twelve
I wake.
My phone.
It’s ringing, inside the pocket of my jeans, on the floor, where I tossed them when Autumn and I—
She stirs next to me. I hurry off the bed and try to stop the ringing before it wakes her. I see the name I expect. I decline the call. When I look up, Autumn is watching me.
“Hey.” I’m not so sorry to see her awake.
“Was that her?” Autumn asks.
I set my phone on the nightstand. It’s one thirty in the afternoon.
“Does it matter?” I ask. I want it to be only us, as much as possible for as long as possible.
“Yes.”
“It was.”
Autumn looks down. Her pink lips purse. I drop my jeans and climb back in bed.
“Come here.” Pulling her to me is a relief.
Autumn snuggles against me, and when she shifts her face, she breathes in deeply. It feels like she’s breathing in the scent of me the same way I have with her. I’m struck again by my new reality. She loves me. Autumn is in love with me, definitively. It’s so much more than I ever could have imagined.
All these years I’d fantasized about Autumn physically, I never let myself think about what it would be like to be her boyfriend, not consciously at least.
I’ve always been a vivid dreamer though. I could control my thoughts when I was awake, but at night, my brain dwelled on its secret obsession. It was a frequent, recurring dream over the years that Autumn and I were a couple. Always, like my conscious fantasies, there was no explanation of how we got there. We would simply be together.
No matter what the dream with Autumn was about—whether it was set in deep space or in a version of McClure High School with upside-down halls—I always felt such a sense of relief when I dreamed that we were together. It was like the dream was my reality, and when I woke, I was in a nightmare where Autumn and I were both dating other people and weren’t even friends. I’d denied my feelings to Jack, to Sylvie, to myself, but my brain had continued to stubbornly insist that Autumn and I were supposed to be together. I’d thought that it was my lust and jealousy mixing to give me the delusion that an error had been made and the matchups that kept us apart were all a big mistake.
But.
Here we are.
“Do you feel guilty?” Autumn’s voice is feather light, like she’s trying to gently blow the words from her mouth.
The guilt is mine alone. I need her to understand that.
I need her to understand that I had to do this. I had to be with her if the chance was there. My love for her is part of who I am.
“Yeah,” I say. “But I also feel like I’ve been loyal to something bigger.” It’s only the start of what I want to tell her, but I’m interrupted by a beep I should have expected.
I’m going to ignore it, but Autumn says, “You should see who it is.”
“I don’t want to,” I say reflexively.
“It could be The Mothers, and if we don’t answer, they’ll think we’re dead and come back early.”
I would still put the odds on it being Sylvie confirming her flight details before she boards her plane from Chicago, but Autumn has a point. I don’t want The Mothers interrupting our time.
I roll away from Autumn, sit up, and pick up my phone.
ORD > STL Flt#5847 4:17pm Dinner after Y/N?
I’m glad that my back is turned, because I can’t help the tiny smile that cracks my face. It’s such a Sylvie text: the militaristic shorthand, the assumption that I’ll recognize the Chicago airport code. Part of the reason Sylvie underestimates herself is she doesn’t recognize that most people don’t possess her efficiency or candor. Sylvie assumes everyone else knows exactly what they want from life and is strategically plotting to get it as soon as possible. Autumn is the only other person I know like that.
Glad u r safely stateside. Up all night. Need rest. See u alone? 7?
I turn off the sound on my phone.
I lie back down, and we settle in close, facing each other.
“It was her again?” Autumn asks, because she knows.
“I told her that I won’t be meeting her plane. I’ll see her after she has dinner with her parents.”
“Oh. When?”
“We have a few hours.” Four hours fifty-one minutes and counting. “Go back to sleep.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Me neither.” It doesn’t matter what we do as long as I can look at her.
Perhaps Autumn feels the same, because she stares at me, and I do what I’ve longed to do a thousand times: I reach out and brush the hair from her forehead.