Chapter Nineteen #2
She shook her head. “I’m not, but I can believe it for both of us until you’re ready to.”
Hallie was the most beautiful person in the world.
It didn’t make sense she was describing Audrey that way when she knew herself.
She was looking up at Audrey with a fuzzy hat and snow fluttering into her hair and across her cheeks like glorious confetti.
And all Audrey wanted to do was preserve this memory forever.
No photo would be able to capture every magnificent part of it, but maybe it could catch part of it.
Maybe, if a photo existed, Audrey would look at it and her body would remember the rest.
It wasn’t a good idea, though. They only had a few days, and she didn’t want to disturb Tracy and Dirk to take it.
Plus, if they did ask for a photo to be taken, it wouldn’t be precisely this moment.
It would be a recreation of it, still loaded but not quite this exquisite, aching moment of almost between them.
Audrey’s chest felt tight but not in a bad way. Her mind sometimes struggled to know the difference but, with Hallie, every atom in her body seemed to understand that this was something different, something real and vital, something Audrey had been blocking out for a very long time.
“You know,” she said, almost breathless, “I’m leaving in a couple of days.”
Hallie smiled sadly. “I know. California has never felt further away.”
“Somehow, I think it will feel worse on Sunday.”
“I do too.”
Audrey shook her head. “It’s deeply inappropriate of me to develop a crush on my cousin’s girlfriend.”
Hallie laughed, beaming like she hadn’t truly believed before that Audrey wanted her. “I’m not your cousin’s girlfriend.”
“My family thinks you are.”
“Audrey, honestly, I couldn’t give less of a shit what your family thinks.”
She laughed in surprise, and, completely forgetting where they were, took a step closer to Hallie, their thick coats brushing together between them. “That’s fair, I suppose.”
Hallie tilted her head. “They think a lot of things that aren’t correct. And, yes, this one is something I told them, but my concern in life is not them.”
“What is it?” Audrey asked, her voice almost lost on the wind.
“Right now, it’s you and getting as much of you as I can for the next few days.” She laughed a little bitterly. “And it’s trying not to think about how shitty it’s going to feel to say goodbye to you on Sunday.”
“We could stay in touch?”
Hallie nodded, swallowing hard. “Yeah, you’d better, Dr. Bee. Can’t live the rest of my life not knowing about insects, can I?”
“Ah, just here for the insects. Can’t say I blame you.”
“Not just the insects.” She sighed heavily, pulling Audrey a little closer again. “But I don’t really know what to do with the rest of it.”
“The rest of it…”
“Mm. The fact that I like this, like you, so much. That I went to the world’s worst family gathering but met the best woman I’ve ever encountered.”
“I don’t think we know each other well enough for you to say that,” Audrey said, attempting to keep things light.
Hallie scowled at her. “We do. Maybe we’re still getting to know each other but… you feel it, don’t you?”
What would be the point in denying it? From the moment they’d met, there had been something easy between the two of them. The more time they spent together, the easier it all felt. Audrey had never experienced anything like it, but the two of them just understood each other.
Audrey nodded. “I do. But I’m not sure what we do with that.”
“Kiss now and deal with the consequences later?” she asked hopefully.
Audrey couldn’t help laughing. She understood that hope entirely. “It’ll hurt like hell later.”
“You think it won’t hurt just because we didn’t kiss?”
“No. I do not think that. But, in three days, I can be thousands of miles away from you, clinging to the hope that us kissing would have been a nightmare, or, I can be there knowing it wasn’t and hating the distance.”
Hallie edged her fingers up the scarf wrapped around Audrey’s neck, one Tracy had given her to wear. Her eyes darted to Audrey’s mouth, lingering too long to have been unconscious. “If we kissed, Dr. Bee, I don’t think it would be a nightmare.”
“Neither do I,” Audrey murmured.
“So, I can either ache with missing your lips, or with knowing I’ll never get to kiss them.”
Audrey’s hands ran up Hallie’s back, holding her close. That was the real dilemma, wasn’t it? And, if it was going to hurt either way, wasn’t it better to have the kiss than not?
Her own eyes found Hallie’s lips and she realized just how much she’d been trying not to look at them. Full and soft. Pink and pillowy and perfect.
As if the universe was trying to make a point, a snowflake fluttered down and landed right on Hallie’s bottom lip.
Whether from it or from the intensity between them, Hallie shuddered and it shot straight into Audrey.
She’d never wanted to kiss anyone like this before.
It felt like its own driving, pounding rhythm in her body, some force greater than the two of them pushing them forward.
It had allowed them to find each other, despite all odds, and, now, all they had to do was kiss. Everything would be okay if they did.
But that wasn’t real. Nothing was going to change their reality. And Audrey didn’t know if she could handle kissing Hallie and leaving her.
The benefit of never dating was never breaking up either. And she had no idea how to handle having someone like Hallie for a moment and then losing her forever. Even preemptively, it hurt like hell. She had no idea how people survived breakups.
Hallie sighed and looked down, wiping the now melted snowflake from her lip. “This probably isn’t the place for this conversation.”
Audrey stumbled over a laugh, looking around.
Tracy and Dirk were still nearby. They didn’t seem to be paying them any attention, but Hallie was right.
This choice wasn’t easy. There would be consequences either way, and, if they were going to kiss, Audrey wasn’t sure she wanted the very first time to be in front of Hallie’s mother and her… crush? Boyfriend? Whatever he was.
Hallie smiled at her again, still standing close, one hand on Audrey’s scarf. “I shouldn’t have—”
“I’m glad you did,” Audrey said quickly. “Sure, this whole thing is… complicated, but isn’t it better to know we were both feeling the same way than to spend the rest of our lives wondering?”
“I suppose so, but knowing the most wonderful, intelligent, and beautiful woman I’ve ever met is far away and wanting me too is a very specific form of torture.”
Hallie’s laughter was so beautiful, so much more than Audrey could have ever dreamed of hearing.
She tried desperately to commit it to memory.
She knew only too well that her mind liked to throw her nightmares over happy dreams, that it would prioritize her family over the perfect woman before her to haunt her restless nights, but she hoped that, if she memorized it well enough, some day, even if only in her dreams, Hallie would come back to her.