Alexis was exaggerating that day, but there is always a grain of truth to her wild hyperboles.
I was kinda into Sylvie at that time.
Sylvie talked to me at the bus stop. No one else did. The fact that Sylvie was as pretty as Autumn, though in a different way, provided a welcome distraction. Sylvie felt safe to look at.
When Alexis made her case, I could see her point. And I felt responsible. Besides, I’d seen some guy kissing Autumn on those steps where she’d been hanging out. My plan had failed.
So I asked Sylvie to a movie, and we had fun. Real fun. She was the only other kid I’d ever met who listened to NPR while getting ready for school in the mornings. I liked that she read biographies and kept a shelf of her favorites. She was beautiful. She was nice. She wanted to be with me.
Sylvie has been good for me. I’ve enjoyed almost every minute with her. She has made me a better person in so many little ways. I hope that someday I’ll be able to fully explain this to Sylvie, but for now I say to Autumn, “Don’t think that I never cared about Sylvie, because I did.” I do. “She’s not really what you think.” She’s so much more. “And she needed me to take care of her when you didn’t anymore.” Because she’s like you: complicated. “I loved her, but I loved her differently from the way I’ve always loved you.”
I still love Sylvie, and there’s so much I’m not saying out loud despite not wanting to leave things unsaid.
But there is so much Autumn and I need to talk about besides Sylvie.
“Oh, Finny,” Autumn says. Her voice has so much emotion in it that my heart flutters.
I fill my lungs with air to steady my nerves. I look at her out of the corner of my eyes. It’s an old trick: looking at Autumn without really looking at her.
Autumn is watching me, still sitting up in my bed. Her hair is glowing around her face like an aura. The sheet has fallen away again. I cannot trust myself to look her in the face. I’ll lose my nerve.
“You said—” I start. I need to know. She was crying when she said it and, amazingly, unsure of how I felt about her. “You said that you loved me too.” Perhaps in her vulnerability, she said more than she meant.
“Yeah,” Autumn says, “I do.” Her voice is trembling but certain.
“Since when?” Since last night? Last month?
“I dunno,” she whispers. “Maybe since forever too, but I didn’t admit it until two years ago.”
Maybe forever too?
I cannot resist anymore. I look directly up at her. Autumn has this soft, sublime smile on her face that breaks into a sigh as she collapses back on to my chest.
She loves me.
She really, truly loves me.
I’m holding her so tightly that I order my body to relax so as not to hurt her.
Autumn.
My Autumn.
If she wants to be.
“So…” I don’t know how to ask this. Autumn loves me, but I am trying to make sure there’re no more misunderstandings.
“What?”
“It’s you and me now, right?”
I feel her laughter against my chest before she speaks.
“Phineas Smith, are you asking me to be your girlfriend?”
Isn’t that all I’m ever doing? I think wildly. My heart is beating fast. To me, this seemed like a formality, but perhaps my history of misunderstanding Autumn is catching up with me again.
“Well, yeah. Is that weird?”
“Only because it feels like we’re already so much more than that.”
I relax again. “Yeah, I know,” I say to her as I tell my brain to stay calm, that asking Autumn to elope to Vegas is absurd. “But it’ll have to do for now.”
For now.
I close my eyes.
“You still have to break up with Sylvie,” she whispers.
My eyes open again.
“I know. I’m going to. Tomorrow.”
“You mean today,” she says.
My stomach drops. Of course, it’s morning. I’m such a fool.
“Oh. Right.” I hug Autumn to me. “We should get some sleep, I guess.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Autumn says.
We cuddle up close, and soon, Autumn is snoring softly.
But I don’t sleep. There’s too much to think about.
eleven
One of the things that might be ironic—I really must remember to ask Autumn to explain irony to me—is that now I have something to tell Sylvie.
Sylvie will accept that I’m choosing Autumn over her if it’s for more than friendship. That’s what makes this so hard.