I wanted to tell her that no matter how many reasons I came up with for why this was a bad idea, none of them had ever been enough to make me stop wanting her. I wanted to tell her that she was the reason I couldn’t sleep, the reason I couldn’t breathe, the reason I kept making all the wrong choices just to forget how badly I wanted to make the right one.

But instead, I closed my eyes.

Because if I looked at her for one more second, I was going to lose every bit of control I had left.

Her fingers twitched against my skin, like she could sense the war happening inside of me. I tightened my arm around her waist, guiding her until she was tucked against me, her head resting against my shoulder. She let out a long, shaky breath—one that felt as if she’d been holding it in for weeks. Her fingers slid up, tangling in my hair, nails scraping lightly against my scalp.

For a long time, we just sat there, the water cooling around us, the bathroom quiet except for the sound of our breathing.

I let my hand drift up her spine, tracing slow patterns against the bare space between her shoulder blades.

I wrote her name. Over and over again.

Beverly.

Beverly.

Beverly.

Not because she would feel the shape of each letter pressing into her skin or wake up with my name carved into her bones the way hers was carved into mine.

But because I couldn’t stop.

Because I was still bleeding.

Still hers.

Because I knew that tomorrow, when the sun cracked open the sky and forced reality between us, I’d wake up, and she’d still be the thing I wanted more than I wanted to breathe.

And Beverly still wouldn’t be mine.

34

BEVERLY, 1999

17 years old

I stared at the ceiling fan in Tiffany’s room, watching it spin in slow, lazy circles. The blades needed dusting. I could see the buildup from here. That should’ve made me want to get up and clean it. But nothing made me want anything lately.

I sighed, letting my head loll to the side. Tiffany was sitting on the floor, painting her toenails a shade of baby blue that clashed horribly with the hot pink scrunchie in her hair, her tongue poking out in concentration.

“You’re so quiet,” she noted, blowing lightly on her big toe. “It’s stressing me out.”

I shrugged, my fingers idly turning a page of a Vogue magazine, eyes scanning over an article about summer trends I had no real interest in. “I’m thinking.”

“Thinking about what?” she said. “Please say something juicy. I’m bored out of my mind.”

I huffed a quiet laugh. “Nothing juicy.”

“Ugh.” She let her head fall back. “Then what?”

“I don’t know. Just…life, I guess.”

She made a face. “Ew. That’s the worst.”