Page 113 of The Other Side of Paradise
“You… you’re… here.”
I stepped closer to her, squeezing her hand. “I was going to miss you,” I said, and I didn’t overthink anything—I did what felt right, leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to her lips, and she pushed out a quick breath, eyes like saucers looking at me. I smiled, giving her another squeeze before I spared her having to find the words to respond to it. “Well then, your house. Lead the way.”
“Right—yes. Leading. The way, that is, I mean, leading you… on the way… to the car. Driving! Right. Onward.” She walked like a toy soldier. Poor girl. I’d give her time.
Maybe we had time, after all.
Chapter 29
Allison
Holy shit.
I was usually a little more eloquent than that, but my brain had been on loop repeating that to myself since the moment I’d seen Stella in the doorway. Since the moment she’d taken my hand and led me out to go with her, wherever it was she was going. Since the moment she’d kissed me.
“It was kinda ugly,” she said, speaking casually, her voice bright, as I started the car, music coming on, and I turned it down immediately, not wanting literally anything to get in the way of hearing Stella. She pulled down the visor mirror, fussing with her hair. “We had a big fight at the flight gate… well, we say we, but it was mostly me yelling at everyone for being shitty. And I yelled at them that I was bisexual too and stormed out.”
“Oh. Shit.” Stella yelling at terrible people was hot. Now wasn’t the time to say that, though. “You came out to everyone? Um… is it… I mean, I guess I know how it went, but only in that you stormed out.”
She laughed, shutting the mirror and turning to me with a tired look, dark rings under her eyes, but a sweet, genuine smile all the same. “I don’t give a damn,” she laughed. “I like beinghonest with who I am. I don’t care what they think. But… Mom’s supportive. Oscar… doesn’t care. And Dad…”
I winced. “Yeah?”
She looked past me, her features softening. “He called me after I got out of the airport.”
“Oh, shit.”
“He was getting coffee.”
“Oh my god. Again?”
“Well, it was a flimsy pretext. He, um… he apologized. Said he loved me and that he hadn’t been fair to me and that he wanted to make things right.”
I stared at her for a long time as the knot slowly unwound in my chest, and I softened, relaxing into the seat. “That’s… that’s amazing,” I said. “You think he really means it?”
“I think so, yeah. And he’s supportive of my sexuality, too.” She turned to the dashboard, fussing with the AC vent. “He said you seem like a good woman with a good head on your shoulders and that I should talk to you.”
Stella’s dad. Mark Adams Bell, father of Stella Valerie Bell, had called her to tell her she should give me, Allison Holt, a chance. Genuinely, what the fuck? “Huh?” was all I managed at length, and she laughed, turning back to me and putting a hand on my cheek. My brain fried.
“My thoughts exactly,” she said. “But hey. He’s right, you know. And I don’t say that lightly about my dad. I, uh… I’d be sad. If I had this second chance and let it go to waste.”
“A second chance at what?” God, I was so fucking stupid. I knew full well what she was saying. It just didn’t makesense.
“Well.” She brushed her thumb over my lower lip, and I felt like I’d lose my mind, my heart going a mile a minute. “I don’t have anything waiting for me on the mainland anyway. Since I lost my internship, all my summer plans disappeared, so… there’s no real reason I have to hurry back. If I haven’t lost mynovelty factor, gotten too boring to you, maybe we could… pick up where we left off?”
“Stella—Jesus Christ, you’re not boring,” I blurted. “You’re—I mean, you’re the most radiant person I’ve ever… just… I swear you light up the sky when you’re around.” I was being corny and stupid and weird but I didn’t care. I could hardly stop the words from tumbling out anyway. “I just—you’re so incrediblyyou,so confident, sosurein who you are, it’s…” I laughed, small and breathy, shaking my head incredulously. “You don’t realize how much you light things up everywhere you go. For your sister, for Brooklyn, for… for me. None of this would have happened without you. Wouldn’t have been able to confront everything with that Isabel girl, wouldn’t have been able to face things with your family, wouldn’t… you just… you’re just amazing.”
She frowned sharply. “Oh, god. You mean you talked it out? About Ellie?”
“Oh, yeah.” That felt like a lifetime ago. Jesus. “Isabel spent like two hours telling me off and sending me pictures of myself to tell me I was way too ugly for her girlfriend to be interested in anyway.”
“Oh my god, I’m going to kill her.”
“Please don’t. You’d go to jail and I’d miss you.”
She laughed, eyes sparkling as she looked across the center console and into mine, and she said, “Fuck all of that. That stupid girl and my stupid family and everybody who thinks we shouldn’t do this, that doesn’t matter. Whatdoesmatter is that you’re here, and I’m here, and I think… I’m not ready to leave quite yet.”
“I’m not… ready for that either. Ready for you to leave, I mean, not like ready for me to leave—I mean, I’m not—I wasn’t leaving until the end of the summer, so I won’t be ready until then anyway—just—”
