Page 59 of No Place Like You

I nudge him with my shoulder. “Did you go see Janet?”

He nods. “It looks like the doctor’s discharging her tomorrow. I’ll probably take the day off, just to make sure she’s settled at home and everything. I think Charles needs to go back to work so…”

“How’s she feeling?”

“Better,” he says, his voice a little brighter. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to go, but I thought maybe you should get some rest.”

“It’s okay,” I say softly. “I’m sure it was nice for you two to have some alone time.”

He smirks. “She asked about you.”

And I smile too. “What did she say?”

“If I was going to ask you to be my girlfriend.”

I chuckle, bringing a hand to my mouth. “Did you tell her you were planning on asking me after fourth period behind the bleachers?”

“It crossed my mind.” We both laugh but that quickly dissolves, and a line between Dexter’s brows deepens. “But I told her that I like you.”

We sit there on the floor, with our eyes locked on each other. “I like you too.”

He sighs, the kind of deep exhale that feels like he’s been holding his breath. “So we sorta like each other.”

“Looks like it.” He nods. And I nod too, mirroring the up and down bobbing motion of his head. “But I’m only here for another month. And we have the wedding after. And that’ll be nice but then…”

“But then you go back home.”

“Yeah,” I say, answering this lingering silent question hovering over us, making me wonder if there was more to this simple “yeah.”

“So we go back to how things were?” he asks, a small frown set in the firm lines of his lips.

“No,” I answer too quickly. It’s instinct. I’m not even sure if the answer should’ve been yes, but saying no felt too natural. “I mean…I-I don’t…”

“I don’t want things to go back to how they were either.” He hesitates and scrapes his nail against the smooth plane of skin in front of his ear. “I might be getting ahead of myself, but would you consider long distance? If this…”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.”

I sigh a shaky breath. “It’s just that I’ve seen the horrors of it first hand,” I explain. “A friend of mine dated this guy from Tampa, and when they broke up last year, it got really ugly. I saw how badly it affected her. Andmy parents did it for a while after college, and my mom tells me all the time about how it nearly tore them apart, so?—”

“Hey,” he interrupts. “I get it. We don’t want to complicate things.”

“Yeah.”

There’s a pause between us where it feels like a turning point, and I can almost hear the gears turning in our heads while we try to figure out a solution. Until I finally say, “So we don’t label this between us.” I say it firmly, leaving little room for doubt, no matter how unsure I still feel. “We do this one day at a time, and after the wedding, we…”

“We go on with our lives.” A quick smile twitches at his lips, and it looks so mournful, like he’s already thinking about the fallout from this. “And we’ll take things slow?”

“Yes,” I say assertively. “That’s smart…”

“And responsible.” I realize he’s finishing my sentences.

I don’t know if this is a good idea. In fact, it feels like a recipe for disaster. A disaster full of broken hearts and painful goodbyes. But I couldn’t say yes when he asked if we should just go back to how things were. When the feel of his hands on my skin was nothing but a distant memory. Or when the thought of kissing him was something that I tucked away as a dream and flushed down the possibility of it happening again.

“Okay,” I say, cutting into the silence that snuck up on us. I say okay because we don’t have any other choice. Neither one of us wants to forget about what happened yesterday. We don’t want to act as if we didn’t light each other’s skin on fire. Or that there isn’t already a gaping hole in my chest from whatever future goodbyes we’ll have to share. It’ll only be for a month. And that’s it.

He inches closer and wraps his arm around my waist to pull me into a long, deep embrace. I turn so that I face him, and our bodies lean against the side of the bed. He drags me to him, pulling me flush against his body. Whatever reservations I have festering in my heart about us, about mytemporary living situation, fall into the shadows. Almost as if they’re giving us a moment of privacy so I don’t have to think about what can come of this.

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