“And yours are still warm,” he murmured back, offering a grin of his own. But it wasn’t a real one. It wasn’t the one I wanted.
As before, he guided me across the roof. Transitioning from the thwack and creak of ancient wood to the muffled glitter of asphalt, and finally back to my window.
Our room was dark, Jean. You were still away, and although I could have asked Jim to join me inside—the formal wouldn’t end until eleven—I knew he would refuse.
Or maybe . . . maybe I simply knew he wouldn’t fit inside my cage. He was too big for those walls.
Instead, we sat on the windowsill. He faced outward, feet resting on the roof. I faced in, feet atop my desk. Atop my calc homework.
Music thumped through the windowsill. A beat that suggested “YMCA” was playing in the gym, accompanied by that torturous dance I know you think is fun.
Neither Jim nor I spoke. But unlike the silence before, where the entire universe had cradled me and called me friend, this silence was strained. I could feel the tick of Jim’s internal clock, and there was no denying that the bomb attached was about to go off.
The breeze kicked at his hair while he picked his thumbnail. A halfhearted movement I didn’t have the guts to interrupt. I just watched. I just waited.
At last, he shifted toward me, and in that instance, the scrape of his jeans was too loud. Too real. Too inescapable, and made all the more so by his eyes, rooting on my face. Dark behind his glasses.
My heart picked up speed. Not because I thought he might kiss me—though god knows I wanted him to—but because there was something wrong. Something off.
“What, James?” I said, harsher than I’d intended. Breaking the spell that had fallen over us.
His forehead tightened. That stare was killing me. That pause was killing me. Until finally: “I saw you got into Harvard, Holmes.”
Nothing could have surprised me more, Jean. I hadn’t told anyone about my acceptance e-mail. Not you, not my parents. “How do you know?”
“I was poking through the school’s server.” He said it so nonchalantly—as if it were perfectly normal. As if I shouldn’t care.
But I did. “Why were you on the school server? And why were you looking at my e-mails?”
His hands lifted defensively. “It wasn’t on purpose, Holmes. I told you, I came here to find something.”
“A key,” I said, my tone mocking and harsh. “So you can walk through walls and whatever other nonsense it is you like to do.”
That hurt him. I saw it in the way his face fell. “Someone has to step outside the rules,” he said eventually. “How else can I help the people enslaved by them?”
“And why do you have to help them at all? Hacking into the school’s system will get you expelled.”
“So? So what if that happens? Why do you care?”
“Because . . .” I stopped. I had to swallow. Had to gather my thoughts and tamp down this heat that strained against my stomach.
“Because what?”
“Nothing.” I looked down at my shadowed calculus homework. A slow rhythm was thumping through the walls now, completely at odds with the frustration building in my lungs. It was the same fury I’d felt when Jim had grilled me on becoming a lawyer.
Irrational. Childish. And bubbling over too fast. I mean, why should I be the one to confess how I felt? Wasn’t it obvious?
Jim didn’t push me, though. Not yet. Instead, he asked, “Will you go? To Harvard, I mean.”
“Of course.”
“Then why haven’t you told anyone about the acceptance? It came in two weeks ago, Shirley. What are you waiting for?”
My breath caught. He had said my name. For the first time ever, Jim had said my name, and it was all too much.
I angled my body toward him, one shoulder inside the dorm, one shoulder out. “What do you want from me, Jim?”
He shook his head. “Don’t make me say it. Not if you can’t.” His voice was softer now. His body, his face moving ever so slightly toward me. “Or can you?”
“You’re going to leave, aren’t you?” Our faces were mere inches apart now. “Once you find what you’ve come for, you’ll leave. But I won’t.”
“You could, though,” he murmured. Closer. Closer. “Come with me, Shirley.”
“Where?”
“Outside.”
“I need more than that, Jim.” My forehead scrunched up. “I’m not like you—I like walls and rules and structure.”
“I see.” He gave a tiny nod, and the bomb finally went off. Detonating in my rib cage, it kicked out a single, booming heartbeat straight against my ribs.
Then it happened. Finally, and so gently.
That’s the only word I can find to describe what we shared. The way Jim pulled me to him. The way he leaned in. The way his gaze flicked from my lips to my eyes, making sure I wanted this.
I did. So badly I thought I would drown from wanting.
He closed the space between us. Our mouths touched. Just a brush of skin—his upper lip grazing my lower. That was all it was, but I couldn’t breathe. Or move. Or think.
For the ten seconds or ten minutes or however long our lips hovered together, I tasted the outside. The real. The free fall of Jim and me, together for one perfect moment.
His hands, warmer now, tangled in my hair. My hands, a bit colder, cupped his face. Deep. Long. Starving. Jim kissed me like we were dying.
Because time was up, and this was good-bye.
This story ends with a kiss.
I mean, sure: while I watched Jim disappear across the rooftop, the night folding over him, I prayed that I would see him again. That our time was up for now, but not forever.
Yet I knew. People don’t kiss like it’s their last, unless it is.
The next day, a Saturday, I went to the library. I had no other way of finding Jim. No phone number, no e-mail. And though I didn’t think he’d actually be there, I went to check anyway.
You probably don’t remember, but it was a gorgeous January day. So bright that sunshine cut right through those foggy windows, and the sparrows sent shadows flying across the floorboards.
On my chair lay a tattered red book with gold letters stamped onto the cover. Grimm’s Fairy Tales, it read, and a chuckle bubbled in my chest at the sight of it . . . until my eyes hit the chessboard, atop which two pieces glowed in the sunbeams.
A white queen and a black king, tipped sideways.
Checkmate.
I didn’t cry. I thought I would, but as I sat there staring at those pieces, no tears pricked behind my eyes. No sobs gathered in my lungs. Instead, something warm shimmered through me. From my toes, it gusted and raced and grew until all I could do was clutch my arms to my chest and smile.
I smiled so big it actually hurt my cheeks. It hurt my ribs and my lungs, too.
Eventually, I scooped up the book of fairy tales. There was no message or anything inside—I hadn’t thought there would be since the book and the chessboard were message enough.