He grabs the tequila bottle by the neck and walks inside. I follow him. His back is to me when he speaks. “I went there for two weeks. Loitered around places I thought I might bump into you. The Beat Museum, coffee shops, places you said you liked. I was desperate. My mother was worried for me. She wanted me to see a therapist.”

“Did you?”

He shakes his head as he shoves the tequila back into the cupboard. “There was no point. After San Francisco, I realized there was nothing I could do to win you back. I stopped writing. Started taking odd jobs. A year and a half later, Dom got an offer for a position in Salem and dragged me along. Said a change of scenery would do me good. And here we are.”

He turns to me, smiling humorlessly.

“Here we are,” I echo.

For a moment, we just drink each other in.

He snaps out of it first. “Time to hop into the shower, Stinky Face. I’ll get you a towel.”

Joe brushes past me on his way to the hallway. My hand reaches to grip his wrist. He stops. The air between us is charged. Buzzing with danger, desperation, and angst.

He shakes my hand off him. Gentle, but firm.

“No, thank you. I’m not going down in your history book as another reckless mistake.”

He’s making his way to what I presume is his bedroom when I snatch his hand again. In this moment, I’m so desperate for him I am not above begging.

“Come on,” I coax, feeling particularly destructive. The world is fucked, and unfair, and full of injustices. It is random, it is cruel, and it’s screwed us both over. Nothing matters anymore. Joe is not an author, and I’m not an artist, and Dom is not alive. All our dreams have gone up in flames, and there is nothing left to fight for.

Joe turns to me, looking annoyed. “What are you doing, Ever? I just told you how fucked I was after we broke up. Do I look like a game to you?”

He doesn’t. He looks like the boy I never stopped loving. That boy turned into a man, and I love him too. So I rise on my toes tentatively and press a soft, dry kiss on his lips.

His eyelids fall shut, and he lets out a sigh. “Don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t give me unwarranted hope.”

But hope is the only thing that’s keeping me from not taking the next breath. I rise again, this time kissing the tip of his chin.

Joe’s head drops to his chest. “Ever, please.”

I kiss his neck, running my hot tongue over his Adam’s apple.

“Fuck. Here we go,” he moans.