13. Aeron #3
The drive back to Alaria takes twenty minutes, and we talk the whole way.
Not about heavy things anymore. She tells me about a documentary she watched on Japanese flower pressing and how the flowers look more alive when they’re dead and flat than they did growing, and I tell her that’s the most morbid thing I’ve ever heard.
She laughs and says, “You’re one to talk, Mr. I-draw-faces-with-haunted-eyes.
” To that, I ask her how she knows what I draw and she says, “I’ve been peeking at your sketchbook throughout the years, you know.
Not behind your back, just when you’re drawing while I’m around. ”
My face goes hot. The steering wheel is suddenly very interesting. I grip it tighter and focus on the road, trying not to think about which pages she might have seen and whether any of them were drawings of her.
About half of my drawings are of her.
Would that freak her out?
Maybe. Better to keep my mouth shut.
We reach Alaria, and I park in the visitor lot near the dorms. I notice her shivering, so I reach over and pick up my hoodie off the floor. She takes it with a soft smile. Once it’s on, she says, “Smells like you.”
It’s probably inappropriate, but I start to get… excited from her wearing my hoodie and thinking about my scent.
As I’m walking around to open the passenger door, I remind myself: PG-13 thoughts only.
She gets out and adjusts my large hoodie on her small frame. She takes my hand again and my brain short-circuits. “Can you walk me up?” she asks.
My pulse doubles. I can feel it in my wrists, my neck, the soft skin behind my ears. “Yeah. Sure.”
Sure. Completely normal and no big deal because I do this all the time (I’m so screwed).
The Alaria campus at night is different.
The gothic buildings lose their stately posture in the dark and become silhouettes.
The streetlamps along the cobblestone paths throw cones of warm light downward, and between those cones the path is dark, so walking across campus is like stepping through a series of spotlights with blackouts in between.
We enter the dorm building through a side door.
The hallway is quiet, lit by those long fluorescent tubes that make everything look institutional.
Our footsteps echo on the linoleum. Cinna walks close enough that her arm brushes mine twice, and each time the contact goes through me like a jolt and lights everything up.
Her room is on the second floor. She unlocks the door and steps inside, and I stand in the doorway because crossing that threshold feels intimidating.
The goal was to walk her to her dorm. Goal accomplished. But I can’t stop myself from peering into her room, wanting to know everything that’s in it.
The room is small. Desk, bed, a shelf full of dried flowers in glass jars and frames. The only light comes from a string of fairy lights tacked along the wall above her bed, turning everything soft and golden. It’s the kind of light I would choose for every room I ever walked into.
I clear my throat. “Well, I should probably g—”
“You can come in.”
I blink at her in a bit of a daze. She giggles, grabs my hand, and pulls me into her private space, closing the door behind me.
My heart is pounding so hard I might get lightheaded soon.
There’s no way it can keep pumping so hard and fast. The room smells like lavender, and Cinna is standing two feet away from me with fairy light framing her hair.
But I also notice the hunch in her posture is still there.
And her eyes are still a little red and her arms are wrapped around herself like she’s trying to hold herself together.
“Aeron, can you stay?” she asks. “Please. I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
But how am I “staying”? Sleeping on the floor? (Doesn’t matter.)
There’s no way I can say no, especially with her voice sounding so broken.
I nod and she sits on the edge of the bed. I sit beside her, leaving a careful twelve inches between us. I have no experience with any of this, but I’m not stupid enough to assume anything. She might only want friendly company, which means I’ll be making friends with the floor tonight.
The room is so quiet I can hear both of us breathing. Her breath is slightly faster than mine. Or maybe mine is slightly faster than hers. Hard to tell when my pulse is so loud in my ears.
“Aeron,” she says.
I turn to look at her.
The fairy lights catch the gold flecks in her eyes. They’re bright again and she has a heated expression I’ve never seen directed at me before. She bites her lower lip and I swallow.
She crosses the twelve inches of space and kisses me.
For one full second my brain goes completely blank, every thought emptied out like someone tipped my skull upside down and shook.
Then the signals come back and I just go with what feels most natural, praying I’m doing this right.
My hands find her waist, pulling her a little closer.
Her fingers slide into my hair. She tastes like strawberries (maybe from a vodka shot earlier), and she’s warm.
She’s so warm, and I’m kissing her back with everything I have because I’ve been imagining this exact moment for years—and the reality is better than every version I built in my head.
I think it’s going to be a mild kiss, maybe thirty seconds tops, but she never pulls away.
She keeps pressing against me more and more.
Her hands are in my hair, my hands are on her waist, and there’s no gap, no millimeter between us.
There is no white space with Cinna. There’s only her mouth and mine, the sound of breathing, the golden light, and the simple, impossible fact that she chose me.
She chose me.