Page 32 of Glass Half Full
“I’m just so scared this is all one big fucking mistake.”
“Maybe it is.”
Her head jerked up so hard she almost hit it against the wall. She stared at me in shock, like no one had ever said those words to her before, like she didn’t quite know what to make of them.
“Maybe it is,” I repeated, “but you’re not always going to make the right choice. No one always makes the right choice. You just have to let yourself figure that out and then make a new choice.”
“Everyone would be so disappointed...”
“Fuck everyone else.” I probably shouldn’t have been swearing so much, but I needed to make a point. “They’re not the ones driving.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, and the pang in my chest was way deeper than it had any right to be when I realized she was trying not to cry.
“Renee.”
My hand found hers. Her breath caught. We both inhaled that heady ‘last time’ scent in the August air. The night was heavy with promises, with urgency, with rushed and stolen moments that refused to wait another year.
“Dylan.”
My name on her lips was all it took.
I threw my arms around her, pulled her into my chest and felt her tremble against me. Her forearms were pinned against my chest, her cheek pressed just below my throat. Her head fit perfectly under my chin.
“I’m so scared.” She let her weight sag against me, and I could tell from the hitch in her voice that she really was crying now.
“It’s okay.” I ditched the analogies and repeated that phrase again and again, the one that’s often not enough and sometimes just what we need to hear. I hoped for the latter. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“I wake up some days and—” I didn’t think a hiccup could break my heart, but hers nearly did. “And I don’t even know who I am.”
“Hey.” I let myself start rubbing circles into her back. Somewhere in the back of my head, I knew it was wrong, but it felt like the right thing to do. It felt like what she needed. “You do know. You know who you are. You stood up on that stage tonight and you told us who you are. Whatever happens, I know you’ve got what it takes to get through it. You’re a fighter. You’re an artist. You’re a fucking poet, Renee. When you get up on that stage, you’re like...You’re like a fucking lioness.”
She started to cry even harder, but the way she clutched my shirt told me not to let her go, that my words were helping instead of hurting.
“Can I ask you to do something?”
She nodded against my chest.
“Keep writing, okay?” I couldn’t handle the thought of that girl on the stage being gone forever. “Just promise me you’ll keep writing. The world needs your words.”
“Dylan, I—I—”
She was crying so hard by then she couldn’t even speak. The metro station was mostly deserted, but it wouldn’t have mattered if we’d been standing in the middle of a crowd. My world had narrowed to the woman in my arms.
“Shh. It’s okay.”
I don’t know how long I held her. It could have been minutes or hours. I would have stood there all night. Eventually her sobs got slower before stopping all together, but still we didn’t break apart.
It was only after I was sure her breathing was steady that I realized how close we were, how warm her body was against mine, how delicate the bones of her shoulders felt beneath my hands. Her skin was so soft. I could have tilted my head and pressed my lips to her temple. I got so close she must have felt my breath on her cheek.
“Dylan?”
She moved back just enough to tilt her face up to me. Even with red-rimmed eyes, she was stunning. She was enough to light up the whole street, and I didn’t know how I hadn’t seen it before.
Her lips parted, just a fraction of an inch, and that’s when it hit me.
I’d never noticed how beautiful she was because I wasn’t supposed to notice. She wasn’t mine to look at.
She was eighteen.
