If He Had Been with Me

We fell asleep on his bed again. But I am awake now. The afternoon light from the window is streaming over us. On the floor next to the bed is our empty pizza box from lunch. His video game is paused. My book is on his nightstand.

Last night around three a.m., we got our blood pressure taken at one of those machines you stick your arm in at the grocery store. Finny’s was perfect and mine was only a little high. We celebrated with a pound of gummy worms and what was left of the whiskey.

Tomorrow I’m going to have lunch with my dad, so we won’t be able to stay out too late tonight. I wonder if Finny will stay up late without me or if he’ll just go to sleep like me.

I stretch and roll onto my side slowly so that I don’t jostle him. He’s lying on his back with his hands behind his head. His mouth is a little open but he doesn’t look silly, just relaxed and warm.

We had been watching the shadows of the tree outside his window and talking about my parent’s divorce, and then how we should go the art museum sometime or at least the zoo. Somewhere in there, my memory goes fuzzy and I must have fallen asleep. I wonder if it was before or after him. Perhaps we fell together.

It’s nice, looking at his face.

This close, I can see that he isn’t exactly perfect. He has a tiny pimple on the side of his nose and a chickenpox scar on his cheek. We had the chickenpox at the same time. We spent a week in bed together, watching movies and eating nachos off the same plate. Finny was better about not scratching. He got better two days before me, but The Mothers let him stay with me anyway.

The longing to touch that scar is more unbearable than any itch I ever felt.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “We used to even get sick together and I ruined it all.”

If he were awake, he would say it was okay, and he would mean it. But it’s not okay. Jack said that it took him forever to get over me, but that still means he got over me.

“I love you,” I say to him, so quietly that even I cannot hear it. I close my eyes and listen to his breathing. I go back to the story in my head about how it could have been. I’m at the part where he is teaching me how to drive when I hear him take a deep breath, almost a gasp. I still remember that sound; it’s the sound he makes when he wakes up, as if he is coming up from underwater. I let my eyes stay closed. He rolls over onto his stomach, slowly, the way I rolled onto my side. I expect him to put his hand on my shoulder or say my name, but he doesn’t. I wait a little longer, and finally decide he’s gone back to sleep. I open my eyes.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I say.

“I guess our late nights are starting to catch up with us,” he says.

“Yeah.”

We don’t say anything else and we don’t move and we don’t look away.

I wish that this meant something. I wish I could hope that he is lying still and looking at me for the same reason I am, that he is thinking the same things I am.

“What’s wrong?” Finny says.

“Nothing,” I say.

“Are you sure?” he says, and then, “Autumn—”

And then his phone rings. He stiffens and sits up. When he picks up his phone, he looks at it and frowns.

“Hi,” he says. “Isn’t it like four a.m. for you?” I watch his frown deepen and then he turns away from me. “Just slow down, Syl—no, it’s okay. Take a breath.” He is quiet for a minute, and then he looks over his shoulder at me. He walks out of the room. “What did you have?” he says, and then he closes the door and I can’t hear him anymore.

I lay my head back down on the bed and close my eyes.

When Finny finally comes back, it is to tell me that The Mothers want us for dinner. He doesn’t look me in the eye. After we eat, I go back home. His window is already dark.