Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between(13)

“That is pretty crazy,” he said, and she felt a wave of relief.

“Right?”

He cupped his hand, then tipped it to one side, letting the sand pour back out onto the beach. “There’s got to be, like, thousands just right there. And that’s only one handful. From one beach. In one town. In one state. In one country. That means there must be about a zillion stars.” He tilted his head back to take in the speckled sky with wide eyes, then laughed. “I mean… wow.”

“Yeah,” Clare said, unable to keep from smiling as she watched him. “Wow.”

Eventually, they clambered up onto the rocks, continuing to talk until it was late—too late—and the fire behind them had died out, and everyone else had drifted back to their cars. Being there with him, it felt like no time at all had passed, but at some point, Clare heard her name shouted from a distance, the words made thin by the chilly breeze. She half turned in that direction, but just as she was about to get up, just before she could leave, Aidan leaned over and kissed her, and the surprise of it was enough to warm her straight down through her toes.

Even hours later—after he walked her back to the car and she finally let go of his hand, after she told Stella on the ride home what had happened, after she crawled into bed and lay there staring at the ceiling, reliving the whole night again—she felt all lit up inside. Some unseen part of her, which had only ever been lukewarm, was suddenly blazing.

She smiles at him now, still half-caught in the memory.

“It was perfect,” she says. “Nothing will ever come close.”

“Nothing?” Aidan says with mock horror. “You’re telling me that none of the thousands of other kisses we’ve had over the last couple of years have compared? I mean, if I’d known that, I wouldn’t have been trying so hard.”

She gives his chest a little shove. “You weren’t trying that hard.”

“Hey, that was some of my best stuff,” he says. “Remember that time we made out in the coat closet at Andy’s party? Or that night in the park?” He pauses for a second, and then his face brightens. “Or that kiss we had in your basement?”

“Which—”

He cuts her off with a grin. “You know which one.”

“Oh,” Clare says, blushing a little. “Right.”

“So you’re saying none of those were better?”

“They were all great. They just weren’t the first. Firsts are always the ones that last. You know?”

Without warning, he brings his face to hers, but when their lips meet, there’s too much momentum behind it, their depth perception lost in the gathering dark. He cups the side of her face with his hand—the way they do in the movies—which is something he’s never done before, not once in all the time they’ve been dating, making the whole thing feel off somehow, theatrical and staged and too full of effort.

When she pulls back a bit too abruptly, he looks wounded.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she says. “It’s just—I think you’re trying too hard to make it special.”

“I thought that was the point of all this,” he says, his voice resigned. “I thought we were supposed to be reliving all the big moments.”

“We are,” she says. “But we’ve got to talk about the future, too.”

He doesn’t respond to this, only shifts away from her a little, so that he’s fully facing the water. Ahead of them, the sky is still painted orange at the very edge, while heavier clouds are gathering at their backs, bringing with them the smell of rain.

“Look,” Clare says finally, after a few minutes have passed in silence. “You know how I feel about you.…” When he doesn’t respond, she clears her throat, more insistent this time. “Aidan. You know that, right?”

He nods, his jaw set.

“But I just… I think we might have an expiration date.” The waver in her voice surprises her; it’s not the first time she’s said this, but still, it hovers between them, clattering and definitive. “And we need to talk about it.”

“Can’t we wait just a little longer?”

“We can’t keep putting it off.”

“I bet we could,” he says with a hint of a smile. “I’m really, really good at putting things off.”

She smiles, too. “That’s true.”

“How about this?” he says, turning to her, his eyes hopeful. “Let’s pretend—”

“Aidan.”

“No, hear me out. Let’s pretend—just for a few minutes—that we’re both going to the same place tomorrow.”

“Yeah?” she says, and he tucks her under his arm, resting his chin against the top of her head, so that when he talks, she can feel the vibration of it, low and gravelly.

“Yeah,” he says. “The way I see it, we’ll meet up every morning and go to the dining hall together, and we’ll eat awful bacon and cold eggs and catch up on our work. Then we’ll walk to class—you to some Advanced Theory of Something-or-Other and me to Intro to Beginner’s Goofing-Off-for-Jocks—and then afterward, we’ll hang out on the quad, and I’ll be playing guitar—”

“You’re tone-deaf,” she points out, and he shrugs.