Page 32 of Just Dare Me
Nora breaks into laughter. I go to punch her in the shoulder, but she escapes the truck just in time. The doors close. Jay and I are alone again.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have a ring,” he says quietly. “You couldn’t wear it anyway. We can’t risk anybody knowing we met up.”
“I don’t need a ring, Jay. I only need you. Don’t go.”
He reaches into his pocket. “I do have this for you, though.” He pulls out a familiar pill bottle with my name on it.
“You filled my prescription? That’s such a husband-y thing to do. You’re already better at this than me.”
“Don’t forget to take them. You feel better when you do.”
“Youmake me feel better. Don’t go away. Don’t do it.”
He wraps me in a hug and rubs my back while he talks. “I want you to know something. Not just know it,feelit. Believe it, the way I believe it.”
“If you stay, I’ll believe anything you say.”
“I want you to imagine a moment in time,” he says, “and not so distant, either. At this future point in time—the near future—there’s nobody left to come between us; nothing left to keep us apart. It’s the moment in time when this is all over. It’s the moment in time when we get to be together, andstaytogether.”
“But when? When is it?”
He grips me tighter. “That’s not the point. The point is, the time between this moment and that future moment can be measured. It can be measured in the number of breaths we take between now and then, or the number of meals we eat, or the number of steps we take. Which means that even though I’m walking away tonight, even though I’m leaving this truck, even though I’m going back to Windsor, I’m never goingawayfrom you, Shayne, because each of those steps is one step closer to that moment.”
We’re kissing again, his hands in my hair, and I can feel the desperation that only a last kiss can bring. He’s already starting to pull away. If I’m going to say anything, it’s now or never. “It’s not fair, I’m not good at nice words, like you are. All I can think to say is so totally cliché and cheesy and doesn’t even really have meaning anymore.”
“Say it anyway.”
“I love you. And thank you for the best day and the worst wedding of my life, because the worst wedding to you is better than the best wedding to anybody else.”
Smiling, Jay leans in for one more—two more, three more—last kisses before opening the door. “This doesn’t mean we can’t still see each other in the meantime, you know.”
I grasp at his hand. “Really?”
“Haven’t we scooped every raid you’ve planned? So plan another one.”
“We are! Thetrains, Jay. They’re using freight trains to move their operation.”
“I know. But which one, and when?”
“I’ll find out, and we’ll set a trap.”
“Great. I’ll be there.”
“You promise?”
“Trust me, if you’re there, I’m there.”
With that, my entire mood flips in an instant. A giddy smile widens across my face as I say, “It’s a date.” And I’m finally able to let him go.
Everything’s different now.
It’s hard to explain the range of feelings I had after the wedding. For a good twelve hours, I was simply euphoric and loopy, smiling and laughing at every little thing, but then suddenly swinging into tearful awe at my reversal of fortune, a kind of overwhelming gratitude that made me uncharacteristically touchy-feely. I spent hours just hugging people—Nora, Ren, Charlie, and Russo; but mostly Elle, after she gave me a verbal lashing for getting married without her.
A funny thing happened then. Not funny, I guess. Surprising, I mean. After coming down from that high, I was overcome by a kind of sweet melancholy. Not sadness or loneliness, as I would have expected. I wasn’t missing Jay, or pitying myself for being separated from him. I felt small. Very small, but in a way that felt good. Not small, as in being insignificant and powerless; small, as in I was only a tiny part of a bigger network of friends and family who all wanted me to succeed, sometimes despite my own behavior getting in the way.
Looking back, I saw clearly how this amazing turn of events was made possible by the untiring efforts of others, not me. I didn’t do it. I didn’t even believe this kind of goodness was still possible, even though other, more positive people in my life were telling me to keep believing. These people—Nora, Elle, Russo, Charlotte, Nolan, Jay, everybody—they had lifted me up, taken me out of the dark, and gifted me this incredible new hope.
No thanks to me. I was their burden to bear. Skeptical and negative, self-destructive, a pain in the ass. Just…broken.
