I've been standing outside the goddam mansion for the past fifteen minutes, trying and failing to muster the guts to knock on the door.
It's actually fucking embarrassing. To think that I ran all the way here, madly following Theo's bus like a guy trying to stop his girl from getting on an airplane in one of those crappy romance movies, only to arrive here five minutes after him and not be brave enough to ask to be let back inside the house. By this point, it would've made no difference if I'd just walked.
Just as I wonder whether or not I'll be sleeping outside tonight, I hear somebody say, "...Evan?"
I turn around, hoping for one irrational second that Theo has appeared behind me despite being inside the house (also, that he suddenly has a feminine voice.) My eyes meet Georgia's instead. It's disappointing, but a massive relief at the same time.
"What are you doing here?" she asks, hefting the shopping bags she's holding further up her arms. "Wait, scratch that: why didn't you say goodbye, you asshole?"
She's surprisingly focused.
"I... had to go," I say. "Immediately. I didn't want to. But I'm back now."
Georgia walks up to me and hands me a few of the shopping bags, smirking. "Good. He's been a grumpy little shit these past few days."
Really focused.
"Oh," I say, because what else can I?
Georgia unlocks the door with her free hand. "Come on, then. Don't just stand there like a twat."
Taking a deep breath, I follow her into the house.
"Theo!" Georgia screams up the stairs, making me jump and nearly drop the shopping. "Get down here!"
"Why?" his voice responds, equally screechy.
"Your boy's here to see you!"
A moment later, a noise akin to thunder echoes through the house. And a bit after that, Theo appears at the bottom of the stairs. His eyes lock onto me and he stops dead, teetering a little.
Georgia, smirking, takes the bags from me and disappears into the kitchen.
Like a zombie, Theo steps off the bottom stair and walks towards me as if in a trance. When he stops, he's stood so close that I have to crane my head to look into his dark eyes.
They're wet.
"I knew you'd come back," he says quietly. Not angrily, or happily, or anything. He just states it.
"I didn't know I would," I say truthfully, almost whispering. "I thought I was stuck."
"At the school?"
"Yes. I was invisible again."
He looks down at his shoes. "Why did you disappear?" he mumbles. His hand seizes his school tie and he begins to twist it in his
fingers. "I blinked and you were just gone."
"It took me away."
He looks up, eyebrows dipping. "It?"
"Whatever's made me a ghost."
"Why did it take you?"
"I don't know."
Theo drops his tie and instead shoves his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. "I kinda want to slap you right now."
I blink. "I'd prefer it if you didn't."
He cracks a smile, even though it wasn't funny. I smile, too.
"And the opposite," he adds.
My stomach drops.
"Honestly, I don't even know." He sighs. "I... I missed you. I'm pissed as hell, but I missed you so fucking much."
I look up at him, into his eyes. And it suddenly hits me how fucking happy I am that they're looking at me again. That he can see me.
"I missed you, too."
He steps forward, looking down at me with soft features. I crane my head so I can keep looking at him.
He puts his arms around me, pulling me into his chest. His hands rest between my shoulder blades and on the small of my back,
fingers wide and splayed and flush against my spine. I slide my arms hesitantly around his waist, still not quite believing this is real, and rest my head against his throat. Almost like it was made to, his chin nestles in my hair. He holds me even tighter, like he's afraid I'll disappear if he lets me go again.
(I'm here. I'm here and he's hugging me.)
Even though we've cuddled - in his bed, which is even more intimate - it's him holding me this time, him who made the leap. I feel protected, and safe, and for a second everything seems to melt away and I just want to stay here forever.
"We need to talk," he says, and I can feel the sound humming through his body.
"Yeah."
But it's at least another minute before we move.
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"It's my fault, isn't it?" Theo asks. He stops walking and turns to look at me, hands buried in the pockets of his coat. The wind bursts through the field, catching his hair and clothes. "It's my fault you disappeared."
I think about his last words to me: You've made your choice. So stick with it.
Yes, it is his fault.
Do I resent him for it? No. He obviously knew what would happen as well as I did, which is to say not at all.
(But it was still his fault.)
My silence is answer enough. Theo sighs and sits down in the field, which is thankfully dry this time. I do the same after a moment.
"I'm sorry," Theo mumbles, looking down at the sod. "I never wanted that to happen. Never. Even though I knew you'd come back, it means we have less time together. I'm so, so sorry."
We both fucked up. Big time.
"I'm sorry, too," I say. "I shouldn't have made things worse by pushing you away. We've had such little time together, and we don't have much left. I'm terrified of losing you, and I care about you more than I've cared about anybody since I was living, and maybe even then. So I was scared. Of course I was. And I'm sorry for making the wrong choice."
Theo looks up at me, mouth slightly open. If I could, I would lean forward and-
"I don't think you understand, though," I continue. "You've lost your mum, I know, and I'm not devaluing that, but you have no idea what it's like to lose people who put their trust in you, again and again and again. The only people you can build connections with. And it'll be especially hard losing you, because I let myself care about you when I swore to myself that there wouldn't be another."
He bites his lip; I can tell the "another" bothers him, but he doesn't push
"Maybe you won't have to leave," he says, sounding so hopeful that it makes my stomach twist. "I mean, I didn't forget you, did I? And I have that painting of you, which helped me remember before. So maybe we'll sort out things with my dad and you'll be able to stay and-"
"I don't think so," I say quietly, cutting him off. "We had unfinished business. I think that's why it let me go again. But when your dad gets here, and if we stop him being such an ass, I'll be gone from your head for good, painting or no."
"You don't know that," Theo mumbles, picking up a fistful of wheat and shredding the stalks violently so he doesn't have to look at me.
I think I do. "Maybe I don't," I say quietly, just to humour him. "When's he getting home? This Saturday?"
"Yeah."
Saturday, then.
Three more nights and I'll probably be gone from his memory for good.
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How do we go back to the way we were?
We can't.
It's awkward as hell. We just don't know what to say to each other anymore. I don't want to bring up Kyle, and he probably doesn't
want to bring up me ignoring him, and neither of us want to bring up the looming deadline of his dad.
So what do we do?
Theo does his homework and I listen to his music.
"What's the area of a circle?"
"Pie times radius squared."
"Oh. Thanks."
A few minutes later: "When did world war two end?"
"1945."
"Cheers."
(I was born eleven years later and everyone was still feeling it; especially my father.)
The whole thing is making me want to scream.
We've shattered something. It's broken, whatever was building between us. How can you just snap back to caring about someone that way after saying so many awful things? (And meaning them all.) (And still having so, so many things left unsaid.)
If this was a normal relationship, we'd have the time to get comfortable with each other again. But we don't have the luxury of a long time, so what do we do?
Drift apart? Pull closer? Or nothing?
I'm afraid. I'm afraid of so many things: of my past, of our limited time, of myself, of the possibility that I'll say the wrong thing and
vanish all over again. I'm so scared, and I'm so angry, and I'm so hateful, and I'm so stupid for letting one part of me hope that Theo will be right after all about me staying.
By coming back, I'm accepting this pain. I'm accepting that I'll lose him, and that he won't even remember he's lost me.
He's worth it, but that won't make it hurt any less.
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The wardrobe's open when I walk into the guest room and my old school uniform, the one I wore in the 70's, is hanging up in there along with the new clothes Theo brought me weeks ago. It's both an old friend and some form of cruelty, although I doubt it was intentional. A pair of Theo's pajamas - the blue ones - are folded neatly on my pillow next to his copy of Lord of the Rings. Smirking, I change and start to read under the covers.
I'm back here. I don't know why I expected different.
But, about an hour after I got into the bed, there's a knock on the door.
"Yeah?"
It opens seamlessly to reveal Theo, wearing an old grey hoodie that reaches his knees on top of his pajamas and carrying his phone and earbuds. He stands there awkwardly, twisting the wire through his fingers like he's just waiting for me to kick him out.
"Mind if I hang out in here?"
I flip back one side of the covers as an answer, letting half of the joy I feel show on my face. Adjusting the hood so it covers more ofhis woody skin, Theo walks over to me with bare feet and slides into the bed, popping one of the earphones in and holding the other out to me with an awkward smile. I accept it and continue to read, Ed Sheeran crooning down my right ear.
After about an hour of silence, something heavy smacks me on my shoulder. I jump and the thing hits the bed next to me with a
groan.
It's Theo's head.
He's awake now, obviously. He looks at me with wide eyes, then laughs awkwardly. It's only then that I notice the huge bags under his eyes.
"Sorry," he mumbles, rubbing his eyes. He looks so fucking adorable. "Sorry. I think I fell asleep for a second." He laughs again. "I'm so tired. I haven't been sleeping well."
"It's okay," I say, putting the book down. "I'll sleep, too."
Then, to my horror, he starts to get out of the bed.
I grab his sleeve, not knowing what to say. He looks at me, one eye hidden by his massive hood and curls, and smiles. Then he sits back down, getting comfy, and grins at me.
"Role reversal."
I roll my eyes, biting back a grin.
He pushes the covers back a little and pulls the hoodie off over his head, pulling his pajama top up for a moment as he does. I look away quickly and switch the light off.
In the darkness, it all becomes easier.
He shuffles closer as soon as I lie down, so I don't even have the chance to turn away from my bedside table. He rests his knees against the back of mine, his chest against my spine, and loops his arm around me so that his thumb is just brushing my stomach. The other comes to rest on top of my head.
He's much taller than me, so it's like being cocooned.
I smile into the pillow.
This is good.
This is very, very good.
"I'm still kinda mad at you," he whispers into my hair, prickling my spine with shivers.
"Me too."
"But I don't want to waste a second."
"Me neither.
"So we have a deal?"
I laugh into the darkness and feel his respondent grin. "Okay, Theo."
"Okay, Evan."