Bennett — Age 18
“Ben,” Tate whispered, but I couldn’t get my eyes to open. “Psst. Ben.”
A pillow hit me on the side of my head.
“Ben!”
“What?” I hissed, finally opening my eyes. Our room was still dark, and I tried to recall why my brother would be waking me up. We weren’t going fishing, were we?
“Your girlfriend is at the window.”
Suddenly, I was wide awake.
And sure enough, there was Maven, sitting on the branch of the tree just outside.
“What are you doing?” I said, opening the window.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
Carson’s being away at college had been a rough transition for her, especially on the nights when her mom worked the graveyard shift at the hospital. “Here.” I reached out a hand toward her. “Come inside.”
Her hand clasped mine, and she maneuvered through the small opening like it wasn’t her first time scaling a tree and climbing through a window. Why did that not surprise me? “Sorry it’s so late,” she whispered.
“What time is it?”
“Almost two.”
Tate shifted in his bed, so I guided her toward mine.
She gave a little pull on my arm, stopping me. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
My parents held a strict no-girls-in-the-bedroom policy.
In all these years, Maven could probably count on one hand the number of times she’d been inside my room, and each of those had been with my mother’s permission—like last January when she’d covered every surface on my side of the room with Post-it notes to ask me to Winter Formal.
It didn’t matter that I was now graduated, working full time, and saving for a place of my own.
Those were the house rules. “You won’t.”
The bed was a twin which I barely fit in on my own, so when she slid beneath the covers, I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her close.
“Why couldn’t you sleep?” I whispered, glad to hear Tate’s breathing even out and grow heavier.
“With Carson gone, I can’t stop thinking how different it feels. And then to know I’ll be leaving for college next fall. Everything’s going to change.”
“The University of Vermont is a thirty-minute drive from here. We’ll see each other all the time.”
She didn’t respond immediately. “What if I go somewhere else?”
My heart gave a small thud. “Where else would you go?”
“My violin teacher wants me to apply to the Cleveland Institute of Music. It’s where she went. It’s an incredible school for orchestral musicians, and she thinks I could get a scholarship.”
“Cleveland?” I whispered.
“I’m not sure I’d even want to—”
“You should apply.” I knew her mom didn’t have the money to put her through school, so I could see the appeal. Though the thought of her being in a different state was something I refused to think about until I had to. “And when you get in, because you will, we’ll make it work.”
“Do you really think so?”
I ran a thumb across her cheek. “I love you too much to not make it work.”
She placed a hand on my chest and lifted herself slightly above me. “You love me?”
“I thought I’d made it pretty obvious.”
I could see the white of her smile in the darkness. “Just for future reference, telling me would have made it even clearer.”
“Well, then, in that case, I love you,” I said again. “And I’m going to do whatever it takes for us to be together.”
She snuggled back into me, contented. “I suppose I should tell you I love you back?”
“Don’t feel obligated,” I said, chuckling quietly. “I already know.”
Her hand came to my face, her smile gone. “I do. I love you. I’ve loved you half my life.”
My whole body warmed at her acknowledgment, and when I pressed my lips against hers, they were warm and soft and welcoming.
“Congratulations, you two.” Tate’s raspy voice made me startle. “Mind celebrating later, though? I’m trying to sleep over here.”
I chucked his pillow back at him.
Maven covered her giggles with a hand. “Sorry, Tate,” she whispered before resting her head against me again and placing her arm over my chest. “We’ll behave.”
In the quiet, with Maven in my arms, I could no longer prevent my mind from considering what it might be like when Maven left next fall.
She had not only become a central part of my life, but she’d become the focus of it.
She was everything. A day didn’t pass when we weren’t together, and the thought of that changing gutted me.
I’m not sure how long it took for me to drift off to sleep, but when I woke up, with early morning sunlight streaming through the tree outside, Maven was already gone.