Lucy: Lol. It’s okay, Jake. Amanda told me she thinks about him when Logan’s on the bottom.

Logan: WTF!

Amanda: LIES!

Dylan: Yo, Luce.

Lucy: Yeah?

Dylan: I got Riley this book. She said it ends in a cliffhanger and wants to know when the next one’s out.

Lucy: You got a girl a book? Mother fucking swoon.

Cam: I’m right here.

Dylan: So it’s a romance book, I guess.

Lucy: OMG. She reads romance? Wtf! Totes my new bff. Does she have a fave bbf?

Dylan: I don’t know what any of that means.

Lucy: Title? Author?

Dylan: No idea.

Lucy: ?

Dylan: The cover’s blue.

Lucy: Seriously?

Dylan: Yeah. Like a light blue.

Lucy: You’re a shit kid, Banks.

Amanda: He seems happy, Heidi. I’d leave it alone.

Amanda: Crap.

Amanda: Wrong chat.

Amanda: Ignore that.

Logan: I shouldn’t let her out of the house.

Dylan: I’ll see you guys soon.

I close out of the screen, ignoring Amanda’s comment. It’s irrelevant. And if Heidi wants to know how I am, she knows where I fucking live.

Dylan: Message me as soon as your mom leaves tomorrow. I’ll be waiting. I can’t wait to see you.

Riley: K.

Dylan: You good?

Riley: :(

Dylan: ?

Riley: Hang on. I know you hate seeing those dots so I’m just warning you that the next one will be a long message.

Dylan: K.

Riley: I wanted to wait until I told you in person, but I don’t think I can. I know it’s been less than a month since we’ve really known each other, but what’s time, right? Because in that short time you’ve become the most important person in my life, Dylan. You’re the reason I actually get out of bed in the morning, the reason I haven’t had anything to drink all weekend—no matter how badly I wanted to. You’re the reason I want to face reality head on and not just float through it. There are going to be things that happen, things we’ll probably share that’ll change the way we think or feel about each other, or at least the way you feel about me… but I just wanted you to know that you matter. You matter so much to me. And regardless of how things will end up between us, that’s never going to change. You’ll always be the boy who changed my course in life. The one who changed ME. The one who gave me a reason to look for something more than just the “enough” I was struggling to get through. I’m grateful you showed up on my doorstep that day—pissed off and angry at the world. Because if you hadn’t… I wouldn’t be here. And I don’t just mean here, writing to you. I mean here, in this world.

Twenty-One

Riley

I spend the entire night wide-awake, tossing and turning, and then tossing and turning some more. Before I know it, the birds are chirping, the clock is ticking, the sun is rising, and my heart… it’s sinking.

Dylan stands on the other side of my door, looking the same as he always does. Sweats, white grease stained tank under a flannel shirt—sleeves rolled up. But his eyes, his smile, they’re different. They’re settled. Like our conversation last night and the two days apart has given him the same sense of calm it gave me… until Jake stood exactly where Dylan is right now.

“Hi,” he says, and I release a breath, stand on my toes, and throw my arms around his neck. I squeeze tight, because I don’t know if it’ll be the last time.

Guilt. Guilt is such a fucked-up emotion, because it’s not one I should be feeling when his arms wrap around my waist, pressing my body flush against his. “I’ve missed you, Riley.”

“Me too,” I whisper, pulling away.

He grasps my top and brings me into him, like I’d done with him so many times before. “Come back,” he says, his smile getting wider. “You give such good hugs.”

We repeat the process, holding each other a little longer until his low, sweet chuckle reverberates in my ears and he releases me.

His smile falls when he looks at my face, the bags under my eyes, the redness from the thousand tears I’ve shed. “Has Jake spoken to you?” I ask.

With his eyes on mine, he slowly shakes his head. “What’s going on, Riley?”

“We should talk.”

His face falls. “I figured as much.”

I take his hand and lead him to my room, but there’s resistance. When I turn to him, he’s looking at my bedroom door. His throat bobs with his swallow. “Can we maybe go somewhere else? I just… I don’t think I want whatever is going to happen next to take away from the memories I have of us in your room.”

Nodding, I slip on my shoes and walk past him and outside. I don’t deflect from his prediction. I don’t tell him that it’s okay—that it’s not what this is about. I don’t say anything, because I don’t want my next words to be a lie. I want to give him the raw—and until today—unspoken truth.

He closes the door after him and takes my hand, then leads me to his garage. The same garage I once declared my clear and unquestionable need for him.

I stay silent as he opens the passenger door of his truck and I get inside, waiting—my heart slowly breaking—for him to join me.

He drives.

I don’t know how long he drives for but it’s not like it is in my dream because the idea of teasing myself with that moment, that wish, doesn’t just break my heart. It completely disintegrates it.

So I sit with my side against the door, as far away from him as possible.

We don’t say a word.

Not out loud.

But in my head, I shift through the jumbled mess—a dictionary of apologies and explanations—and I fight the tears, the sob brewing in my chest because the memories hurt, and I don’t have anything to dull the ache besides the man sitting next to me. And right now, he’s not enough.

Out of all the places he could possibly take me to, he takes me to a cemetery. Not the one I’m familiar with. It’s smaller, older and a little less well kept. He stays quiet as he gets out of the car and makes his way to my side where he opens the door for me and takes my hand to help me down.

I’m in a daze, too caught up in my own thoughts that I don’t even realize he’s walking ahead of me and I’m following cluelessly behind until he stops at a plot and starts picking at the weeds surrounding the headstone. Faded and damaged, the words on marble are hard to make out, but I read them.

Every single one.

Ruby Banks

My wife, my friend, the mother dear

In dreamless sleep repossess here

May those whose love to her was given

All meet and live with her in heaven

I try to cover my gasp, my tears falling with my blink as I look up at him. “Dylan,” I whisper, my breath as shaky as my hands.

“I wanted her to meet you,” he says, taking a seat on the dirt in front of the marker, “In case I don’t get this chance again.”

I sit down next to him and take his hand.

“It’s been so long since I’ve been here,” he tells me, shifting our positions so his arm’s around me and his other hand is on my leg. “My dad and Eric and I used to come here a bit when I was younger. I always felt out of place, you know? Because they knew her and could talk to her the way they would if she were alive. They could picture her, see her reactions to their words and I—I couldn’t do any of that. I couldn’t describe her to you, what she looked like when she smiled or the sound of her voice or the way she smelled.”