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.
Autumn’s eyes drift closed as I stroke her temples and her hair. She looks so happy. How is it possible that I’m making her smile like that with just the tips of my fingers? There isn’t anything else I can blame the smile on: no music, no other sensations.
There must be a catch.
After four years of saying no to Jamie, why did she say yes to me?
I almost laugh because I realize she didn’t say yes to me. She proposed it. I gave in to her request, despite the reasons it was a bad idea.
Autumn trembles under my touch, like the feel of my fingertips is more than she can handle.
“Do you regret it?” I ask, because surely something will go wrong.
Her eyes open. “No,” she says. Before relief can hit me, she continues, “But I wish it had been your first time too.”
Autumn looks away from me, and I freeze.
Without betraying Sylvie, I need to explain to Autumn how significant last night was for me.
I let my hand fall away and concentrate on my words.
“The first time, we were both so drunk neither of us can remember it. And then it turned out that she couldn’t do it unless she was drunk. And if she was drunk, it felt wrong to me. It didn’t happen often or even go very well when it did. So, I mean, in a lot of ways, it was a first for me.”
I hope I don’t have to say more, but Autumn says, “What do you mean ‘she couldn’t do it unless she was drunk’?”
“Someone hurt her once,” I say. It’s true that Sylvie was hurt, but it’s not true to say that she was hurt only once.
“Oh,” Autumn says.
It’s a bit of a bummer to not really remember the first time I had sex, but that isn’t why last night felt like a first time for me. With Sylvie, most nights ended with me telling her she was too drunk for me to keep going. There were nights she was sober enough to consent, but we had to stop in the middle. Success was rare, and I lived in fear of hurting Sylvie.
Autumn lays her hand over mine, and suddenly, I remember all the things that I still need to tell her. I twine my fingers with hers.
“I wanted something better for you,” I told her. “That’s why I made you promise not to do it when you were drinking, but really, the idea of you ever doing it with anybody made me mad.” I need to warn her about the effect she has on me. “Do you remember how you told me that you were going to do it after graduation? And then the day after, you were sitting on the porch, and you said you were waiting for Jamie?”
“Yeah?”
“I came up here and punched the wall,” I admit. “I’d never done that before. It hurt.”
“You thought…”
“Yeah.” Also, I need to warn her how selfish she makes me. “Then, after I found out you guys had broken up, it was hard to see you miserable over him when I was so happy. I wanted to pick you up and spin you around.” Like I’d watched Jamie do so many times.
Rather than responding to my hypocrisy, Autumn says, “You were sad that time Sylvie broke up with you. I was so angry at her for hurting you that I thought about pushing her in front of the school bus.”
I almost laugh at Autumn’s hyperbole.
“I was sad,” I agree, “but it was my own fault. I told everybody that I didn’t like it when they made comments about you, and Sylvie got jealous. She asked me if I had feelings for you.” She asked directly that time. “And I told her to drop it and kept trying to change the subject. She could tell.”
I’d tried what had worked before, saying true things in a way that hid what I didn’t want to say. Again and again, I tried to get Sylvie to pretend that I’d told her what she wanted to hear, but that time, she wouldn’t play along. Sylvie dumped me, as I deserved. She was cool and brisk.
Sylvie said, “Finn, even if you weren’t being purposefully obtuse, that would still be a problem. I’m tired of the charade.” That had hurt because I hadn’t thought of my relationship with Sylvie as a farce.
Part of me wishes I could tell Autumn how much I missed Sylvie those weeks. I missed talking with her about politics. I missed going on runs with her when no one else would go with me because it was too cold. I missed calling her to say good night. I missed our evenings at the library together, working side by side, not talking.
Finally, I lied to Sylvie. I lied again and again. Sure, I’d told her I had a crush on Autumn. But I said losing her had made me realize that I hadn’t really been in love with Autumn at all. I told Sylvie that she was the only one I wanted to be with, and after that, she seemed to believe me again.
“Why did you get back with her?” Autumn asks, surprising me.
“You loved Jamie all this time too, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” she says, and I’m amazed that I still feel a flicker of jealousy.
“Then why don’t you understand? I wanted—I tried to love only her.”
Autumn’s face tells me that she understands at least that much, so I continue.
“When I told you last month that I was going to break up with Sylvie, it wasn’t because I thought I had a chance of being more than just your friend. It was because loving you from a distance was one thing, but it wouldn’t have been fair to her if I were in love with my best friend.”
Abruptly, Autumn sits up. She hugs the covers around herself like bandages on a wound. I don’t understand what’s happened. I confessed to punching blameless walls and rejoicing in her heartbreak, and she smiled sweetly at me. Why is she upset now? I sit up too.
“Autumn?”
Her hair is hanging over her face. “What if you see her and realize this was all a mistake?”
“That will not happen.”
“It could.”
“It won’t.”
“If you love her—” Autumn says, but I can’t let her go on.
“But if I have the chance to be with you—” It’s surreal to me, but somehow, after everything, she still doesn’t understand how uncontrollably in love I am. “God, Autumn. You’re the ideal I’ve judged every other girl by my whole life. You’re funny and smart and weird. I never know what’s going to come out of your mouth or what you’re going to do. I love that. You. I love you.”
After all these years of feeling like I was holding back the most eloquent words of love, my big speech sounds weak to me, but I try to let all my emotion show in my voice.
Her brown hair parts over her face, and her huge eyes peek up at me from under her eyelashes.
I don’t know how I’m still breathing.
“And you’re so beautiful,” I hear myself say.
She ducks her head again, and I laugh aloud.
“Now, I know you already knew that,” I say. I’m laughing because I’ve seen her shrug off that exact compliment so many times.
“It’s different when you say it.” She speaks so quietly I can barely hear her.
I laugh. “How?”
“I don’t know,” she whispers.
Sweet Autumn.
“You’re so beautiful.” I reach for her face and tilt her chin up. I need her to see me say this. “Last night was the best thing that ever happened to me,” I tell her. “And I would never think it was a mistake unless you said it was.”
“I would never say that,” she whispers.
I smile and lean my forehead against hers. I close my eyes as I reply. “Then everything is going to be okay. We’re together now, right?” I need to hear her say it. No more mistakes.
“Of course,” Autumn says, and I can’t help my laugh again.
She pulls away.
I explain, “I never ever thought this would happen, and then you say, ‘of course,’ like it’s the most natural thing in the world.”
“Doesn’t it feel like it?” she asks me.
It does, and it doesn’t. Being with Autumn feels natural, but it also feels supernatural. I think about the way her novel captured and displayed my love for her so perfectly without her having consciously known all that was in my heart. I think about my recurring dreams of having returned to the right timeline, where she and I have always been together.