “We may as well scandalize the neighborhood.”
He leaned over, cupped the back of my head in one hand, and kissed me.
Right there where everyone could see.
I kissed him back, leaning in. He tasted like Andrew and summer and a little like warm beer. It was the best flavor in the world.
We kissed like that for a long time, until a kid laughed and a few of the adults whistled.
Then we kept going.
And eventually, we ditched our drinks and he took me home.
Thirty-Four
Andrew
* * *
One month later
* * *
“I think this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” I said.
“No,” my brother said. “That was when you jumped off the roof when you were nine.”
“I was Superman,” I said. “Besides, my ankle only broke a little.”
Nick opened the passenger door of his car. “It broke a lot. Your foot was practically twisted the wrong way. I was traumatized.”
“You always were a bit of a chicken.”
He glared at me. “Jesus Christ. Just get in.”
I wheeled up to the door and put my brake on. I pulled myself out and into the car, putting myself in the passenger seat. Trying not to puke or pass out, or both.
“Take it easy on him,” Evie said to her husband as he collapsed my chair and put it in the back of the car. “This is a big deal. Andrew, are you okay?”
My vision was swimming. “I’m fine,” I managed, my mouth dry.
“Do you need drugs?” Nick asked.
I shook my head. A Xanax high was a pretty tempting way to get through the drive to the comics convention, but I wanted to keep my head clear.
I was actually doing this. Going to a convention in Detroit, talking on a panel with Nick, then staying in a hotel overnight and coming home tomorrow. How the hell had I agreed to this again?
Oh, right. Tessa.
Tessa could talk me into anything. One minute I was bantering with her like we always did, and the next thing I knew I was agreeing to some fucked-up idea. She was like magic. She didn’t even have to take her clothes off.
That was what happened when you were in love with someone.
Yes, me. In love. Who the hell said this story could have a happy ending? I could say I was surprised, but then again, this was Tessa we were talking about. Falling in love with her was as easy as breathing, even for someone like me.
Making it work was harder, but there was nothing I would rather do.
She wasn’t coming with us—she had an important orientation session today at the nursing school she’d been accepted into. Classes started in three days, and she was so excited and nervous that she was probably sitting in the session right now, panicking just like I was. Both of us were doing entirely different things, yet feeling exactly the same wave of anxiety. It was weirdly comforting in a way.
Evie got in the back seat, and Nick started the car. He glanced at me, I gave him the thumbs-up, and we started.
I felt different than I had a month ago, even though on the surface a lot of things were the same. I still lived in my house, and Tessa still lived in hers. We weren’t ready for anything else yet, especially since most of my house was custom fitted for me. But I’d given Tessa my security code so she could come and go whenever she wanted. Her girly things were in my bathroom. And she’d called a contractor to put a ramp on her porch so I could go to her place, too.
And sometimes we went out. There were a few restaurants and coffee shops in Millwood that could accommodate a wheelchair. We went to the movies and the park. It wasn’t always simple and it was sometimes exhausting, but I’d finally learned the most important thing: Even after you’ve lived through something as bad as I had, you had to live your fucking life. As in, stop just existing and actually live it.
It was hard sometimes, but when was anything worth doing easy?
I’d started going out to my appointments instead of making people come to me. I visited Dr. Arnaud at his office, and I visited my therapist, too. I still made Jon come to me for physio, because I liked to make him work. I also had Donna the wellness therapist come, too, though not as often. She said that my energies were so improved that I barely needed her help anymore.
Sometimes it was Tessa who took me to appointments, and sometimes it was Nick. My brother and I had patched things up after he apologized. I made him apologize to Tessa, too, which he did. And then, as usual, we were fine. Nick and I were blood; he was my other half. There was almost nothing I wouldn’t forgive him for; this one was easy. We went back to making comics, Nick on my sofa with Scout on his lap while I drew.
Life was actually good, which was probably why I got fooled into agreeing to this crazy trip.
I was lightheaded as soon as we hit the highway. My hand gripped the door handle, my knuckles white. It had been seven years, but being on the highway sent me back to that night, the way we spun toward the guardrail, the darkness. Theo dying next to me. The sirens far in the distance as I waited.
But that was over. It was in the past. I was still alive, and I would be for a long time. I had things to do, a life to live. A woman to love. This wasn’t going to get the best of me—not this time.
“Music?” Nick asked. He was staying quiet, reading my mind. Evie was quiet, too. I nodded and Nick turned on the music on his iPhone. Beautiful music filled the car, and then a beautiful voice: Roy Orbison singing “Mystery Girl.” I unclenched my hands, relaxed into the car seat, and smiled.
“What?” Nick said.
“You’re a romantic,” I said, loud enough for his wife to hear in the back.
“Shut up, dickhead,” Nick said, but he was smiling, too.
When you make comics in your suburban living room, you forget that real people are reading them. The download numbers are just figures on a screen, not real people. It’s easy to pretend that there are no real people somewhere past your door, reading the thing you work so hard on.
But it hit home when Nick and I came onto the stage at the convention. The lights overhead were bright, but I could still see that there were over a hundred people in the audience, waiting to see us. Us. The Mason brothers, who had started spinning stories in my hospital room because it was better than pain. Who the hell wanted to see us?
The moderator introduced us, and we waved. The room applauded. They had put a table on the stage with three microphones, one for the moderator and two for us. The moderator was going to ask us questions, and then we were going to take questions from the audience.
My mouth was dry. Cold sweat coated my back. I had no idea if I would be able to say anything at all. And then I looked out at the audience, and Tessa was there.
She was sitting right in the front row. She was wearing jeans and a zip-up hoodie with the name of her nursing school on it, sneakers on her fe
et. She was the most beautiful woman in the room—her flawless skin, her blonde hair, her gorgeous blue eyes. Those eyes were fixed on me, and she was smiling.
She’d made it.
I smiled back at her, and everything fell away. There was just Tessa and me. That was always how it was with us: Wherever we were, there was just her and me. I tended to forget that anyone else was in the room, and so did she.
The moderator finished his introductions and was about to start his first question when I leaned toward my microphone and said, “I just want to clear something up before we start, because we get a lot of questions. Let’s just make this clear. Lightning Man and Judy Gravity are dating.”
The room erupted—applause, shouts of protest. There was a big divide among Lightning Man fans about the state of the Lightning Man-Judy Gravity romance. It was by far the topic of the most emails we got.
I looked at Tessa again. She was cheering, of course.
“This is going to be a lively debate,” the moderator said. “What’s your opinion, Nick?”
Nick had noticed Tessa, too. Probably because she was sitting right next to Evie, who was also clapping. “Lightning Man,” he said, “is definitely dating Judy Gravity. No question.”
Over the roar of the audience, I watched Tessa laugh.
And I knew, for the first time, that everything was going to be okay.
Also by Julie Kriss
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