“Not ready for what?” Asher asked, interrupting my virginity epiphany.
“I’m not ready for sex,” I stated, obviously.
He squished his eyebrows together, replaying my words.
“O-okay.” He tilted his head. “Did you…did you feel like I was pressuring you?”
“No, I didn’t feel like you were pressuring me.”
“Mags, I’m a little lost here.”
He scanned my wide eyes, the realization that we were on two very different pages bathing my body in a different kind of heat, the kind of embarrassment that not even the cool lake around my skin could take care of.
“You didn’t want to have sex with me tonight,” I slowly realized, aloud.
He tilted his head, pursing his lips together.
“I wasn’t planning on it. I don’t want to rush us. I mean, we haven’t even talked about sex.”
He put his hand on my chin, staring at my wide eyes. Of course he didn’t want to rush us. Asher Reyes was a bleeding romantic. The same way he held a stone in his hand—looking at it from every angle—was the same way he held my face in his palm.
“Then what’s wrong?” I asked. “Why have you been weird all day? I thought it was because you were nervous about—you know.” He squinted at me with a slight head shake, as if to tell me he didn’t follow. “You haven’t left my side all day. You spent ten minutes walking to lunch admiring the woodwork on the gazebo—I had to practically tug you into the mess hall before the final gong,” I continued. “You wanted me to skip dinner, you.…” I trailed off, seeing his jaw tighten.
Asher’s gaze moved to fix on the moon’s reflection in the water. The sound of the lake pattering on the dock behind us somehow grew louder in the seconds that followed, and I felt his hold on me loosen. He swam a couple yards toward the ladder on the dock and pulled himself out of the water.
I wanted to go after him, but I was frozen in confusion, treading water by myself, watching my boyfriend stand above me, motionless, eyes like gunmetal staring at the moon.
“Asher?”
His eyes floated toward me, filling to the brim with tears. All at once, his chest caved in, and he folded his body down onto the wooden slats, setting his head between his legs. Asher was an emotional guy, but I had only seen his tears fall twice: when he was performing onstage, and when we said goodbye to each other last summer. But this wasn’t a soft cry, it was painful and loud, like a boy splintering in half. My heart broke out of my chest, and I tugged myself onto the dock, folding my wet arms around his shaking body and holding him tight. He gripped onto my hands with his body frozen in agony.
We stayed like this for ten minutes—neither of us moving, until he finally looked up at me—eyes puffy and red. There was anguish on every line of his face as he wiped his tears with the back of his hand. I shifted my body so I was sitting in front of him, my knees folded on his, his hand clenched inside mine.
“Today”—he inhaled sharply, trying to find his voice amid tears—“today is my brother’s birthday.”
My heart dropped. We had spent an entire year talking for hours upon hours, night after night, and Asher never mentioned he had a brother. He was the only person in my life, besides my mother, who knew I had an absent father. And here I sat, not even knowing he had a sibling. Instantly, I felt a sting of pain. Pain that whispered, maybe Asher means more to you than you do to him.
“I didn’t know you have a brother,” I whispered.
“Had,” Asher corrected. He steadied his breathing, as if dreading the words that were about to leave his mouth. “My brother died. Four years ago. He…” The reality strangled Asher’s throat, and he swallowed hard. “He killed himself.” His tears fell effortlessly, wide brown eyes now on mine. “I hate this day. Last year was the first time that I didn’t hate this day so much. Because I got to spend it with you. I didn’t have to spend the hours listening to my parents talk about how old he should be. I didn’t have to listen to them talk about the person he didn’t get to become. I got to just be with you, and it made me happy. I should have told you last summer. I’m sorry.”
I found my hand wiping away my own tears, crying at the mere thought of Asher losing someone. I set my fingers on his wet, quivering jaw, my thumb wiping away his flowing tears.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about. It’s okay,” I said softly against his cheek.
“I wanted to tell you, I just…” He clenched his hand over his chest. “When I talk about him, it hurts everywhere.”
I nodded, as if I understood, but I didn’t know this kind of pain. Asher was living with the kind of hurt that hope couldn’t fix. My father’s absence was different, and the ache shaped me. I was strikingly aware of the gap between what my father gave me and what a daughter deserved. So, I let hope fill in the middle. Hope was my drug of choice. It dulled a painful, fatherless reality. I twirled toward bright lights despite strong winds against my cheeks. There were no bright lights here.
“I understand,” I said, pressing my cold lips against his forehead.
It wasn’t exactly a lie, because while I didn’t understand, I now fully understood Asher Reyes. I understood why he led with caution. I understood why he longed to slip into other roles. I understood why he made lonely kids feel wanted. I understood the reason for the pain behind his eyes. I understood why he looked at me like I mattered—and why he made sure to tell me, every day. The mysterious side of Asher was no longer a mystery to me, and I loved him even more. I ran my hands through his hair and kissed the tears off his cheeks.
“I don’t want to be alone tonight,” he whispered into the curve of my neck.
I didn’t leave his side until the moon traded places with the sun.
18
THIRTY-FIVE
IT WAS WELL PAST MIDNIGHT, but I knew my eyelids wouldn’t find reprieve until after the sun came up. My body was still floating through space after its encounter with Asher, and the hopeful adrenaline built upon itself with each page-turn of the script in my hands. I reached the end, and the scope of the adaptation of my favorite book left me wide-eyed, with my palm on my soaring chest. It would be the second feature he’d direct, but this was Asher’s first screenwriting credit—a co-write, to be fair—but Asher had fully undersold what he’d done to it. He took a story that let me feel seen as a child and made it more grown-up, while keeping the thoughtful and tender parts intact. It was the same beloved character study that I fell in love with, but it didn’t feel like a small indie—it felt cinematic, like it needed to exist on the big screen and be heard in surround sound. This wasn’t my favorite little red sauce restaurant on the Lower East Side—I couldn’t gatekeep something this epic, and as I grinned from ear to ear, I realized I didn’t want to.
I set the script down and started poring through my songwriting notebook, dog-earing prewritten verses and lines that would work perfectly—ones that could bloom into full songs and help make the lead character’s arc come alive. She was a singer-songwriter caught between two worlds, and only music could guide her way home. She was a lot like me—longing to make footprints on her planet, but unsure of which step to take to make her wishes come true.