Page 81 of Finders Keepers
“I would be absolutely honored. Just give me one…second…”
There’s a quiet grunt right before a metallic pop, then a scraping sound before one of Quentin’s bare feet suddenly appears in my peripheral vision. “What the fuck!” I shout, leaning out to see one of his legs hanging against the brick and his head emerging. “Are you trying toclimbover here?”
“Yeah,” he says, like it’s not a big deal that he’s currently dangling half his body out of a second-story window. He did attempt this once before, actually—which is how he wound up with a broken arm that had him unable to go swimming formost of the summer of 2005. I bet him he couldn’t do it, so I guess it was technically my fault it happened.
“Quentin Foster Bell, use the front door, you absolute clown!”
“Now who’s screwing up whose grand gesture, hm?” he mumbles as he disappears back inside.
I’m only halfway down the stairs when the doorbell rings.
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My heart skipsa beat, then feels like it might implode as I take in the full force of Quentin standing there in front of me. I flung the door open so quickly he didn’t even have time to do anything with his hands, one still extended toward the doorbell.
I suddenly can’t seem to form words. I am empty of thoughts, which are crowded out by the intense emotion taking up every available inch. I don’t quite know how to describe it, except…well, I guess I do, actually.
My arms go around his neck and I bury my face in his shoulder.
He freezes at first, likely caught unawares by the intensity of the greeting. But he softens into my embrace and wraps me in his arms, holding me tightly and murmuring my name over and over into my hair as if it’s an incantation that might keep me from ever disappearing from his life again.
“Quentin,” I whisper. “I love you. I love you so much.”
After a moment, he slides his hands to my shoulders and holds me just far enough away to look into my eyes. “I thoughtI loved you before. When we were kids. But I understand now that I was wrong.”
“Oh.” The world comes crashing down, one of those controlled demolition videos taking place in my chest. Maybe that incantation was actually one of future banishment. Surely I haven’t…There is absolutely no way I could have misread this. I glance away, quickly, in an attempt to hide how startled I am by his words, but he gently cradles my cheek and directs my face back toward his.
“It was only a pale imitation,” he whispers, a slight smile forming at the corner of his mouth. “Because as gigantic of a feeling as it was, as all-encompassing and demanding…it’s nothing compared to what I feel for you now. This thing that makes me simultaneously make the stupidest decisions and want to be the best version of myself. That makes me ache with need and hope. I am so, so gone for you, Neen, and I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve never quite known what to do. But, if you’ll let me, I promise I’ll keep trying to get it right, with everything I’ve got, for my whole life.”
The sweet, soft words reverberate inside me, an echoing ring that feels like it could continue for as long as I’ll let it. “If it makes you feel better, I’m not sure I know what to do with any of this either,” I confess. “But I think that the first step is probably…kissing me.”
“That, I can do.”
Quentin’s lips brush against mine tentatively before settling into something deeper, something that feels certain and steady and like it could last a lifetime.
A throat clears somewhere in the room behind me. We turn our heads as one, our lips separating as we find my mother sitting on the couch. In my hurry to get to Quentin, her presencein the living room completely evaded my notice. “Oh, would you look at the time!” she says, not looking at anything that actually indicates it. She puts down her e-reader, stands, grabs her purse from its hook by the front door, and scoots around us, talking all the while. “I need to go to…the store! For…onions. Hope you’ll join us for dinner tonight, Quentin. We’re having…uh…something with onions, I guess! Six o’clock? Great! See you later.”
Quentin and I exchange smiles, too amused to be annoyed by the interruption.
“Where’s the box?” he asks.
“Upstairs, in my room.”
He leans down and whispers into my ear, his words hot against my already flushed skin. “Funny, that’s where I was going to suggest we go anyway.”
Quentin stops on the threshold of my bedroom, his hands grabbing the doorframe as he peeks inside without entering. “I haven’t been in here in a very long time.”
“I guess you haven’t.” I didn’t even realize that, of all the times he came over to my parents’ house this summer, he never did have reason to venture upstairs. And when we were teenagers, there was a strict “No Quentin in Nina’s Room” policy instituted when we turned ten. At the time I thought it was absolutely absurd. What did they even think we were going to get up to in there? But I understand the concern now. Because it turns out we were pretty much the last ones on earth to notice that we were into each other. My parents can be forgiven for assuming we were smarter than we apparently were. “Hasn’t changed too much, to be honest.”
“That comforter,” he says.
“It’s horrible, isn’t it?”
“I kind of like it. I remember you being all excited when you told me you finally got your parents to buy it for you. Or, you told the Moon, rather.”
“What? Why do you remember that?”
“Because you were happy, and it made me happy. And we were like, fourteen then, I guess, and I was just starting to understand that my feelings toward you were changing into something very different from the friendship I was familiar with, and I wassoannoyed that I found you cute.” He leans against the doorframe and flexes his hand in front of him. “I tried to punch a hole in my wall because I saw someone do it on TV and it seemed like what a tough guy would do. But these walls are lath and plaster and I wasn’t even particularly strong, so all I did was make my knuckles bleed and probably get a hairline fracture in one of my thumb bones. Still doesn’t always bend right.” He grins at me. “I was not kidding when I said I’ve never known what to do with the way I feel about you.”
