Page 19 of Our Hearts Knew Better

I couldn’t blink anymore.

I couldn’t look at anything but that glow as it came closer, and closer, and closer.

My heartwasracing. The tracks were shaking. My feet were shaking, too, my body doing small jolts in place to get off, but not yet. The train wasn’t close enough yet. Even I knew that and this was my first go.

Just a bit more. . .

My lungs seized, my heart going haywire, as the train barreled upon us, the sounds deafening and the lights blinding.

Adam’s grip in mine pulled, and I felt myself smiling right before he yanked me off the tracks.

Wind was sharp on my back as the train whizzed past us, and we toppled to the ground as I released a scream that seemed to slowly regulate my body back to normal.

I was having a fit, my laughter rivaling the volume of the train as it continued past us.

It wasn’t until it was gone, the sounds around us quiet again, that I realized I was on top of Adam, and he was holding my hips with the biggest grin stretching his mouth.

I pushed off him and flipped to my back, catching my breath up at the dark sky.

“Well?” he asked, when I could no longer hear my breathing, or his, something smug in the question that sent me into another fit.

That was both the most frightening and most exhilarating experience I’d ever had up to that point. I wasn’t sure I was never doing that again.

“You’re just what I needed,” Adam said suddenly, laughing with me, and my laughter faded as those words settled like a second buzz beneath my skin.

He said that so easily.

He made me believe I could say things easily too.

But I didn’t have a voice, just adrenaline that pushed me back up and over him. I reached for his cap that had fallen off and flopped it back onto his head before flipping again to my back.

He smiled again, securing the cap on right, and we laid there talking for what felt like so long.

Too long, until I became antsy over the time, and the feeling of being bitten by actual ants.

She Was Mine Too

It was getting harder to fall asleep at night. What did they—some otherthey—say? Something about reality finally being better than your dreams. . .

The walls were closing in more, a worse restlessness in my skin. The more I came back to this room, to this house, the stronger the pull to be out. And as jerky as I felt, I couldn’t shake it away.

Adam had texted, but I didn’t respond to him. It wasn’t a message that required a response. It was one that told me he wasn’t coming by this night. This was a sleep night for him.

But my own lids were far from each other if they weren’t blinking.

And I needed out. Almost more than any other night.

I was getting lazy, falling back into habitual passiveness.Waiting. . .

I hadn’t started out these nights that way so I wasn’t going to be that way tonight.

My covers almost landed on the floor with how I flung them off me.

I could’ve been quieter opening my window and climbing down the trellis.

And as I waited out there a few extra pulse-pounding moments to make sure my dad’s window stayed dark, my teeth clenched with silent words hurled up at the stilled curtains and as I hurried off, wondering which day it would be when I’d finally say them.

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