“This is what you do to me, bluebird,” he’d whispered into my ear. “You drive me fucking crazy.”
And he’s driven me crazy many times since. I stifle a groan as he grinds himself against me, breathing heavily into my mouth. “One of these days…” he tells me, his voice sounding strained. “One of these days…”But he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t demand to know which day it will actually be. There’s something inside of him that knows I’m not ready. His whole being is somehow attuned to mine in a way that scares me sometimes, because I feel the same way with him. I know him. It seems as though there’s a part of me that recognizes everything he’s ever felt and ever will feel. We are mirrors of one another. We are on a road, an unpaved, pot-holed road, and we keep hitting fork after fork where a decision needs to be made, and either by luck, fate, or sheer force of will we keep making the decisions that mean we get to stay together. The decisions that mean we get to remain each other’s mirror.
It’s scary to feel this way so young. At least that’s what Friday tells me I should be feeling, anyway. I can’t quite seem to muster up the appropriate levels of panic, though. I’m too relieved by the knowledge that Callan Cross is the other half of my soul, and I was lucky enough to have been born right next-door next to him.
He bites my lip gently, growling a little. “So what do you think?” he asks. “We keep taking our photos. Ten years from now, we develop them all at once?” He drags his teeth over my neck, chuckling when I gasp.
“But I kind of like being locked away with you in a dark room for hours at a time,” I say breathlessly.
“Don’t worry. We can still do that.”
“Then sure. I think it sounds fun.”
We kiss some more, but Callan finally pushes away from me, turning me around and pulling me to him so that he’s holding me from behind in his arms. “You realize I masturbate more than any other seventeen-year-old male on the face of this planet,” he says drowsily.
We fall asleep laughing.
******
I get busted on my way out of the house in the morning. It’s early, not even six yet. Jo’s normally fast asleep, exhausted from working such long shifts, but not this morning. She’s sitting at the breakfast table with her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee as I try and slip silently out of the front door.
“Coralie? Coralie, sweetheart, can you come in here a second please?”
I nearly jump out of my skin. “Holy crap. Jo, sorry, I—I didn’t see you there.”
“I know, baby girl. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
I’m trying to figure out the expression she’s wearing as I cautiously enter the kitchen, trying not to freak out. I should never have mentioned Jo knowing about my nocturnal stay-cations last night. If I hadn’t, the universe undoubtedly wouldn’t be embarrassing me like this right now.
“I know you need to get ready for school,” Jo says, “but there’s something I wanted to talk to you about first.” There are dark circles under her eyes, and her hair is a little messy, falling down out of the loose bun she has tied at the back of her head. She’s looked more and more tired of late. I haven’t mentioned anything to Callan—I didn’t want to seem rude—but this morning she looks like she run a marathon, and then refused to sleep for a week.
“Sure. Of course. If it’s about me staying—”
“No, no, it’s not that.” She shakes her head, peering into the bottom of her coffee cup. The contents inside has gathered a milky film on top; I doubt very much that the liquid is still warm. She motions for me to sit down next to her, which I do, growing more and more anxious by the second. “It’s something else,” she says. “I definitely shouldn’t be talking to you about this before Callan, but I just—I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.” Tears well in her eyes, the same deep brown, soft, kind eyes she shares with her son, and a heavy, dark weight pulls at me from the inside. I know what she’s going to say. I have no idea how, but I suddenly know this isn’t good at all.
Jo takes a deep breath. “I’m sick,” she blurts out. “Really sick. I have been for a while now, but I…I wanted to wait. My doctor was hopeful that undergoing a chemotherapy treatment might fix things. Unfortunately…unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case.”
I sit still, stunned, unable to say anything, to blink, to swallow, to even vaguely comprehend what she’s saying to me.