Page 139 of Only in Your Dreams

She runs a finger around the rim of an unlit candle on the island. “It’s occurred to me that there’s a bunch of things I have all wrong from back in school. I was hoping to ask you about them.”

My stomach squeezes nervously, but I pull up the stool next to hers. “You can ask me anything.”

She clears her throat. “True or false: your prom date never fell through. You canceled on her to go with me as friends, because you knew I was upset no one asked me.”

She’s really not fucking around.

I shove the hair off my forehead. “False. I pretended to have a date because I didn’t want to ask anyone but you.”

Mel looks touched, rubbing her lips together. “I swear, I didn’t know you felt that way. All the girls you’d have around you…”

“There was no one until college, when I figured I should attempt to move on. I gave up on that pretty quick, and then I saw you with Connor a few years later, tried dating again for a while but… they weren’t you.”

It feels so good to finally let all this out. Euphoric.

Melody hasn’t taken her eyes off me. “True or false: you never left Oakwood Bay because you…”

“Because I hoped you’d come back one day. Because I wanted to be here if you ever did.”

“And this house? The reason it looks almost identical to the one on the vision board I made for school?”

“You wanted it. I wanted to give it to you.”

“Just like that, huh? I want something. You give it to me?”

I lift and drop my shoulders. “I like it when you’re happy.”

Her gaze travels around the kitchen, taking it in. Maybe finally getting that it’s hers. Not an inch of this place was built without her in mind, and it never felt right painting it, filling it, without her say.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “For the house, and for caring that much. I really do love it here.”

I cup her cheek and she leans into my hand. “True or false: you kept my jersey because you missed me.”

“A lot,” she says.

I lift my wrist. “You kept this shoelace because you still thought about me.”

“All the time.” She hesitates. “You really did start getting those tattoos because you were in love with me back then.”

“That’s true, Clover.” I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “I want to show you something.”

I rise, holding out my hand to help her down from her own stool, and she follows me to the wall of bookshelves lining the back of the living room off the kitchen. Most of these are books of Grams’s that I haven’t had the heart to give away. But I slide four of them from the very top shelf and hand them to her.

The tattoos are proof I longed for her for the past ten years. But there were four years before that, too.

Melody balances the books in an arm. They’re our high school yearbooks, and with a glance at me, she opens the topmost one. Flips through it to find dried-out four-leaf clovers preserved between the pages.

Mel stares down at a page, at the clover pressed into it. She nods, slowly, over and over, curling her lips into her mouth, and a single tear hits the yearbook, right next to the clover.

“All of them?”

“One for every game I played, all four years.” We stare at each other. “Why are you crying?”

She dabs the corners of her eyes. “I think I’m mourning what we could have been this whole time. Knowing I could have had you… It’s such a waste of a decade.”

I reach for her, sweep the back of a finger along her cheek, collecting tears. “It wasn’t time yet. I had a lot of growing up to do for you.”

Melody balances the yearbooks on the back of the couch. She moves for me, fiddles with the hem of my shirt. Runs a hand up my side, where her four-leaf clovers dot my body.

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