Page 4 of The Other Side of Apart

He swears under his breath. “I got asked, Mei. I said yes.” He lays the words right between us, watches my face and the tears rolling down it. “Maybe I thought I was ready to move on like I thought you had. Maybe I liked that someone was running toward me instead of away from me. Or maybe I wanted to hurt you like you hurt me. I don’t know. But whatever I thought, Nick was hurting you while I was making up conversations with youin my head to make myself feel better that you were gone. It’s so messed up.”

The air between us swells, his face shiny with rain, and I search for responses, but he throws a question across the sand toward me and my brain skids to a stop. “What did you do with your feelings for me?” The waves roar and surge, but he keeps his eyes on me, his body rigid. “Was any of it real, or did I just imagine it all because that’s how I wanted you to feel?” He swears into the mixed-up sky, wipes his hands down his face before looking back at me. “Just give me something—anything! I didn’t think I’d be anywhere near you again, and now that I am, I can’t hold in what I’ve wanted to say for weeks because keeping it inside hurts too much. I’ve been trying all day, and I just can’t. I have to know where I stand with you.” A surge of waves slams into him from behind and he wobbles, sidestepping to stay standing. He jumps onto a large rock, wipes rain and salt spray out of his eyes. “You messed me up day one, Mei,” he yells as the clouds bump against each other and send down more rain. “When you left, I tried not to be messed up. Didn’t work. And even though my dad’s a total liar, he was right about girls, but I wanna be messed up by you. It’s a billion times better than being messed up without you.” His voice trembles. “I’m so crazy happy that you’re safe and right here in front of me and that we’re out of San Francisco together. More than anything, I wanna erase all the pain Nick left on you, but I can’t. I can’t take it away or change it and I’m not sure what you need me to do now. Or be. I just don’t know how you feel. And I need to know.”

My heartbeat competes with the wind and waves. The rain slows, and I step closer to the frantic water, hand on my chest. “You want to know where my feelings went?” I say, honesty pouring out of me, scattering the storm. “They’re all right here, because I shoved them so deep inside, no one could ever findthem or take them from me. They’re mine and I’ll keep them forever even if I shouldn’t.”

“Why shouldn’t you?” His voice is weary, cautious.

“Because I’m a disaster. Your life was so good before you met me.”

“No.” He hops off the rock and wades through the water toward me, stopping a few feet away. “Nothing mattered after you left because all I wanted was you, and I still do. I want you to keep messing me up. I want you in my life, and I don’t care about Nick or where we come from or what we should or shouldn’t do.” Rain trickles down his face from his wet hair as he moves closer. “So what do you want? What do you feel, the good and bad? Don’t shut me out again—I wanna know it all.”

I shake my head to the sand. “I feel too much.”

He’s in front of me, his warmth an inch away. “Tell me. Please,” he whispers, and I hear him despite the chaos around us. “What do you want?”

I look up, waves tugging at my ankles, but I resist them, held up by the intensity building around us, “I want you. That’s it. All of my feelings just mean that, nothing else.”

“Do you want whatever comes next with me, too? Because I don’t know what it is.”

“Yes.” I grit my teeth to stop their chattering, blink at the sand, then back up at him. “I want everything with you.”

Wind whips between Marcus and me, blowing apart the tension and uncertainty. The frustration in his eyes drifts across their surface like clouds and disappears, leaving only blue.

“Then it’s you and me, Mei. I knew it the night I met you. Whatever happens next, we leave everything that happened behind us. Two days ago, I thought it was all over, so I’m not giving anything a chance to hurt you or ruin us again.”Rain quivers on his lashes, slides down his nose.

My body trembles from the cold rain soaking through his hoodie. My bare legs and feet are numb, but my insides stretch toward Marcus’s warm light. He’s standing in the turbulent ocean under an angry sky, in front of me. A place I never dared to dream he’d be again. I thought I’d only have memories before Nick’s darkness smothered them and whatever was left of me. But we’re here somehow, the sand insistent that we stay right here regardless of the storm or misunderstandings or freshly reopened wounds. The wounds will heal, and Marcus’s eyes tell me we will, too. I grab onto his belief.

He blinks away the crying sky that seems lighter now that the storm between us has calmed. His hand slides around the back of my neck, and his nose brushes mine. His lips are so close, unspoken words hover between us.

“What are you thinking right now?” he asks, still holding me tightly.

My hands smooth up his bare chest, over his shoulders and down his arms, gripping his forearms. I dig my numb toes into the sand to keep me steady. “I was just thinking …we’ve been in some crazy situations together, but this might be the most insane. And coldest.” There’s no way I’m admitting my real thoughts out loud, because being this close to him is making them run wild.

“You sure that’s it?” he smirks, easing closer.

I open my mouth to respond, but lightning slits the sky and thunder crashes. I shriek and run toward the hut. “Hurry!” I yell over my shoulder as Marcus sprints out of the water behind me. “The last thing we need is to be struck by lightning!” A wild, shaky laugh bursts out of me, and when he reaches me, his fingers slip through mine. We sprint through curtains of rain to the hut where he pulls me up the ramp and shoves open the door with his shoulder.

We bust through into damp, drafty darkness, and the wind slams it closed behind us, shutting out the storm. We stand in the middle of the hut, catching our breath before he pulls me to his chest, wrapping his arms around me while we shiver against each other, creating a puddle beneath us. His fingers thread into my wet hair, his palm cradling the back of my head as I tremble in the cold and heat colliding between us.

His hand slowly smooths over my back, pressing me to him as we stand in the dark, motionless, silent. He lowers his forehead to mine, our noses touching. “Hey,” he whispers.

“Hi.” I meet his eyes, glossy in the dim light.

He inhales, deep and slow, then presses his lips to my forehead. “I said a lot of things out there, but in case you missed it when I said it before, I need to tell you again. One very important thing. Like…the very most important thing I could ever tell you.”

“That you’ve been recruited to go to Mars to practice intergalactic horticulture.”

“So close,” he whispers, sending goose bumps over my body.

“That prom was a total disaster without me.”

“Definitely. But irrelevant.”

“That you’re really a Twizzlers guy?”

“No, never, and I love you,” he breathes, taking my face between his hands.

I clutch his wrists and close my eyes, his honesty painting bright colors all over my heart against this gray, weathered backdrop. “I love you, too,” I whisper against his lips, not for the first time since we met but definitely for the first time in this second chance. “For three months and twelve days, actually. No end in sight.”

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