My head turns in his direction, but it’s like I’m not even here. He won’t even look at me. His green eyes are pinned on some distant place, and I’m not sure I’ve truly found him at all.
Eventually, I stop searching, and together, we stare out at the same spot on the sunlit horizon—me with my arms around my knees, him with his hands flattened against the roof at his sides. When he speaks, even the sun shines behind a cloud that sweeps across the sky. “I’ve been thinking all night of what I could say to you.” His voice is dry, unreadable, and it makes my stomach drop.
“Did you sleep here?” I ask.
When he finally gazes over at me, his thick black lashes hang low over tired eyes that tug at the splinters of my heart. His scruff is days old, his hair is an untamed mess, and in his all-black attire, he looks . . . beautiful. Heartbreakingly beautiful.
“I didn’t really sleep,” he says, and he stares back out at that invisible spot again. His chest rises on a heavy breath before deflating in a shallow one. “I don’t know what to say, Kit. All night, I’ve tried to come up with some way to say I’m sorry, for every single mistake I’ve made with you, but I still don’t have it.”
The hopelessness in his voice manifests in my own chest—an empty aching that makes me want to wrap my arms around him and pray he holds me too. Even if it means nothing to him. Even if it doesn’t change anything.
The sun peeks out from behind the clouds, and when he gazes over me, all I can do is stare back at him. “I lost you before I ever had you,” he says, “and all I’ve been doing is sitting up here feeling sorry for myself.” He shakes his head in silent admonishment of himself. “Do you realize how big of an asshole that makes me? That I’m so jealous of the guy I should have been for you, I can’t even find the right way to apologize for the guy I was?”
He’s saying all the things I needed to hear days, weeks, years ago, and I don’t even realize I’m crying until a tear slides over my lashes and trickles down my cheek. It’s hot and speaks of a million different things—of the sadness I feel that we’re over, of the regret I feel that we never began, of the relief I feel that he’s sorry, and above all, of the emptiness, of the distance that stretches between us until it’s much too far to cross.
The clouds open up for us, and light raindrops begin to mix with the shallow streams of tears on my face. Shawn just stares at me from across the void, until his somber voice says, “I should go.”
My head is shaking back and forth even before I find my voice. “No. Come inside.”
I walk to my window ahead of Shawn, not waiting to see if he’ll follow, and inside my room, I wait and I wait and I wait. When he finally climbs in after me, his hair and shoulders damp from the rain, I want to hold his face in my hands and kiss the raindrops from his cheeks. I want to tell him I’m sorry too. Instead, I lean against a wall, my arms crossed over my chest to keep them from reaching out. I have a million questions, and if I don’t ask them now, I know I never will.
Shawn closes the window behind him, and then he sits back against the sill and waits for me to say something.
“Were we really together?” I ask in a moment of forced courage. I’m terrified of his answer, but I need to know it, even if it twists the knife in my chest. “After Van’s party . . . the roof . . . ” I wipe what I tell myself are raindrops from my cheeks. “What was I to you, Shawn?”
He considers his reply before saying, “Do you really think I wanted to keep you a secret?” When I say nothing, he sighs. “Kit, there isn’t a man alive who would want to keep you a secret. You’re . . . ” He shakes his head to himself. “You’re everything I never knew I wanted. I didn’t realize what perfect was until I got to know you, and then I thought you were finally mine, and . . . I just didn’t want the other guys making it impossible for us to get any privacy for those last two days. They would have been such assholes about it. I wanted you to myself.”
Resisting the urge to go into his arms, to make myself his, I say, “Why did you act like you hated me when I first joined the band?”
“I didn’t trust you,” he explains. “I didn’t realize you actually cared about the music. I thought you were only there to get even with me or something.”
“What about when I kissed you in Mayhem? Before the tour?” He pretended like he didn’t remember taking me to the bus, lying me down on a bench, or making out with me—right before I had to run to the bathroom to throw up.
“You were drunk,” he says sadly. “I was so wrapped up in finally getting to touch you, I didn’t even realize it . . . I felt like an asshole for taking it so far. And then . . . I thought you just wanted to forget.”
Because I lied. That morning, I was the first one to pretend nothing happened. Shawn only followed my lead.