If Only I Had Told Her(14)

Then, depending on how she acts, I’ll know if she overheard anything this morning, if I need to explain myself.

No matter what, I will tell her how I feel…eventually. But it can wait. I’ve waited this long. The thing to worry about now is what I will say to Sylvie. I escape the guilt of thinking about Sylvie by getting off the couch and heading out.

Aunt Claire always locks her back door. My mother often forgets to lock ours and she often loses her keys, so she keeps an extra key hidden. Aunt Claire doesn’t keep a key hidden, but Autumn often loses her keys and forgets to lock the back door, so I’m betting that she forgot to lock it today.

She forgot to lock it that day she snuck Jamie over freshman year. I saw them go inside from my window, then closed my curtains. But to my horror, Mom asked me to run next door and ask Autumn if they had eggs. As I crossed the lawn, I prayed that she’d left the back door unlocked. She had, but it hadn’t saved me from intruding on them.

Today, I knock gently, but there is no answer. I try the doorknob, and it turns. It’s Aunt Claire’s house. Autumn hadn’t been surprised or confused to see me that day I came over for eggs. The only awkward part had been when Jamie emerged from the hallway, making eye contact with me while Autumn was looking in the fridge. I could tell she didn’t want me to know that Jamie was there. We both knew her parents wouldn’t want Jamie over while they were out.

I even pretended I thought that no one had been home to save her the embarrassment.

Jamie, on the other hand, made his presence known, staked his claim. I wanted to say something, but then Autumn was handing me the eggs for Mom. Should I have exposed him? Would Autumn have realized back then that his ego was more important than her wishes?

Autumn hadn’t minded me inviting myself in. She hadn’t minded that day or a million times before or after. That’s what matters. It’s always been that way with The Mothers and our houses. Still, my heart is beating hard. Where is she?

I expected her to be watching a movie in the living room or eating in the kitchen, but the rooms are empty and the lights are off. I turn to the stairs and listen to the creak and groan under my feet as I climb. Surely, she can hear me? Has she gone out?

I knock and push open her bedroom door, half expecting the room to be empty. But deep in the darkness, in the far corner of her bed, I see her shape.

“Autumn?”

“Hey,” she says. Her voice is calm, yet it shakes.

My shoulders tense. What happened?

“I came to check on you.”

“I finished the novel,” she says. She’s crying. She’s more emotional than with other books she’s read, and if she means her own novel, surely they would be happy tears? These don’t look like happy tears.

Still, it doesn’t matter why she’s crying, because she’s crying. Instinct takes over, and I cross the room, pulling her into my arms the way I have dreamed of so many times before, with so many different tenors of emotions and desire.

But there’s only one thing I want right now: to stop the pain that is making her fingers curl around my shirt. It’s been so long since she let me see her vulnerable like this. We were so young the last time.

Autumn’s sobs reverberate in my chest as she presses her sweet face against me, and it is proof I am awful. I am taking such pleasure in comforting Autumn. Just as I have been all summer, ever since Jamie made me the happiest man alive by breaking Autumn’s heart.

My Autumn.

No, Phineas, not yours.

She’s in her bathrobe, but I try to push that thought aside.

She starts to quiet. Her breathing slows. I want to stroke her hair, her back, kiss the top of her head. I can’t. I won’t. Autumn.

I feel her shoulders slump, followed by the faintest of whimpers. She’s done crying. I could move, but I don’t. I hold her gently, careful to make sure she’s in control, and she can pull away with the slightest of movements.

“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?” I ask. I’ll be around if she needs me.

“It’s like they’re dead,” she says.

Of course. Jamie and Sasha. The two people who kept her anchored through her ups and downs the past four years. She had her time and space to be numb, but now, finally, she is truly grieving the end of their friendship. Still, I give her the opening to explain it.

“Like who is dead?”

“Izzy and Aden.”

I only have time to think, Who? before she says, “My main characters.”

Her novel. The one she’s finished. I don’t understand why that has made her cry like this, but I’m so relieved that I laugh and say aloud to myself, “I thought something was really wrong.”

She raises her head off my chest, and I let one of my arms fall away as she faces me. In the dying light, her tear-filled eyes are luminous. Her lovely face is pink and puffy. She looks so sweet and so absolutely devastated.

“Something is wrong!” Her voice quavers and her lips quiver. “Can’t you tell I’m upset?”

I laugh. I can’t help it. I laugh because she isn’t crying about something from the real world and because I’m so happy that she finished her novel. Her devotion to her writing is beautiful, like the rest of her.

Then she punches me. It isn’t very hard, but it hurts a little, and it makes me laugh again.

“Stop laughing at me,” she insists.