The way he says everything is like he really means every single thing.
Tears sting my nose instantly. “I should be thanking you,” I say. “For letting me crash here, for being so kind to me, for—” I almost say loving me before I catch myself. “For being such a good friend.”
“Win, I don’t think you understand. I spent my birthday last year alone on my couch, drinking and miserable. I was so lonely. I felt like half a person. I—” He chokes up and clears his throat. “I felt hopeless.” He sniffles, and I fight the urge to pull away to look at his face. To wipe his tears, if there are any. “But then you came along.”
“If things were so bad, why go to some silly Halloween party?” How did I get so lucky?
“Have you ever been so low you stop caring so much? I think I hit rock bottom. I figured nothing else was working, so why not do something scary on a night where I could be someone else for a little bit? A costume to make light of it all.”
The second I go to look up at him, he pulls me back and tightens his hold. He squeezes me to his chest like a favourite stuffed animal or blanket, tucking me under his chin. I splay my fingers out on his back and press into him, communicating back to him the same intensity. Clinging to him just the same.
“I’m sorry things were so bad,” I say softly, his sweater against the corner of my mouth.
I wish I knew you then, I think to myself.
I’d have found him there, in that dark period. Sat with him in it. Until very recently, I was there too. Perhaps that’s all Bo and I are. Two people leaving behind the worst, looking forward to the good to come. But is he ready to leave everything behind?
Because I think I might be.
“I’m not sorry,” Bo says, surprisingly steady. “Not anymore.”
He lets me go and steps backward. Even with red-rimmed, sullen eyes, he still smiles down at me. And out of the many, many smiles he’s given me, this one is different. There’s something unmistakeably hesitant about it, but mostly, it’s the hopefulness amidst it all that strikes me.
Yes, I tell him silently with my own melancholy smile. I feel it too. And yes, it’s absolutely terrifying. Let’s pretend we don’t. Not yet. Not tonight. Not until we’re both certain.
“I’d do it all over again to be at that party,” he says. “To meet you. To get Gus.”
I damn near disintegrate, my face crumpling as I shake my head. Because how can I hear him say that and not fall in love with him at this exact moment? How can I tell myself he’s not purely good when he says things like that?
“Bo…” I say, looking at our feet.
“I would,” he says adamantly, nodding as if he wants me to do the same. “Wouldn’t you?”
“If we hadn’t met… if this hadn’t happened,” I say, placing a hand on my small bump, “I think I’d have been stuck playing it safe forever.”
A tear falls from his eye, and without hesitation, I reach up to brush it away with my thumb, cradling his cheek in my hand.
“You’d have gotten yourself out eventually, Win.” He presses the corner of his mouth to my wrist, releasing a trembling breath against it. “You can do anything,” he whispers against my pulse point. And the way he says anything is as if he really means any possible thing.
And I believe him.
I truly do.
I feel my own tears come, slow and steady. To hide my face, I press myself back into his chest, and he meets me immediately, wrapping himself around me like a shield.
And we dance some more.
To the sound of nothing but each other’s withering restraint.
Accepting that this is the best thing that could have happened to us. To get us out of our own personal dark spots. To give us purpose. To find each other.
Because even though we aren’t together, I can no longer imagine a version of my life without Bo in it. Bo is simply lovely. Plain and true and all-encompassing.
So why am I still so scared?
Angry with myself, I wiggle free from his hold. I laugh weakly as he pretends to fight me, holding tighter as he sways me side to side.
“No, don’t,” he says, his hand going from shoulder to elbow. “Another record?”
I pat his shoulder at least a dozen times as I shake my head, unsure of what else to do to keep the overwhelming feelings and truths and fears from spilling out. His eyes follow the movement of my head as I shake it one last time, and he sighs, releasing me.
I walk toward the bathroom to shower without looking back, my head hung low and emotions caught heavy in my throat.
Leaving Bo still standing there.
Halfway through my shower, music starts playing again, and I fall against the tile, letting the water wash over me as I imagine Bo’s body around me in here too.
And, I realise, I’m completely fucked.
CHAPTER 25
“I fucking knew it!” Sarah says, whispering inches from my face, her finger wagging.
“Whatever happened to hello?” I ask, looking around the hallway she dragged me into the moment Bo and I stepped through her front door for DND night.
“You want hello? Fine. Hi! How are you? When did you two start sleeping together?” Sarah shakes my shoulders, her smile open and wide.
“What? We are not,” I say, shrugging her off. “Step back, weirdo!” I whisper-yell.
She opens the door to Caleb’s office and shoves me through it. “Tell me everything.”
“Literally nothing has happened, Sarah,” I say, taking a few steps to get my balance after being pushed. “Would you calm down? Fucking hell.”
“There was a look. I saw it.” She points to her eyes in a fury.
“What look?” I ask, falling across the two-seater couch across from Caleb’s desk in front of a dark oak–panelled wall.
“You two walked in, and Bo looked toward the table where we set everything up. Then he checked in with you. A tilt of his head and a sweet little smile, then you nodded. He was getting permission to walk over there. That’s the look of a man on someone’s leash. Pussy-whipped!”
“You did not just say pussy-whipped. Please, please, please tell me you didn’t,” I say, covering my face.
“So you do not deny,” Sarah says, dropping into Caleb’s chair and throwing her feet up onto the desk in the centre of the room.
“I do deny. The most we’ve done since Halloween is hug.” Dancing is hugging, just extended, right? It doesn’t count.
Sarah’s eyes narrow on me in suspicion. “You do give great hugs,” she whispers. “But not that good.”
“Bo’s thoughtful. He was just making sure I was cool before he ditched me to see his friends. Simple as that.”
“So you’re telling me that I haven’t seen you in forty years”—it’s been twelve days—“because you’ve been held up in your house with him not boinking?”
I choose to let her use of the word boinking slide. “We’ve been hanging out,” I say defensively. “We go for walks to the water to talk. We hang out on the couch and watch nerdy movies that Bo likes. I’m also still working and growing a human. So yes, that’s all we’ve been doing. Sorry to disappoint.”