The End of Our Story

He pulls back and the space between us is unbearable, and before I can wonder, he covers my mouth with his.

He tastes like boy and salt, like Wil. I have been parched for him, for the way his mouth fits with mine, for his hands on my arms, my waist, in my hair. My hands search him, remembering every little detail, every familiar inch. Wil Hines is a story I know by heart, a story that comes racing back to me, all at once. Now that he’s close again, I’ll never let him go.





BRIDGE


Spring, Senior Year


THE next morning, my skin is still vibrating from the kiss. I race across the tennis court during PE, wanting to shriek the words to Leigh. But I can’t. Not until I know what we are.

“So, what’d you do last night?” Leigh lobs an easy ball my way, a neon sun backspinning over the net. Despite having a general policy against a heart rate over 130, Leigh is somehow good at tennis.

“Hung out with Micah. And, ah—” I whack the ball as hard as I can, and it hits the fence behind her and rolls two courts down. “Sorry.”

She waits until the gym teacher at the other end of the court isn’t looking. Then she gives me the finger and takes her sweet time interrupting the game next to us—two sophomore stoners, and the game next to them: Ana and Thea.

I watch Ana scurry for my ball and my whole body tingles like I’ve been under the sun for days. I watch her laugh and toss the ball back to Leigh, and my brain shifts into overdrive. They aren’t a good match, Wil and Ana, not the way we are. She’ll find someone next year, someone who wants college and a tie collection and a golf membership. I didn’t ask for this. He needs me. But my excuses are thin, and beneath them is simmering guilt. The feeling that I’ve done wrong by her. I look away. I pretend to stretch. I am sweat-soaked under low clouds.

“Seventy-six–love,” Leigh bellows before she serves. She’s been making up scores all period.

We lob the ball back and forth until she gets bored and decides to end the game, punishing me, point after point. We meet at the net and slurp the Big Gulp Leigh filled with gas-station iced coffee on the way to school.

“What’s going on with you?” She squints sweat out of her eyes.

“Nothing. What do you mean?”

“You’re, like, smiling. It’s weird.”

“I can’t smile?”

“Not lately, you can’t.”

I reach for the Big Gulp and suck the last of the syrupy dregs through the straw. “Maybe I’m just having a good morning.”

“It’s fucking PE.” Leigh shakes her head. “Nobody on earth is this happy this early in the morning unless—” A sly grin crosses her face.

“Leigh.” I cut my eyes down the court. “Shut up.”

“Ohmygod.” She socks my bicep, hard.

“Leigh.”

“You got laid! For the first time in, like, a year!” She yelps loud enough that the stoners on the next court burst out laughing. Ana and Thea glance over.

“I. Did. Not.” I grab her arm and drag her across the court, toward the locker rooms.

“Ladies?” the gym teacher yells.

“Feminine issue!” I yell back. We hustle off the courts, Leigh squawking the whole way. When we get to the locker room, I shove through the double doors and I check beneath the bathroom stall doors before I say, “Okay. I did not get laid.”

“Buuut—” Leigh pulls me down to the bench in front of my locker. “Spit it out, Hawking.”

“I kissed Wil. Last night,” I blurt.

Leigh’s eyes go big. “You kissed Wil. Like, your Wil. You kissed your Wil.”

I bob my head.

“Who happens to be Ana’s Wil, at the moment.” Her forehead crinkles.

“Don’t remind me.” I kick off my sneakers and peel off my socks.

Leigh sits there with her mouth slightly open, silent.

“Say something,” I order.

“No, I mean, this is . . . Are you getting back together?” Her disapproval lines get deeper.

“I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it. I was going to find him after Spanish so we could talk.”

Leigh twists one of her dreads around her index finger. She looks past me. “This is huge.”

“I know, Leigh. That’s what I’m telling you.” I search her. Stormy eyes are not what I expected. “Would you look at me? What are you, pissed?”

She shakes her head. “No. No way.”

“Well? Aren’t you going to say, Do your thing, whatever makes you feel good, some bullshit about my goddamned heart chakra?” My stomach surges.

“No way. This is you guys.”

“So?” There’s an edge to my voice.

“So . . .” She lets her head fall back against the locker. It makes a tinny thud. “If it was just some guy, and you were just hooking up, then hell yeah. Do what makes you feel good. But you and Wil . . .”

“So what am I supposed to do, then?”

“You’re supposed to think, Bridge. I mean, like, now? With all he’s got going on? With Ana?”

“Can we not talk about Ana?” I stretch out on the bench and stare into the fluorescent lights overhead.

“Not really.” She reaches over and squeezes my ankle. “She’s kind of an important part of this.”

I press my palms over my eyes until everything goes black. “Yeah. I know.”

“Bridge. I didn’t—”

The locker room doors swing open again, and I sit up and rub the spots from my eyes. Ana and Thea traipse in and lean their rackets against the wall.

“Hi.” Ana’s face tightens when she sees me.

“Hey.” I nod.

“I’m just saying, you’ve been there for him,” Thea tells Ana. She bends over one of the sinks and splashes her face with water. “And I know he’s sad and everything, but that doesn’t give him the right to forget you completely.”

“Are you guys talking about Wil?” I ask before I can stop myself. The knot in my stomach gives me the answer.

Thea turns from the sink and blinks, wet-faced, like she’s seeing me for the first time.

“I just wish this whole thing was over, you know?” Ana tells Thea quietly as a few freshmen girls trickle in. “It’s just been hard, and I know that’s selfish or whatever. But Wil just isn’t . . . there anymore.”

Thea sighs, leaving pity fog on the mirror.

“There is no over, you know.” I just can’t stop myself.

Ana turns. “What?” She launches the word directly at me, hard.

“I don’t think you ever get over not having a dad anymore.”

“Right. Obviously, I know that, Bridge.” Ana’s face is red. She looks at Thea. “You’re not the only one who—”

The shriek of the bell cuts through the locker room. Head down, I follow Leigh through the double doors. I don’t expect to see Wil on the other side of the hall. Just like that, the sadness, my disappointment in Leigh’s reaction, drain from my body.

He opens his mouth like he’s going to shout something across the hall, and then he sees Ana. He edges through the crowd and he leans close to her in a way that I understand, in a way that kills me. She lights up. I watch his lips.

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