Eternity

“You’re alive,” he said.

He was so close.

A burning sob lodged in her throat. Please, let it be true.

“Is it . . . Is it really over?” The words floated out of her, as though spoken by someone else.

His face broke into an uncontrollable smile and his hands tightened around her. “Em,” he said. “It’s really over.”

“How . . . ?” she asked.

“I’m honestly not sure,” he admitted. “But you did it, somehow, when you saved Melissa.”

“JD, all that stuff that happened this winter . . . I never meant . . . ” She faltered. How would she ever be able to say how sorry she was?

“I know,” he said, cutting her off by placing a finger on her lips. “You don’t need to apologize anymore.”

They stayed that way for a few seconds, centimeters apart.

And then he leaned in even closer and replaced his finger with his mouth, kissing her the way she’d always wanted him to. Slowly, carefully. She drank him in and kissed him back. Can you feel this? How right this is? She knew he could. She melted into him, reaching one hand around the back of his neck and hungrily pulling him closer.

He smelled like dew in the morning, like new growth.

As he pulled away, grinning stupidly, Em squeezed his hand and tugged him back. She put her mouth close to his ear—close enough for her lips to brush against the tiny hairs on his cheek.

“I love you, JD,” she said. Finally. The words felt so natural, so easy to say.

“I love you too, Emily,” he said.

And they kissed again—a kiss better, deeper, and sweeter than revenge.

EPILOGUE

The bell on Emily’s windowsill issues a tiny ding. She looks up at it, smiling, and scribbles a note on a scrap of paper. Drops it into the basket on her end and pulls it over to JD’s house. She watches him come to the window, pluck the paper from the basket, and read it.

“You’re on, Winters!” he shouts from less than a hundred feet away. “I accept your challenge. What time?”

“After dinner! My mom is making pizza.”

He holds up a finger and moves from the window. When he returns, he is holding a pen, with which he writes a response. The basket creaks its way back over to Em’s side of the line. She feels like giggling the entire time.

Save room for popcorn, JD’s note says. It’ll be your consolation prize after I beat you in Scrabble.

“You wish!” she yells.

He flashes her a grin before disappearing; Em turns back to her laptop, where Crow’s demo album is playing. He’s moved to Boston, into an apartment with a few musicians he knows from Berklee. She and Crow text sometimes.

Em smiles with a trace of nostalgia.

He is doing well—not drinking, not smoking, and getting some gigs with his new band. One of the songs has even been getting some radio play around Boston. It’s her favorite.

It’s called “Emily.”