Page 113 of When You Wish Upon a Wideout

Sienna responded before pocketing the phone and moving to join Beau.

You have no idea.

Beau held his hand out, letting Sienna squeeze between him and the railing before wrapping his arms tightly across her.

“Goes on forever, yeah?” he asked as they looked out at the horizon.

Leaning her head against Beau’s shoulder, Sienna nodded. “I hope so.”

i’ll come back for you

Dear Mom,

It’s been another week of tension between me and Beau. Oddly enough, during that time, Beau replaced me with Dad, who’s been getting up at the crack of dawn with him. I guess that’s good. I hate waking up early. What I love is staying up late—on the roof or in bed—with Beau. But that hasn’t really been happening. Until last night.

I’d been on the roof for an hour when I heard Beau’s footsteps, the thump of his weight on the air conditioning unit, the grunt he let out as he yanked himself up.

“Hey,” he said, crawling over to me.

I almost didn’t want to talk to him, but I mumbled a “hi” without looking.

Beau let out a heavy breath and then lay down beside me. There was the smallest space between us, which I hated, but I didn’t make a move to close the gap. I waited for him to instead.

I realized, after a solid minute and a half of silence, that I might be waiting for a while, and I won’t lie, my heart hurt a little bit.

“Why weren’t you in school today?” I asked. It was Wednesday, and normally our free periods overlapped. It didn’t take long for me to realize he wasn’t there.

“I... ” Beau stopped, as if he had to think long and hard about what he was going to say. “I had to take an exam.”

“What exam?”

“I’ll let you know if I pass. If I don’t, it won’t matter anyway.” He shifted, lying on his side. “How was your day?”

I can’t stand small talk, Mom. You know this. And I hate it even more with Beau because it feels likeworkwhen it’s never been that way between us.

“Fine.”

It was cloudy, which bothered me on a normal day. Today it bothered me even more. Because the stars reminded me that there was always light in the darkness. And I felt like I was about to fall into another bottomless, pitch-black pit without a drop of light to guide me out.

Beau’s eyes were burning into me—something was going on. I could feel it, sense the wheels turning in his head, the words muddled in the back of his throat. I wasn’t sure if he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say them out loud, and the thought made my body tremble as my stomach knotted.

Beau scooted closer, but his near warmth didn’t do anything to stop my shivering. I wasn’t shaking because I was cold, Mom. I was shaking under the weight of the pending doom I worried would fall from the night sky that should hold our hopes and dreams instead.

“Sienna—”

I didn’t want to hear my name from Beau’s mouth, so I shut him up with my lips. He fought against it for half a second, trying to back away, but all it took was one of my hands on the back of his neck and the other gripping the opening of his T-shirt for him to breathe a sigh into me. I clung to it viciously and almost impossibly tight, like it was my lifeline, likehewas my lifeline that I would fight tooth and nail to hang on to.

Beau rolled on top of me, our bodies molding together, and even though I’ve only been drunk two times in my life, IknewI was drunk on him—his smell, his taste, his weight. It was all impossibly delicious, and for a second, I wondered why anyone did drugs or drank at all. Because there was no high like Beau’s body on mine, covering me from head to toe, the feel of him against my thigh or the sounds that left his mouth when I opened my legs and he pressed into the perfect place.

We moved like that for what seemed like hours and seconds all at once. But I knew this time it wasn’t going to be enough for either of us.

“I wish you’d make love to me,” I blurted out. My eyes had been closed. I wished only on what I could feel—him, my shooting wideout.

Beau usually was the one to slow things down and when what I said hit me, I thought he might. But this time, he was the one to deepen the kiss, his moves and breathing more frantic, and my body was burning from the inside out as it tried to hang on for the ride.

His face was buried in my neck, his hands roaming my body—under my sweatshirt, up my shorts. He groaned into my skin when his hands found my underwear, wrapping a hand around the waistband. I wasn’t above begging. I wanted all our clothes off and no space between us. And Beau was close to wanting that too, because he was about to pull down my underwear and shorts, but then I opened my eyes and gasped—and not in the right way clearly—when I saw the shooting star in the small gaps between clouds. Now it was Beau trembling as he strained to not move.

“Shit. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Beau’s fingers slowly let go of my underwear and slid out from the leg of my shorts. “Sienna?” The concern wasn’t just in his voice, it was dripping so heavily from his face I could feel it.

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